Opinion
My wedding plan was perfection, then I turned my feet into two blocks of ice
Kate Halfpenny
Regular columnistSharon and Ian’s wedding was a lunch affair in Bright. In morning traffic, almost four hours’ drive from the family home in Williamstown. Kids dropped at the station and dog fed, I burned off solo in the Kia Carnival about 7.30am, in a good dress and towering strappy Chloe sandals.
Along with changing the radio station every five seconds in search of a better song, one of my driving foibles is having the car temperature set to coldish. Nobody wants car sickness from being trapped in a hot moving bubble. I was doing a reading at the wedding and wanted to be in ripper shape from the roadie. So, a bag of jersey caramels, tons of bad singing and Arctic temperatures.
It’s easier to fulfil your wedding duties when you haven’t frozen your feet.Credit: Tanya Lake
Groom Ian was on welcome duties at the door of the winery when I pulled up. Ace. My scheduling and Be Your Best strategy seemed to have paid off. Until I got out of the car, fell over and couldn’t stand. My feet were legit frozen.
Ian saw I was in all sorts. Abandoned his post. Raced over.
We tried punching my useless lump of ice feet to restore circulation. Nothing doing. Ian hoisted me onto his back, and we set off across the car park. Undignified, sure, but going well – until the bridal car arrived. Ian was torn. Help me or greet his gorgeous bride? He slid me to the ground. I pulled myself up onto a wall and inched inside, nodding and smiling. Yes, the village idiot has arrived.
When the time came for the reading – the lyrics to a Nick Cave song – I used the backs of chairs for support to stagger slowly up like Keyser Soze when he’s pretending not to be a criminal mastermind.
There was plenty of time on the drive home to consider where things went wrong. Short answer: not anticipating the effect that blasting the air-con would have on a poor shoe choice.
For a while after, I became a planning maniac rarely taken by surprise. But lately, there’s stuff creeping up unexpectedly. Things you haven’t planned for. Spot fires popping up and catching me so off guard it’s hard to find my feet. I wonder if you’re the same.
There’s the passing of time, of course. Christmas feels about five minutes ago, and now it’s nearly winter. An invitation arrived for my 40-year school reunion this month. I’m so not prepared for it to be four decades since sunbaking lunchtimes with Brigitte and Sally and Nicki, uniforms hiked up, baby oil on legs, discussing the grand lives and loves that lay ahead.
Technology addiction. I sniff at parents in playgrounds or students at bus stops, heads bent, ignoring their kids, friends, the world. Somehow, suddenly, I’m one of those blithely spending more time with the tiny computer in my hand than with people in my heart and home. I’m trying to work out what gap it’s filling while cursing its sneakiness.
There’s financial trickiness. The call from a doctor saying don’t worry, but I want you to have a biopsy. Stress. The quietly mounting demands of work, family and personal obligations that leave you too frazzled and depleted to plan a rejuvenating holiday.
More widely, the mad global weather situation, where even if you do book the holiday you’ll get blown away by an unseasonal typhoon.
And the crisis of men killing and hurting women. The government’s acting like this has somehow not been happening since we were in caves. That it’s a contemporary situation that’s caught them on the hop and they have to come up with solutions on the fly.
Like deciding that moderating what teenagers masturbate to could be more effective than hiking up the price of booze and toughening bail laws and making offenders wear leg bracelets forever so the next woman they buy a drink for doesn’t think, “He seems like a nice guy”.
Beware the thing you don’t plan for, people. The one that taps you on the shoulder like a pantomime villain. And if you have to make unwise footwear choices, don’t mix them with roadies.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.