Tick, tick, tick

It has been an eventful weekend.

On Saturday, Captain Ric was married to Leigh (finally!). I would normally be inclined to say more about the event, but I suspect that none of the readers of this blog actually have any interest in weddings or the associated shenanigans, so I'll spare you the details.

I will note, however, that this ticks off another of my non-Resolutions for the year. I was moderately pleased with my piping at the weekend - I have played better before, but on only one occasion. And, critically, the 'important bits' were perfect (those being the Processional, the Recessional, and the piping in at the reception).

Fortunately, the weather was nice and sunny before the wedding, so I didn't mind a jot when Leigh was somewhat delayed - it is of course the bride's prerogative to be late on her wedding day, but it is rather more pleasant for the piper when she's late on a sunny day than when she's late on a December evening when freezing cold rain is pouring down from the skies (oh yes, I know that one well). Saturday's snow waited until after the service, when the wedding party emerged from the church.

So, that's three sisters I have piped down the aisle (technically, one sister and two sisters-in-law, a distinction that's only important in that Andrew and Richard are my actual brothers), which leaves one to go.

The second thing that I was able to knock off the list was an awkward conversation. To a certain extent, this was covered two months ago, but I wasn't entirely happy with the resolution there. Well, it's now done, finished, and complete. I'm still not going to tell you any more than that.

However, I will say some more about the third item to be removed from my list on Saturday. As one of the best men, I was considered a member of the wedding party, which in turn meant that at the tail end of the first dance, when the MC called on the rest of the wedding party to join the happy couple, I had the not unpleasant duty of taking the floor with my pre-assigned bridesmaid. (Leigh had made sure to assign a specific partner for each of the bridesmaids. There was a good reason for this, which I'm not going to share with you. Although, given the nature of the people involved and the nature of the day, I suspect it was always an unnecessary precaution.)

Now, at school, I learned all the ceilidh dances, so I'm pretty confident with these. However, at school they did not teach a slow dance, on the grounds that obviously everyone knows how to do that, right? And, at a dance in late December, I found myself dancing such a dance, and deeply unhappy that it really didn't work out as intended. Hence, "There's a gap in my skill-set that needs to be closed up before it is shown up." (And, before you note that no-one would really care about anyone other than Ric & Leigh at this point, I would point out that there was 100% camera coverage of the dance-floor. So, any mistake was liable to find its way onto YouTube for my eternal mockery.)

Of course, the nice, easy way to solve this conundrum would have been to ask either of my pre-existing sisters for a quick tutorial. Amongst their many other talents, they are qualified teachers of dance. I decided on using an entirely different solution, though - I just ignored the problem and assumed it would go away.

It turns out that there isn't a damn thing wrong with my dancing. In December, my partner for the dance was an eighteen-year-old girl I really didn't know, whereas on Saturday I was dancing with Kirsty, a girl who I do know at least a little, and who is slightly older than eighteen, and therefore rather more confident in her skin than my previous victim. The upshot of all of this was that the whole thing worked rather better. However, the other key difference was that in December I was also attempting to balance a penny on my forehead, something that wasn't a necessity on Saturday. Apparently, that matters.

So, I'm removing that from my 'to-do' list. Taking a dance class might not be a terrible idea anyway, but the motivation for doing so wouldn't have anything to do with actually learning to dance. Which leaves just two items on the list: moving house and visiting a new country.