I once walked into the offices of Good Housekeeping when a staff member was trying out a psychological quiz.
‘Quick!’ she said. ‘Assume that your house is on fire and the people and pets are all out. What’s the first thing you’d grab?’
‘Er – my passport,’ I replied, which surprised even me. But I suppose it does tie in with a deep-rooted need to feel free to roam around life’s corners. When I got home I tried the same question on a very fashion-conscious friend.
‘Oh I’d save my clothes,’ she said without hesitation. Which was slightly unnerving since I’d forgotten to add the bit about people and pets.
If I were asked the same question today I know what my answer would be. Unhesitatingly. My clipboard. Because, in under six weeks I shall become not just: ‘Hi Mum, what’s for dinner today?’ Not just: ‘I’ve been talking to your wife, David – you certainly picked a rum one, ho, ho, ho!’ Not even just: ‘Hey, your Mum’s a real goer – considering her age!’
In six weeks time, on what I fervently hope will be a fine and sunny June morning, I shall become the Mother of the Bride. And, since the reception is to be held at home, I am also hoping to become the successful master-mind (mistress-mind?) behind it all. Hence the clipboard. It lives in the crook of my arm. It lists guests and champagne glasses and new shoes for me and a haircut for Daniel. It lists curried turkey and sugared almonds and potato salad and we need more teaspoons.
It lists heartfelt notes to the printer of the invitations. Anna is marrying a Canadian of Dutch extraction. Even I had to really sit down and learn how to spell his surname. And, since my own married name is Rapkins and I’ve just received a parcel of cheque books from the bank, each one individually printed ‘Parkins’, one can’t be too careful. I already knew this anyway. My telephone bill, for years now, has been addressed to Papkins. The central heating was billed to Hopkins until we asked them to change it. Which they did. To Hopgood. This is all absolutely true. So much so that we have seriously talked of papering the downstairs loo with the variations we receive over the years. Ratkins is the slightly sinister and most common version. The nastiest, so far, is Rapeskins. How poor Anna will fare as Mrs Tjepkema I dread to think.
Other anxious notes encompass such peripheral activities as ‘Check garden sprinkler’. This is a major necessity since I bought an enormous sack of something for the lawn called ‘Weed & Feed’. Looking like one of those peasant ladies in ‘The Gleaners’ I girded it up on my hip and paced steadily to and fro, flinging great swathes of assorted magic pellets out across the greensward. I think I must have started too early in the season, because it is now brownsward. Not the ideal setting for a summer bride.
Meanwhile indoors Anna stitches the lace for her wedding dress and our good friend and chief bridesmaid Betty helps with fittings, while I hug my clipboard and I make a note to ‘measure green garlands’. I plan to loop these, with posies of white flowers, along white-covered tables.
Betty has also volunteered to bake the wedding cake. She and Anna plan to ice it together. ‘We can always practise a bit first,’ says Anna, with amazing confidence. She even giggles as she says it. How did I, the last of the Really Great Worryers, ever find myself with such a blithe, nonchalant daughter?
I shan’t easily forget my own youthful attempt to ice my first cake. How deftly I squeezed and smoothed and added clever curlicues. How proudly I led everyone kitchenwards with a merry ta-ra! And how silently we all gathered round this big, tacky brown lump sitting in a pool of not-so-Royal icing which, as we watched, slid silently down over the cake-stand and crept, glacier-like, across the table.
But now I smile bravely and lend Anna my GH cookbook with the cake decoration chapter carefully marked. I also secretly buy a little silver flower holder and plan to purchase a garland of silk flowers and several lengths of ribbon. If all else fails we can cover the results in cascading blossoms and satin streamers. More notes for the clipboard.
Out on the lawn (oh lor, I’d better put an asterisk next to ‘check sprinkler’) we’ll serve punch on the William Morris tablecloths. More notes … borrow a couple of extra punchbowls. While on the subject of drink, must remember to visit super French wine place we discovered recently …
‘It may not be open,’ we are warned with a typical Gallic shrug. It seems that several bins of wine have been accidentally labelled at a tenth of their original price. And one customer demanded the right to buy them all at the marked price and did. So the proprietors fired three staff members for ‘gross imbecility’ and everyone went on strike.
But we are in luck and the wine store is operating on two floors. I prowl hopefully along the back shelves, hoping to find a few overlooked champagnes marked at lemonade prices but all seems to be disappointingly back to normal.
‘What’s the usher supposed to do, Mum?’ says Dan, trying on his new cotton safari suit – a very carefully chosen half-way cross between old blue jeans (his choice) and the slick polyester Jimmy Osmond look (nobody’s choice except the local store buyers).
‘Well I suppose ushers ush,’’ I say as I measure his trouser hem against the instep of his new shoes (two more ticks on the list). ‘Actually you sort of shunt them around in church – oh, and one other thing this particular usher might do – just make sure, as we make our stately way up the aisle, that the mother of the bride hasn‘t still got a rather tatty clipboard clamped desperately underneath her arm…’