Authors: Dawn French
Just before the other one and I bow away from the lemon and limelight though, I would like to be tellin’ you that you has made one big giant haystacks of a mistake, momma. You would of got to be in some funny clothes and do laughing, laughing all the livelong day, instead of just lookin’ cool for everyone to see, and seekin’ out the latest trend of clowns to be associated with, instead of the French and the Saunders act who have always loved you truly and madly and deeply. There was one time when we very nearly done it, do you remember? You was goin’ to be up London, as were we at a simultaneous time, and there was a laugh-till-you-poo scene already written including of your good self. It was lookin’ like gettin’ close to bein’ done but then suddenly you were sendin’ off a faxular note explainin’ your busyness with two unimportant and irrelevant things. One was the singin’ and actin’ of Evita the Peruvian, and the other was the gestatin’ of the baby of Lourdes. Honestly, what kind of other measly excuse would you be comin’ up with futurely? Well, as it happens, and it did, you came up with absurdist and ever increasingly unreliable reasons to not take part. All of them were silly and did you no credit in the good lies department of skills.
So, mainly my reasoning is this: thank you for being so Teflon resilient with your tough rebukes and endless restraining orders on us. It has taught us a big lesson to not miss after double maths with Miss Alford, which is simply that you is got a humour bypass that takes the red bus route round the back of fun without stopping at the park-and-ride of titters, so you could of got on a happy shopper to cock a hoop. You twot!
But anyway, keep doin’ singin’ because that bit’s good. Of that we are jointly agreed.
Good luck for evermore, whatever it is you do.
I HAD TO
write to you because you were one of the very few ‘civvy’ friends I made as a kid. As you know, us air force ‘crab’ brats generally stuck together but when we came to live at RAF Turn Hill near your house in Market Drayton in Shropshire, we hit it off straight away, didn’t we? You were so welcoming to me at quite a tricky time. It was only tricky really because I was 11 years old and my body was a hive of hormonal confusion and my brain was a soggy pink sponge of girly emotion ready to drip with inexplicable tears at any moment. Plus, there was suddenly hair. Everywhere. Alarming.
I always valued the security of the RAF base where I knew all the faces, but there was something magical about your house. I remember it as big and rambling and friendly with a toasty country kitchen. Am I right, did it have a mezzanine with banisters where you could see the entire first floor as you went up the stairs? You had lots of animals, which was a major lure for me. There was a new litter of curly-haired chocolate-coloured puppies that was a source of great delight. We lay on your lawn for hours playing with them and naming them and hugging them and dressing them and not minding being bitten by their tiny sharp teeth. I recall you having a veritable menagerie of animals – cats and kittens and guinea pigs and rabbits and hamsters and even a donkey. Am I accurate about all this, OR have I had a rosy false memory where I have supplanted you with Dr Dolittle?!
Whatever
, I know how lovely it was to be in your orbit and how loving your family were towards me.
I do clearly remember when we decided to do a little double-act turn for a talent contest at our school. Was Mr Kitching the headmaster of the school, and was it next to a graveyard which meant I had to hold my breath
ALL DAY
so that bad spirits couldn’t get in me, which meant that sports activities outside were a potentially fatal pastime, since one usually needs to breathe during sports, I find, especially if you’re a bit fat, when you need to breathe
a lot
. We performed Esther and Abi Ofarim’s extraordinary hit ‘Cinderella Rockefella’. A call-and-response classic … I wore a leather jacket and took on the male role and you were the pretty one in the dress. We mimed, I freely admit that, but we went down a storm and, best of all, people LAUGHED! I can’t remember whether we anticipated that response. I rather think we imagined they would be astounded by our accurate impersonations. So, two big lessons were learned by me on that day: 1. ham it up and give the audience permission to find you hilarious, and 2. it doesn’t matter if your impressions are pants so long as they’re funny. Oh, and 3. try to get the other one to wear the leather jacket and be the Boy as often as poss to avoid cumbersome costume and stubble rash. Thanks for being the first of several successful partnerships I’ve had on and off stage!
When you and I weren’t at school or petting animals, or just petting, we did a lot of dreaming didn’t we? Mainly about being bridesmaids. I loved those conversations about how our dresses would be, how our tresses would be, how very like princesses we would be … If only somebody, ANYBODY, would ask us! I thought it would be quite good to offer ourselves as a pair, a
brace
of bridesmaids. We were, after all, a splendid match, similar height, same taste, which conveniently avoids any thundering bridesmaid-dress-choosing tantrums. We were friends, which surely helps to sidestep ugly bridesmaid rivalrous wars that inevitably end in tears and a certain amount of hair damage or, worse, hairpiece damage. We were prepared to practise bridesmaid tandem walking for
hours
so’s we could be perfectly harmoniously in step like a couple of highly trained pantomime-Cinderella-goes-to-the-ball-carriage-pulling white miniature ponies. Elegant, light and breezy with a perky symmetry, if a bit chunky. Clippety-clop, clippety-clop. Bliss. If we could, what flowers would we choose? What headpieces, what shoes? Heel or flat? Would there be gloves? Would we be permitted the tiny tremulous first step of a relationship with the forbidden love – make-up? Just a smattering of mascara perhaps or the lightest brushing of a mum’s shimmery coral lipstick? Oh, we could only dream.
Then, one blessed day, it happened. My mum told me that my beloved Uncle Owen and his lovely fiancée, the irrepressible Joan, were coming to visit and that the bride-to-be wanted to have a chat with me. They were due to be married and I could only hope that this was
the
conversation I’d been waiting for my
whole
life! At last, I was on the brink of bridesmaidhood for sure and boy was I going to enjoy it to the full, I was going to relish every crystal-slippered, lacey-gloved, teary-eyed, dew-droppy, rose-petally, acres of tuille and netty, glossy, girly moment. Every perfect moment. I wasn’t going to forget you though, you were definitely part of the deal, although of course you weren’t actually part of the family and had never actually met Joan, but somehow,
through
sheer righteous force of the plan’s perfectness, I would surely persuade her that you were to be included.
The day of their visit came and after a seemingly endless lunch at our house, where no one even mentioned the wedding, Joan asked if we could go for a walk together. Oh my holy God. This was it. We had never ‘gone for a walk’ before. We circumnavigated Buntingsdale Lake while I politely answered well-intentioned questions about school and life and school. I wanted to yell ‘Just ask me! Don’t delay another second! I’m going to say yes! Ask me soon! Ask me now! Ask me!!’ Eventually, after a marathon amount of walking, we finally sat down and I nearly wet myself with anticipation, I even had my ‘No really, me? I’m so shocked! Of course, I’d be honoured’ face prepared just below the skin ready to pop up and be seemingly aghast at the surprise of the moment. Yes, yes, she started to talk about the wedding and all their plans … ‘Yes! I will of course be your bridesmaid – look no further for a devoted handmaiden, you lucky bride, you,’ I was thinking, but she hadn’t actually asked yet, so I suppressed my excitement and cocked my head and tried desperately to appear to be listening. ‘Hurry, hurry, I might faint if you don’t get to it. You know you need me. Just ask! Oh, and by the way, my friend Sarah and I are sort of joined at the hip, could she be one too?’ I thought. Hang on, now she was telling me about her family and all the little girls in it who would make suitable bridesmaids. ‘Yes, yes, there will be a bevy of us and we will resemble a bower of delicate flower fairies as we follow you up the aisle holding your gossamer train aloft with our wands,’ I thought. Oops, careful, floated off into my own head a bit too long there, and now her expression has changed to a sort of
pitying
frown while I have mistakenly retained my listening rictus. Oops, quickly change it to match hers. Yes, now we are both frowning and looking sad. Why are we looking sad? Tune in, Dawn, what is she actually saying? Something about too many nieces, odd numbers, how I will apparently have lots of other opportunities and for me not to be too upset, and am I OK? What is she telling me? My tear ducts seem to get wind of the devastating rejection before I do, and start to do impulse crying. Why am I crying? Auntie Joan has her arm around me and is apologising. Why? – OH – MY – ACTUAL – GOD! She has told me I’m not one. I haven’t passed. I’m not in. Not can bridesmaid be. Me no bridesmaid. No. Not. No. Out. Go. Begone. Not. No floatiness. No wings. No Sarah. No. None. No … No!! My
single solitary
reason to live, second to puppy-nuzzling of course, and third to Peter Tork worship, snatched away in a flea’s heartbeat. It was quicksilver. It was there. Then it wasn’t. I was a bridesmaid. Then I wasn’t. Of course Joan had never said that I
would
be, but that’s not the point. I
wasn’t
going to be.
I managed to reassure her that despite my silly tears, I really didn’t mind. After all, she wasn’t being malicious, just honest. Yeah, sure I didn’t mind. The rabid injustice of it all sputtered inside me until it grew into a full howling tornado of hurt and anger which made me want to spear all bridesmaids everywhere immediately with my red-hot sharpened rods of spite. The only reason I didn’t is because I am execrably polite and monstrously mindful of others. Otherwise I would have joyfully taken lives, I would have happily abandoned myself to a bridesmaid killing spree of behemoth proportions and willingly languished in jail
for
ever to have that sweet taste of revenge on my lips for only a nanosecond. I wanted bridesmaid blood.
As it was, we returned home and through gritted teeth I explained to my mum that there was indeed to be a full complement of fluffy bridesmaids but that I was not to be one of them. Never mind, eh? Mum saw through my pretence instantly and knew I would nurse the resentment into a snarling, snapping, biting dangerous thing unless she took decisive displacement action. A week later we drove to Manchester and we spent too much money on an outfit for me that was fit for one purpose only – to upstage those fecking chosen ones, the bridesmaids. I ended up at that wedding in an eye-catching, extraordinary and (like all revenge buys) ill-advised get-up. It took the form of a bright pink trouser suit. The trousers were flared, the top was a cape with gold braided buttons at the Nehru neck. The hat was jockey-inspired, also pink. The blouse was frilly-fronted, also pink. The shoes were black patent leather with a T-bar. The socks were school (mistake). Certainly I was noticeable. If only for all the wrong reasons. I looked like an Austin Powers reject. Thank heavens that, a short while later, my very cool, jazzy, clever Uncle Mike and his equally groovy fiancée Trish finally granted my wish and asked me to be bridesmaid at their wedding. It was a real sixties wedding and Trish’s lovely sister Heather had to play your part, Sarah, because we had moved by then, and also mainly because she was Trish’s sister. Anyway, I got to do it and it was utterly dreamy and included gloves
and
a fancy hairdo
and
a small heel. Praise be.
I had to laugh years later when Len and I were married and his nieces Donna and Babette were my bridesmaids. Jackie, a
different
niece who I knew less well obviously felt a degree of this bridesmaid envy I speak of, and decided to turn up in a canary-yellow bridesmaid outfit of her own devising. She went a step further than me and for that I applaud her. Bring on the bridesmaids! Let
all
women and girls invited to weddings come in their own bridesmaid outfits if they so choose!
I never found out if you managed to be one. Hope you did. Otherwise you might still be as dangerously murderous as I was.
Any time you want to do synchronised slow walking, with fabulous hairdos and matching accessories, let me know!
I AM TRYING
to book a holiday. It has to be one week long and in the UK somewhere. We haven’t got enough time to go abroad, and besides, I don’t really want to do that – I’m feeling a bit carbon-footprint guilty, plus I hate flying. Flying, for me, is utterly exhausting, for the simple reason that it is my duty (on behalf of
all
the passengers, I hasten to add) to keep the plane in the air by sheer force of my mind … If I lose concentration for even a minute, the massive metal crate will surely plummet earthwards and hundreds of tragic deaths would be on my conscience. Well, if we could
find
my conscience, which will definitely have been ripped backwards through my arsebum on impact. Woe betide I should have a little kip – chaos would certainly ensue if I did. I’m not sure how all the many planes I’m
not
on stay up. There must be some cosmic system whereby a mind/plane controller like me is placed on each and every flight. I don’t know what the process is, but it is obviously working. On the whole. All of this means that any trip abroad involving a flight equals major stress so I have to balance that out with how relaxing the holiday is going to be. Since we only have a week, two flights don’t add up to funsville for me. No, I want to find a British-based holiday. Quite difficult considering the different needs, likes and dislikes of all three of us. I like sea, art, food, naps, telly and dog. Len likes books, heat, pictures, tunes, wine, comics and walks. Billie likes bed, phone, PlayStation, Facebook, iPod, boys
and
dark rooms. Usually we try to do a bit of all of the above, but that often results in no one being satisfied.