I have in mind to post some time soon about the perils – and rewards – of trying to master the English language: short version, I’m 62 years into the project and still in the foothills.

Let me tell you in the meantime about one of the three happiest days of my life, which happened on 22nd February this year (the others being my own wedding day and the birth of Daughter and Heiress). It was, to wit, the wedding of said D & H to Scott, a Northern Irishman and pretty much as perfect a son in law as you could wish for (see below).

It was a fantastic day, which the young couple organised pretty much all by themselves: changed days from my generation. All the father of the bride had to do was turn up and deliver some sort of speech. So, in honour of Father’s Day, that frankly wholly commercial invention of card manufacturers, here’s the text. It seemed to go down OK.

 

Heather, Scott, ladies and gentlemen, the last time I spoke at a wedding was in the rather less traditional role of uncle of the bridegroom. This was in London, and as my nephew Jonny was marrying an Englishwoman, and around half of the guests were from south of Watford Gap, I thought it useful and appropriate to give them a brief history of Scotland, mainly so that Jess knew what she was getting into. This was before lockdown, and I was still in my fifties then, just a kid with a crazy dream.

So I told them first about the Vikings, and how they were basically the teenage second sons of Swedish farmers who were sent over in the longboats to get them out of the way. It was all so unfair, and they rather took it out on the monks when they got here. At least according to the monks.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, there was a group of the Awkward Squad who were really more into shipbuilding than writing poetry and playing harps like the rest of the population. They were persuaded that perhaps they’d like to try out all these boats they’d been working on, and that there was a nice bit of country across the sea that might suit them better.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Vikings and the Irish met somewhere near Harthill service station, and after initial hostilities died down, they discovered they had a lot in common. Drinking and an interest in marine engineering, mainly. And so, along with the Picts and Galwegians and once the teenage Vikings had found a good woman and settled down a bit, the nation we stand in today was born.

In that speech, for reasons of brevity, I didn’t go into the subsequent creation of Northern Ireland, when James VI and I persuaded some Scots to go back over the Irish Sea on the promise of more shipbuilding opportunities, and with firm guarantees in place that none of them would have to write any poetry ever. Unless their name was Seamus Heaney. Or Van Morrison.

I then, ladies and gentlemen, shared a list of Scottish inventions, just to let Jonny’s in laws know the type of people they were dealing with. I won’t repeat the list, because quite frankly it was pretty much a straight lift from Wikipedia, and you can look it up. Suffice to say it shows we Scots invented almost everything.

What I didn’t know was that Jess’s Dad, the father of the bride, was in fact Northern Irish, and in his speech he put me right about some of these inventions being in fact from the Six Counties. John Boyd Dunlop, for example, may have been from Ayrshire, but invented the pneumatic tyre in a shed in Belfast.

Which just goes to show we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns, and you should never make any exaggerated claims when you’re going to be followed by a Northern Irishman, as I was then, and will be soon.

Which leads me to my next, and possibly first relevant, point. When Heather first told me of Scott’s existence, she said and I quote: ‘I don’t want you to be prejudiced in his favour just because he’s a guitar teacher and he’s Northern Irish.’

Let’s unpack that a little. I might be prejudiced in his favour because he’s a guitar teacher, as my guitar playing is always in need of improvement (no lessons yet, I note). And the Northern Irish thing? Well, there’s the whole Celtic soul brothers vibe, and Van Morrison, but also, to be frank with you, it’s the accent. We love it. Imagine my disappointment when I met him and he didn’t have it!

I’m only kidding, of course. Alison and I, along with the rest of our family, have come to know Scott over the last few years and I’d like to stop joking for a moment and say how utterly, utterly pleased and proud we are to welcome him into our family. He is an absolutely lovely lad, and we couldn’t have asked for a better son in law if we’d picked him ourselves. He’s kind, gentle, talented, and treats Heather like a princess.

Still waiting for that first guitar lesson though, Scott. Just saying.

Anyway, Scott has Ross as his best man to tell us all about him – no doubt in glowing terms, and without any embarrassing stories about youthful japes involving tequila, a baboon from Edinburgh Zoo and a visiting mariachi band. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the first problem with this speech.

You see, the traditional wedding speech set up is pretty sexist. Most of the time it’s the men speaking. Worse than that, the groom can rely on his best mate to tell some lightly spiced stories about what a character he is, while the bride just gets her soppy old Dad blubbing his way through a diatribe about what a perfect specimen of womanhood she is and how desolate he is about ‘giving her away,’ to use the deeply inappropriate language of traditional Dad speeches.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was determined today to strike a blow against the Patriarchy by telling you some lightly spiced stories about what a character Heather is, and no blubbing whatsoever. But that leads me to the second and third problems with this speech.

The second problem is that, if Heather has been involved in an incident involving tequila, a baboon from Edinburgh Zoo and a visiting mariachi band, she’s had the good sense to keep it from me. What goes on tour stays on tour, and she’s either got exceptionally loyal friends or there’s a lot of bribery going on.

The third problem is that Heather is wonderful – everyone that meets her knows that. She’s highly intelligent and analytical. She’s so committed to fairness, she doesn’t want her Dad to be prejudiced in favour of her new boyfriend just because he’s a Northern Irish guitar teacher. She’s kind hearted to a fault. She is also very funny, almost always deliberately so. She’s considerate and loyal. She’s a lot more resilient than she thinks she is. She’s also very creative.

Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen – a detailed artwork depicting Guinea Toro, the world’s first bullfighting guinea pig. She was twenty five when she did that [a beat] ok, I’m kidding. Twenty two.

So, faced with Heather being so wonderful and all, what else is there for me to say? Well, the truth is, ever since she graced us with her presence (she took 24 hours to do that, by the way, but I think her mother’s forgiven her for it by now) I’ve taken on the traditional Dad role of telling her loads of nonsense for no better reason than she trusted me not just to be making shit up. And I feel now is probably the right time to put some of that right:

Heather, I think you worked out early on that Santa doesn’t exist, but kept the pretense going for strategic reasons. The truth is that Santa really does exist, but the magic elves were a complete fabrication: the big guy had a key to the conservatory and that’s how he got the presents in there. Also, he outsourced the factory at the North Pole to China long ago.

If the Tooth Fairy’s real, they owe one hell of a lot of money.

Other things I really should have told you by now. Ya hoor ya hoor ya hoor ya is not, in fact, proper Gaelic for ‘it’s lovely to be here in the Highlands.’

There is no actual Biblical reference to the Inuit being God’s Frozen People. Similarly, there’s no reliable source to prove Jesus was a Mexican, although I do hope he was and he can maybe give them a hand with fending off Donald Trump.

Finally, there is no Fucawe tribe of three foot pigmies living in four foot grasslands, spending their day trying to jump above the level of the grass going, we’re the Fucawe?

Thank you for your patience and understanding, ladies and gentlemen. I know I feel a lot better for having got that off my chest, even if it does get me cancelled. I will now step aside, and let the youngsters have their say. Before I do so, however, I’d like to ask you to be upstanding if you still can and toast a couple of the most wonderful human beings I have ever known. And no, I’m not at all biased.

To the bride and groom!

(for the record, I managed not to blub)