Friday 29th May 2015

Long day; popped by my parents' house to pick up any post (no more speeding tickets, hurrah! Just bills), and then to pick up Ali. Revelation of the day; having been close friends and bandmates with this totally awesome man for the best part of 8 years, it turns out Ali doesn't like being called Ali. This is according to his mum, but he confirmed it later on. Apparently, he prefers to be called Alister, which is of course his actual name. Why didn't Ali tell me this before? He's too awkward and British, that Ali, that's what he is.

Anyway, mostly in tandem (although we lost them a few times) we followed the others to Liverpool, with heavy rain but glorious comedy from Pappy's on the stereo entertaining us all the way. It took bloody ages to get there. We made it to the venue with 21 minutes to spare - just in time for the ceremony; today was 'wedding gig' day. Felt weird being part of the wedding for somebody I've never met before, it was kind of intrusive, like we had crashed it somehow. As Ali (sorry, Alister), Griff and Vix played songs for the ceremony, Gaf and I, being the humble rhythm section, were invited to watch so we sneaked in at the back - only to later find out that's where the pictures were being taken, so we accidentally ended up in the front of all of them.

It was a gay wedding; obviously I have no issues with that - if people love each other, they love each other, what's the problem? Yet it was the first time I'd been to a gay wedding; turns out it's the same as every other wedding I've been to - a glorious, happy day for all, with drunken uncles, embarrassing speeches and a mediocre covers band, as I probably should have known. We were that band; the sound wasn't great, our acoustic set (Griff, Vix and I) was cut short due to time restraints, the covers we learn't in a rush were a little messy. Probably the worst we've collectively played in a while, but everyone loved it. It's a wedding, it's full of love.

Had a great time - Liverpool is lovely. We ate well (and loads of it), we drank well (courtesy of the band credit card), we danced till the early hours and Griff got beaten by a woman in an arm wrestle. We stayed in an incredible apartment looking over the docks; we eventually crashed out, drunkenly, just after 3am.