Just got back from a lovely weekend with Jan. We left the kids with Grandma and Grandad up in Cambridgeshire and legged it down to West London to attend the wedding ceremony of one of her friends from university whom she saw just a few months ago but hadn’t seen for YEARS before that.

Jan was excited because she was to be reunited with some very good friends whom she hadn’t seen for… a long time! One person estimated it had been 20 years but everyone promptly beat them to a pulp upon mentioning such an outlandish and offensive number. I was excited because I had never attended a gay wedding before.

Not so exciting was the three hour drive down to West London. Three hours in and of itself isn’t so bad but I have been doing nothing but driving since we got here. Hurray for the Mercedes Benz rental car! And not having the trusty rusty GPS in my phone for fear of outlandish and offensive roaming charges only added to the stress. Hurray for pre-cached Google maps!

We arrived safely at our surprisingly modern hotel in Teddington and, after a short walk around town, put on our glad rags and made our way up to the famous Turk’s Head Pub in Twickenham. Jan immediately crashed face-first into a blast from the past as she gleefully reminisced with four friends she hadn’t seen since they were at school together. I just sat back and enjoyed hearing them wax poetic about where life had lead each of them, roasting absent friends, and laughing about theatre productions of days gone by.

The high point of the evening for me was listening to the sterling lineup of speeches offered by a handful of the boys’ very close friends. I was impressed with each speaker’s well-written words and dry delivery. Each speech was better than the last and I was tearing with laughter by the end. The second the speeches ended, the DJ kicked the night into high gear, offering the most fabulous and camp playlist. Jan boogied to about 50% of the songs on offer, taking advantage of the rest of the time to catch up with her school friends. I danced to a measly 10%, choosing instead to engage in witty banter with some of the fascinating and increasingly drunk guests. I cut myself off after four glasses of cava as I was the night’s designated driver.

When the night came to a close, I stuffed as many drunken Englishmen into the back of the Benz as I could and followed their indecipherable directions all around West London. The drop offs went surprisingly well and it was only when Jan and I were finally on our way back to our hotel that we got really lost. And the night-roaming locals in some of these dodgy little towns were not helping matters. But we finally made it home. And we slept. And no kids woke us up all night long.

Before heading back home today, Jan took me on a little tour of her old stomping grounds. We visited what used to be her university campus (before it was sold off and transformed into a series of upper-class townhouses), her old dorms, her off-campus apartment, and a few pubs she used to frequent when she was supposed to be learning. There are some beautiful gardens along the Thames that make the neighborhood seem like a very nice place to pass one’s formative years. It was truly lovely strolling down memory lane with my 22 year-old wife.