Best Man Speech

Ok was delivered yesterday … great success apparently so job done. Pasted here in case it’s ever of use to anyone. Feedback from my sister was that opening stuff didn’t really work. Opening joke is weak. But people weren’t really that focused at this stage, kids were messing around and people were still talking after the Bride’s father’s speech (it was done in the  wrong order)… where it kicked in was when I started talking about the Groom. This is the main interest for future reference.

Was nervous as hell not so much because of the speech but because I was fighting demons big time – faced a lot yesterday all about ego: it was not ME getting married and why do I do this for other people when they don’t do it for me type of stuff: deep resentment that still exists after “my muse” seemed to abandoned me on the high seas… but it probably only seems this way because I see my own reserved behaviour creates this attitude, if I pull back then it will seem as though other people pull back and that is what I think I experience… this has got to be solved it is the weight that holds me down and probably is the strange-attractor around which a lot of this blog has orbited… that said was thinking yesterday I am orbiting a different star now from other people … I don’t get any deep satisfaction from doing things like the wedding any more it is all just a job… doing the dancing, socialising etc is all just a job. What I have become works well on a desert island (this morning I am cool and back to myself) but in “reality” in social environments I no longer function any more than a robot. I feel good when people warm to me because I know I haven’t hurt anyone and have done my job - but any real closeness doesn’t exist. It was weird with the groom because the situation demanded a honesty and closeness that we only ever play out at arms length – communication break-down we hardly spoke at the wedding. A good joke to have put in the speech would have been the one: so the groom asked me about marriage, I said I was flattered but wasn’t sure it would work. In a way this works for us. I never realised how “male” our relationship was and how difficult we find it to be close despite having spent so long camping together. Hopefully the wedding will have strengthened two relationships.
Despite having attempted to follow Buddhism the search for liberation has actually shattered any possibility of intimacy. It seems, in my mind, that to be intimate creates a bond which when broken leads to suffering so the bond mustn’t be formed. Have analysed love and sexual attraction at length in the blog I realise now that exactly the same process occurs in friendship. My vision of people functioning together is simply robotic, human bonds demand intimacy … yet can this be done without “fondness” and therefore suffering at the break of a bond? Not a step further along the road since “my muse” shucks! and I don’t understand anything about Buddha Dharma yet either even more Shucks!!

Main point anyway was the groom really liked it which is the brief here! (So blog-wise it means I’m back with vengeance on the ass of the SRH)

BEST MAN SPEECH 29/5/10

GENERAL GOT LOST COMMENT: now this is why you shouldn’t trust me with a map Gavin

START
Ladies and Gentlemen I’m sorry to say that today I’m not feeling very well.
I just mentioned to Gavin that I was feeling a bit funny…
…and he said well get on with the speech then while it lasts… so here I am.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Alva and I’m The Best Man. It is a real honour to be standing here BUT I thought I was safe from this job given the amount of dirt I can produce on Gav… so to be standing here today has really got me wondering what you all must know!

I am quite sure that Lucy is eager to respond to Gavin’s kind toast [and gifts], but before she does may I step in and thank you all on behalf of the “flower girls“… Congratulations on getting Sarah ready and up the aisle.

[I echo Gavin’s words]… It has been a beautiful wedding…[some comments] …
thank you to those who have made it possible and everyone who has helped in making this such a lovely occasion.

ETHICAL
As you can probably imagine this wedding has been prepared with utmost ethical awareness:
>No dangerous weapons have been exchanged during any part of the event or planning… except perhaps some of the [delicious desert].
>Gavin has mentioned/ensured that the wedding rings are made from a legal source of gold. However he was especially happy with the engagement ring which he managed to snap up at a real bargain price on eBay… the seller was having a clearance sale apparently … a Naomi Campbell for anyone interested.
>And finally of course I’ve done my part and made sure that all my jokes are 100% recycled.

Now the speech is running at 7 minutes at the moment so if you could assist by not laughing or interrupting that would be very much appreciated.
[PAUSE]

FALSE START
Gavin is the most handsome, witty, charming, debonair, [look puzzled] soph…istic…ated, ***Look Here***
… sorry Gav I can’t read your writing there.

START
OK! Gavin! Where can one begin with Gavin…[PAUSE]

He is a Poet, a Philosopher, a Warrior, an Adventurer, an Artist, a Pioneer… and I think had things gone differently he would even have made a Rock Star.
But unlike his idol Iggy Pop I am sure he would never have sold out to do car insurance adverts… altho his lawn is looking rather immaculate these days.

So I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you just a fraction of the Gavin that I have come to know over the years… at least those bits not already available in the 100 pages Google throws up… and having hung out with Gav on many occasions… the bits I can repeat here without risking MY own reputation.

HATCHED
As I’m sure many have long suspected GAVIN WAS hatched from a Giant Cosmic Egg. Fighting his way out from the shell is how he came to damage that front tooth of his… so any other stories that you may have heard about Spain are plain ludicrous!

It was the 1st December 1972 which was also the day that gave us Toni Collette the actress and the first Atari game Pong, the day that Iceland approved the worship of Norse Gods, and the day that the staff at the maternity wing of Hammersmith Hospital still call ugly baby Friday.

MET
I met Gavin 15 years ago in the Imperial College Caving Club. It was a cold bonfires night in Yorkshire and he was launching himself rather keenly from a tent … just like the firework that had been lit behind him.

From that moment onwards he has never slowed down… or that was until he met Sarah… but I shall come to that later…

INCIDENT
Caving was going well and then came the infamous incident involving another firework and a fluffy bunny. It required a change of direction… and a new identity for Gavin.

CLUBBING
Inspired by a failed attempt by MI6 to headhunt him, which ought to have gone rather well given that he didn’t answer any of the questions in the interview, he donned a black polo neck and a pair of wide-blue-brogues and headed for the London Dance Underground.

He was easily spotted on a Saturday night bopping away under the ambient lighting, looking A LOT like the SAS brother of Danger Mouse.

For anyone who can’t picture that it is immortalised in the photo on the back of the 1997 LTJ Bukem album Earth!!

ROCKSTAR
Now no serious discussion of Gavin can ever over-look his rock-star pretensions bubbling away just beneath the surface…[GESTURE GAVIN]

OK… well… bare with me here for a minute… He had been a singer in a band at school but nothing was seen of him until one day in a pokey suburb of London, inspired by the local Christian band serenading shoppers outside the local Mecca Bingo Hall, he returned home to express his new found love for the lord … into the answer phone.

The next morning and 2 bottles of wine later the tiny cassette contained the 13 track masterpiece “Soundscapes of Heaven”… featuring tracks such as “Casually Tuning Up to be with Jesus” and evocative lyrics like this one where he cleverly compares the difficulties of walking in Christ’s footsteps with the temptations of shopping in Chelsea.

“Making my way down the King’s Road,
I thought my head was gonna explode”

All sung in a voice reminiscent of David Bowie, I’m sure it will eventually secure him a place in rock history … but it’s probably damned any last chances he ever had of getting into Heaven (I don’t mean the night club btw).

WITNESS
It was around this time that Gavin said he was moving jobs. After saving dolphins for many years in the EIA it was time for a change.
I knew he was sometimes attracted by the allure of the right wing and knew he even read the Daily Mail once… but I was shocked when he said he was going to work for “Global Whiteness”. Happily it was just a misunderstanding… it was “Global Witness”.

BEER
So I remember first meeting Sarah at the Reading Beer festival in 1999 - a few pints of “Piddler on the roof” later and the conversation had turned to “love”. Sarah, I remember, had been rather interested in the discussion… but little did anyone realise then the feelings that were secretly brewing within the party.

RIDGEWAY
This was incidentally the eve of my first expedition with Gav above ground - but our new found past time of surface exploration didn’t quite begin with the shock and awe that was originally planned… still drunk the following afternoon, we stumbled to a bus stop, skipped the first 20miles missing out around 3000years of history and ended up getting lost on a straight track having somehow forgotten which way we were walking.
I was reminded recently that things didn’t get much better. A Heroic decision to take a short cut across a railway bridge almost provided South-West-Trains with a new front logo. Leaping and rolling to safety down the embankment in a cloud of dust we were faced with a group of fellow walkers standing staring in shocked silence.
A man with his son trying to make sense of what he had just seen, asked whether it was done for a bet. Sadly the truth was we were just bad at walking!

Happily for Gavin things in the weeks that followed went very much better with Sarah - and for once the fireworks didn’t get him into trouble.

SARAH
Can I take this opportunity to say how lovely Sarah looks today.

Sarah is a truly wonderful person and really deserves a good husband… so it is a damn job for Gavin that he came along before she found one.

But seriously it  was going to take someone quite extraordinary to balance and slow down Gav and that person is Sarah. She is beautiful, calm, has a great sense of humour and is the perfect partner to Gavin: very much the Yin to his Yang or as Gav’s socks often try to remind me the Ping to his “Pong“.

Where she is methodical he is ma-nic, where she is beautiful … he has nice hands.

It is fair to say that Sarah has completed Gavin, and as the saying goes, like my speech now, he is totally finished.

Congratulation to them both, we all know they make the most wonderful couple.
READ telegrams
One from David Cameron … Congratulations Sarah and Gavin. I didn’t believe it either but it seems coalitions do work. All the best for a happy partnership.
And one here from Tracie.
Hey Big Boy. How come you no write no more. How come you no send money no more. When you come back Bangkok?

FINALE
And now I can’t think of a better way to round things off than to remember what Sarah asked during that discussion at the Reading beer festival and which Hammerstein answered so well in the “sound of music”, words to which I’m so happy that She and Gavin both heeded the call …

A bell is no bell till you ring it
A song is no song till you sing it
And the love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay
Love isn’t love
Till you give it away

So with that let me ask you to charge your glasses… and for those who can still stand
to join me in a toast to the happy couple and to wish them a long and happy marriage…

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the new Mr and Mrs Hayman.