That moment.

‘Five minutes’. ‘Five minutes’.‘Five minutes’.

The on-call obstetrician announced that my life - our lives - would be turned upside down in exactly five minutes. He made his announcement just once, but the two words echoed inside my head. How could he possibly know this with such accuracy and confidence? I could only assume that, given his current position (between Eileen's legs) and the fact that he had already introduced himself to everyone in the room as the on-call obstetrician, he was ideally placed to make his announcement. I guessed - rightly as it turned out - that he wasn’t just guessing.

Five minutes? 

Five minutes!

I was suddenly acutely aware of time. 

But at the same time I was acutely aware that I was unaware of the time. 

I was acutely aware that it was passing. 

And quickly.

Very quickly. 

Too quickly. 

In five minutes (less!) my whole life - our whole lives - would change forever. We were on the cusp of our own personal and, given Eileen’s lack of clothing and the current position of the on-call obstetrician, not-so-private revolution. And I wasn’t wearing a watch. I cursed my omission.

Right at that moment my desire to know the time - the precise time, the exact time – was overwhelming. If I was – if we were - about to experience anything remotely resembling a personal revolution, I wanted to know the exact time that it occurred, how long it lasted and when it finished. Unfortunately, I had stopped wearing a wristwatch in about 1995 when I had taken delivery of my very first brick-that-masqueraded-as-a-mobile-phone. Since then I had rarely, if ever, missed that sense of comfort and security that comes with knowing that the time was always right there at your fingertips, or just a few inches above them. Until now. Now I found myself yearning for those halcyon, pre-1995, pre-brick, pre-Blackberry, pre-iPhone, innocent wristwatch days. I missed the freedom. I missed the winding. I missed the ache in my thumb and forefinger that came when you had to wind the tiny little bezel for ten minutes to change the date in the little square window. I missed it all and I wanted it back. I wanted to turn back time. Now.

But I couldn’t. 

It hardly seemed to be an appropriate moment for me to ask if anyone in the room had the right time. For one thing, I was afraid that someone might assume that I was bored, or that there was something on TV that I was a tad disappointed to be missing. Nor was it really an appropriate moment for me to attempt to fish my Blackberry from the front pocket of my jeans. The truth was that it wasn’t just my own, or anyone else’s, mother who might have pointed out that my jeans were a little on the tight side. If I was being completely honest with myself, I was of a similar view myself. They were rather tight – a little too tight for a forty-year-old to be wearing in any social situation, never mind in the middle of a delivery suite on the cusp of a personal and not-so-private revolution. Consequently, the process of extracting my Blackberry from my pocket was a little easier said, and far easier imagined, than done. 

In any case, removing the Blackberry from my pocket was really only half the problem. I would then need to fiddle around with it to finally get to see the exact time. This, I feared, would look, at least to the non-aficionados of the Blackberry in the room, like I was either sending a text message or, worse still, checking my work emails. Both of which, I assumed, given the fast approaching personal revolution, would be universally frowned upon.  

A quick glance around the room led me to conclude that the three nurses were probably not in the Blackberry-owner demographic. I’d never set eyes on the on-call obstetrician so I was forced to guess that he would have no idea what a Blackberry was or indeed what one did. This left only Eileen, and the truth was that it was Eileen that I feared the most. 

As a long-standing - and increasingly evangelical - iPhone disciple, she is prone to looks of scorn and contempt whenever a Blackberry is produced in her presence. I dreaded to think of her reaction if she noticed me playing with mine in the middle of the delivery suite when the on-call obstetrician had recently announced that our much-anticipated revolution was just five minutes away. My desire to know the time was overwhelming, but Eileen was very clearly in no mood – or position – to be confronted by her nemesis. 

So, my Blackberry remained firmly in my pocket, and I remained firmly in the dark about the exact time. 

To pass the time, and to provide at least a degree of distraction from my overwhelming desire to know the time, I decided to take a quick look around the delivery suite. Time was ticking by and it had just dawned on me thatI hadn’t at any point since our arrival taken in my immediate surroundings. My – our – revolution was whizzing toward me (towards us) with a sense of ever-increasing inevitability, and I suddenly I felt that it might be appropriate to have a clear idea of exactly where this revolution would take place.

Stirrups! I expected to see stirrups, and I was a little disappointed when I didn’t. I had assumed that they would be dangling from the ceiling above the bed that Eileen was lying on. I had it firmly in my mind that stirrups were very much front and centre of the whole birthing ‘thing’. I felt sure that when I was growing up I had seen a movie with a scene involving a very pregnant lady on a bed with her feet in stirrups, pushing, whilst a very matronly looking lady, with an extraordinarily large bosom, was standing beside her, bellowing at her to push ‘just a little bit harder’. 

The truth was that I had no idea if stirrups were a good thing or not; whether they aided the birthing process, or hindered it. My disappointment at the lack of stirrups certainly wasn’t based on what might these days be called ‘birthing outcomes’. It was based solely on an expectation of the familiar that hadn’t materialised. Stirrups, I concluded, were obviously either a thing of the past, or they had always only ever been a thing of old movies featuring matronly looking nurses with an ample bosom. Either way, they seemed to be completely absent from the modern-day birthing experience. An experience that I was now beginning to feel very much a part of. Stirrups, if they had ever existed, had been replaced by what might best be described as leg extensions. These protruded from the end of the birthing bed, and the two nurses who were strategically positioned down at her ankles had manoeuvred each of Eileen’s legs into them. Her feet were now placed firmly against the cushioned ends of the leg extensions. I guessed – correctly as it turned out - that this would allow her to push with maximum force whenever it was suggested that pushing was required. The leg extensions with the cushioned ends meant that Eileen’s legs were going nowhere.  

Whilst this was true of her legs, the rest of Eileen was free to wriggle and writhe to her heart’s content. Whilst she was certainly wriggling and writhing, Eileen’s heart appeared to be a long way from of content. She was quite obviously in what can only be described as total, complete and utter agony. That said, I have never seen anyone look as completely and utterly focussed as Eileen looked right at that moment. The recent announcement - that our own personal revolution was due in just five minutes – looked to have inspired her to find an ounce of energy, determination and willpower from somewhere. In my time as an armchair football fan, I have seen plenty of footballers appear to slip into autopilot in the final five minutes of a match, as if they are happy to allow the game to simply peter out with little more than a whimper so that they can retire as quickly as possible to the nearest – and most expensive - bar. There was no such final-whistle-approaching comfort zone complacency from Eileen. She was focussed, determined. She was clearly a million miles from her comfort zone, but she was very firmly ‘in the zone’. Her eyes were fixed firmly - and somewhat metaphorically - on the prize.  

My eyes, on the other hand, were fixed firmly on the large clock on the wall. There it was! Directly above Eileen’s head. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t noticed it before. In my defence, it was a very odd place to put a clock. It looked to me to have been placed entirely for the benefit of the bit players in the scene that was unfolding in the room beneath it, leaving it completely out of sight of the scene’s leading lady. Perhaps whoever had been responsible for the positioning of clocks around the hospital had assumed that she – they - would have other things on her – on their - mind. Perhaps the clock-responsible person felt that to her – to them - the right time was neither here nor there. Perhaps that was right, but I was certainly relieved to finally know the exact time. I suddenly felt liberated. If my freedom – our freedom – was about to end, if a lifetime of ‘do-as-you-choose’ non-parenthood was to be replaced by a lifetime of ‘do-as-your-kid-says’ parenthood, at least I would know the exact time that we crossed that threshold, that we entered that brave new world. 

At least I would know the exact time that the two of us became the three of us.

We had been in the delivery suite, and at the hospital, for precisely 9 minutes. No more. Not 10 minutes. We hadn’t even made double digits. For a significant proportion of those nine minutes I had either been feeling superfluous or I had been desperately trying to pinpoint exactly how I was feeling. For the remainder of the time I had been fretting about my choice of clothing or I was preoccupied with a burning desire to know the time. Now I had my answer. What’s more, the past had well and truly passed. My all too fleeting superfluous moments were well and truly behind me. They were gone. Perhaps forever. 

The nurse who was positioned at Eileen’s right shoulder invited me to stand opposite her at Eileen’s left shoulder. 

Every single one of the previously announced five minutes had been. And gone. 

The time for our very own personal, and not so private, revolution had finally arrived. 

It was, according to the impractically positioned clock on the wall above the bed, 9.09pm on Sunday 4th July. 

Right there, right at that moment, ably assisted by an on-call obstetrician who I had never seen in my life before, three perfectly positioned nurses and her once superfluous-feeling, oddly-dressed, significant other, Claudia Eileen Pich – the love of my life - pushed our first daughter into the world. 

And into our lives. 

Pearl Matisse was born.

Bliss

It had arrived. Finally. My big moment. Look, I say big, but really I mean biggish. Nearly big. OK. Small.

I was presenting to the Balgowlah Rotary Club. I say 'presenting'. It was more that I was presenting myself. I'd been invited to 'say a few words' to the 40 or so members of Balgowlah Rotary at their monthly meeting. I say 40 ... it was more like 30. Or so!

I'd been invited by a lovely local lady. (We'll call her Joan). Joan had just made a very generous donation to Lifeline Northern Beaches and I, the big boss of Lifeline Northern Beaches, had jumped at the chance when she'd invited me to a meeting of her local Rotary Club.

I'll be honest - I like Rotary. They do 'stuff'. Great stuff. If you don't know them, they're basically a bunch of (usually) retired lads and lasses who are keen to give back in the local community. Like I say, they 'do stuff'. Anything. From sizzling sausages to running major fundraising events. To be honest, there's nowt quite like the 'grey army' for mobilising the troops. Or firing up the barbie. So there I was, sitting at one of 3 tables of 10, at the Balgowlah RSL, surrounded by 'oldies', staring at Joan. Or me). She finished. They clapped. All 28 of them. It was deafening. I stood up. All 58 eyes were on me. (I'm not counting mine). 

My big moment had arrived. 

And then my phone bleeped. A text message. From Picky.

"What time will you be home?"

To the uninitiated that might sound like a perfectly reasonable and innocuous message. But not to me. I know Picky. Well. Very well. Too well.

The thing is, I can tell what Picky is thinking from 100miles. Through thick fog. So I stood and stared at the screen. And they all sat and stared at me. The eyes. All 58 of them. I was torn. But I knew. I knew what I had to do. I picked up my phone. And typed one word. Just. One. Solitary. Word.

'Why?'

I waited. So did they. The eyes.

Bleep.

"I'm in a fair bit of pain."

Like I said; I know Picky. Well. When Picky says she's in 'a bit of pain', it means she's having her leg removed. With a pocket knife. 'A fair bit of pain' means that the pocket knife is blunt. And rusty.

I read the text message.
And then I looked up. 

At the eyes. 

And then at Joan. 

Time stood still. 

For a second. 

I knew. 

I knew I had to go.

I went.

It was 7.52pm

Balgowlah RSL is 15minutes from home on my scooter. I did it in 10. I ran two red lights and weaved through the traffic like I was told never to do on my scooter course.

As I jumped off my scooter outside the apartment block, I called Tansy. She knew. God knows how. The due date was still more than three weeks away. But she knew. I said we'd drop Pearl off at her place in 15minutes. 

Inside the apartment Picky was pacing around. 

I told her to get ready to leave.

I told Pearl to grab her pyjamas.

She was having her very first sleep over.

Pearl screamed with delight.

Eileen screamed in agony.

And then she told me that she wasn't in labour.

Now look, I'm a bloke, and I freely admit that blokes know diddly-squat about labour. We're not supposed to. We're supposed to know about lawn-mower engines and grouting the bathroom. We haven't evolved to know about stuff that far south on a woman. But I know this - when your first baby arrived in 56 minutes from woe to go, you don't mess about with stomach pain in the latter stages of pregnancy. 

Picky was having none of it. So, in desperation, and in desperate need of an ally, I called the midwife. It was a bad move. She asked to speak to Picky. And Picky repeated that she didn't think she was in labour. The midwife told us to wait for a while to 'see what happens'. 

Then Picky had a contraction. 

The midwife told me to get her to the hospital straight away.

I BLOODY WELL TOLD YOU! It was 8.20pm.

I told Pearl she was going for a sleepover. She went ballistic. She'd always wanted to go for a sleepover.

We dropped Pearl at her mate Gemma's place, and drove up to the hospital. It took 10minutes. It was 8.35pm.

At the hospital we were taken straight into a birthing room. I'd just timed a contraction on my Iphone. Four minutes! That was it. It was all there was. 240 seconds. And 10minutes earlier she'd tried to convince me (and a fully qualified midwife) that she wasn't in labour.  

The midwife wanted to check how dilated Eileen was.

So she had a look.
A good look.

But she couldn't see a cervix.

It had gone.

There was nothing.

She was fully dilated. 

I asked her how long. She said any minute. Eileen screamed. She needed to push. NOW. She pushed. The midwife said, 'Now'.

It was 8.52pm. Olive Bliss was born. 

Exactly an hour had passed. I'd missed my not-so-big moment for this big moment. It was bliss.

The Wedding ends ...

That was then ... and this is now.

Our wedding is well and truly behind us.Thank god for that. It was a bloody nightmare. From start to finish. I've skipped a few bits and bobs to spare the blushes of people who did their best to contribute to the nightmare, rather than helping us out. Suffice to say that it certainly wasn't the wedding we'd planned - or hoped for - when some bright spark (me) had the idea of a wonderful winter wedding in Europe.

In fact, we both have half a mind to do it all over again. Picky's way. In Sydney and in summer.

We're seriously thinking about having the summer wedding that Picky always wanted. Technically it won't be a wedding. I don't think you can get married if you're already married. Uness you're a Mormon or from some other nut-bag religion / cult. Even if your first one was a complete shocker. Maybe you can. Maybe if we buzz the Department of Weddings - or whatever they call themselves these days - and point them to this blog and they read about the hell that was our first attempt at getting married - they'll declare it 'null and void' and let us do it again. Properly.

Still, beyond the nightmare, the way that we look at it now is this; Picky's mum and dad were there, so were her best mates from Germany - Manu, Gesine, Sophie, Irina ... and Emi! Yep, even Emi made it. Eventually. We thought she'd landed in Paris, but her flight eventually made it to London. She missed the ceremony, but made it for the champagne ... and if you make a wedding in time for the bubbly you've not really missed much to be honest.

Plus, of course, Dale was there and, despite the blood, drama and race across London in an ambulance ... she was still pregnant. Even Chris, my oldest mate in the whole wide world, made it through the snow to get to the Reception at the very last minute. He's a true mate that fella.

And, of course, let's not forget that I married my beautiful Picky. Stuff the snow. I did actually get married to the love of my life. To my mother-of-Pearl.

So, surrounded by the people we both love and by people who we care for - and who care for us. At the end of the day, you can't argue with that. You can argue with the snow and most of the other crap, but if you're marrying the girl you love and the people you love are there to see it and share it, you can't ask for much more. Can you? Nah. Course you can't. I reckon I was the luckiest bloke on earth on my wedding day.

Afterwards Picky held me to the promise I'd made in the taxi as we fought our way across London in the snow. Course she did. She's German. You can't bullshit a German. They're like elephants. They remember everything.

I'd thrown away a glib line about a honeymoon 'somewhere hot' & she'd taken note and filed it away in her head under 'Promises that WILL be delivered'.

We're off to Tahiti at the end of July. A dream honeymoon to make up for her non-dream wedding.

We're going to the place that one of the Kardashians went for her honeymoon. Apparently. I'd rather have multiple winter weddings in London than watch an episode of the bloody Kardashians!

Picky's mum and dad are flying out to Sydney to look after Pearl whilst we're away on our belated dream honeymoon.

We have a week ...

A whole week ...

An entire 7 days ...

On a tropical island on our own ...

Without Pearl ...

We're gonna be kid-less in paradise.

What the bloody hell are we going to do? 

What will we talk about?

I can promise you one thing ... we won't be talking about the wedding. 

Pip pip ;-))

NEWSFLASH ... that one, single moment that unites all new parents

I would like to interrupt the on-going, sad & sorry tale of my wedding day with a brief blog post to wish my daughter a happy 2nd birthday! Yep, it's today. 4th July. Independence Day for some (and best wishes to anyone reading this State-side).

Pearl Matisse Pich. Born at 9.09pm on Sunday 4th July 2010.

I was wondering what to blog about on such a hugely significant day. It was a tough one. Being the papa of Pearl these last two years has been an experience that in some ways is beyond words. 

& then I got to thinking that, as our little Pearl turns two, a whole heap of people I know are having babies, or have just recently had babies ... or are at various stages of baby-dom and kid-dom.

And this question popped into my noggin; what's the one single moment that unites all parents? Is there one? Really, is there?

Yes. Indeed there is.

There is one moment that all new parents experience. Every single one. It's as certain as death and taxes. It's dead-set guaranteed. Nailed on. There is no doubt - none at all - that at some point, at one very specific moment as a new parent you will be faced with one very simple and very stark question ...

Should we take our baby to the hospital?

So here's another small excerpt from my 'book'. It's dedicated to anyone just setting out on 'the baby journey'.


This was our MOMENT. 

---- from & then there were 3 by David Pich

Pearl began to cry. By the time we finally arrived home she had been crying continually for forty-five minutes. In that time I had stopped the car - twice - so that Eileen could climb into the back seat to comfort her. It hadn’t helped. Pearl had only become more and more distressed as the journey went on. So had Eileen. When we opened the door to our apartment with a screaming baby, Eileen was about as distressed as Pearl sounded. By the time we had taken our shoes off, Eileen was beside herself. Pearl hadn’t changed, she was still screaming.

Our initial thought was that the noise and motion of the car after the peace, tranquillity, and properly sung songs of the parents’ room might be the issue. But when Pearl continued to scream in the living room of our apartment we both began to panic. She had only just been fed, but in desperation Eileen tried to feed her again. The screaming only intensified. We knew that Pearl didn’t need changing, but we changed her anyway. Pearl stopped screaming. Momentarily. And then she went completely ballistic. Her beautiful baby-like complexion disappeared and she turned a deep shade of crimson-red. And then her entire body went completely rigid. We had nothing left. We had used up our entire arsenal. We had tried to feed her and then we had changed her. That was all we had in our Newborn Baby Problem Resolution kitbag. It was now empty. And so, having fired all of our bullets, we did what we assumed all parents would do when they were out of ideas and were left, bereft, with a ballistic baby in their arms. We drove Pearl directly to Accident & Emergency at the local hospital.

Heading directly to A&E wasn’t a decision that we made lightly. In those crucial moments just before we bolted out of the apartment with Pearl we agreed that we would do one last thing to try to resolve the issue ourselves. We checked the internet for possible causes of ballistic babies. It was a decision that was to prove absolutely crucial. We were in cyberspace for no more than a minute when we realised that we had poisoned Pearl. With breast milk.

   

Before leaving home for the airport that morning, Eileen had expressed some milk into a small bottle. It had been my idea. I knew I was probably being over-cautious, when I suggested to Eileen that a bottle of breast milk might come in handy at some point during the day, but Eileen had agreed. Once we were all at the airport we had given Pearl the milk just after Hagen and Karola had checked in, and just before they disappeared down the corridor towards Immigration Control. The four of us had ordered coffee at the one decent cafe in the International Terminal and, instead of messing about with her clothes and feeding blanket, Eileen had decided to give Pearl the expressed milk.

It was a decision that we were now rueing. Pearl was screaming blue murder and one or other of us happened to mention the expressed breast milk. I was desperate and Google was ready and waiting, its search box empty, the cursor flashing impatiently. I had been about to type ‘ballistic baby’ but at the last minute I changed my mind. I typed ‘off breast milk’ and clicked Google Search. It took exactly 0.21sec - one-fifth of a second - for our worst fears to be realised. We both froze. Frozen, we stared at the screen. It offered us 33,200,000 pages. 

Off breast milk was an issue. 

A huge issue. An issue of epidemic proportions. 

Babies were dropping like flies as a result of off breast milk. 

Breast milk can go off in minutes. Seconds. 

0.21 of a second. 

Breast milk can be POISONOUS. 

BREAST MILK IS POISON. 

We were out of our apartment and into our car in minutes. Seconds. Less than a second. 0.21 of a second.

In the seven minutes it took us to get to Manly District Hospital with our poisoned baby, Eileen and I had managed to get ourselves into a right old state. Pearl was going absolutely ballistic. We rushed through the heavy plastic doors of A&E and the lady behind the reception desk sprang into action. She reached for a pen and a pink admission form, asked us to take a seat in the waiting room with all the other people and took a sip of her tea. I was thrown. I had been expecting a George Clooney-like, ER-style response. At the very least I thought that we would be escorted to a gleaming white- curtained cubicle by a posse of professionals in gleaming white coats. I hadn’t expected to find myself sitting on an orange plastic chair with a wonky leg filling in a pink form. 

I had only been sitting on that orange plastic chair, rocking on its wonky leg, for about two minutes when Pearl stopped crying. A little less than a minute later she fell asleep. She had been asleep for a further two minutes when it dawned on Eileen and I that we were sitting in the waiting room of Accident & Emergency Department at Manly District Hospital on a Sunday evening with a sleeping baby. 

Right at that moment a triage nurse appeared. We had seemingly, and miraculously, jumped the queue. Our ballistic baby had had the desired impact. As the triage nurse approached I suspected that our sleeping baby was about to have a slightly different impact. The nurse sat next to us on an orange plastic chair. She studied the pink admission form that we had very easily completed since Pearl was sleeping soundly in Eileen’s lap. The nurse looked a little perplexed and to be honest I didn’t entirely blame her. She was faced with two quite conflicting stories: a pink admission form that described a 3-week-old baby poisoning emergency and a Google-search that had thrown up 33,200,000 hits in 0.21sec, and a perfect picture of peace and tranquillity beside her on the orange plastic chairs. She was lost for words. To break the impasse I asked her if she had, by any chance, heard the commotion over at the A&E reception desk a few minutes earlier. She hadn’t. She had been busy in triage with a broken ankle. Undeterred, I explained that our baby (the one who was currently sleeping soundly on Eileen’s lap) had, just five minutes earlier, been crying, screaming, going ballistic, and that we suspected that we might have accidentally poisoned her with a bottle of off breast milk. The triage nurse didn’t bat an eyelid. She was fully focussed as she listened intently to everything I said. And then she told me that she thought it was much more likely that Pearl had had a bit of wind.

Wind! I was stunned. I pointed out to the nurse that I had, on occasion, had wind - I could see Eileen nodding out of the corner of my eye - and that I had never screamed ballistically on any of those rare occasions. The nurse said that 3-week-old babies are different to adults and that wind can be very painful for a baby, but that it eventually passes. The two of us wanted to curl up with Pearl and go to sleep right there on the plastic orange chairs in the waiting room of A&E.

----




Happy Birthday Pearl. I love you. 

Part 6c. Married, just. Our Wedding Day white out.

I would like to dedicate this post to Oakley Alderman. He popped into the world on 2nd July 2011.

One day maybe - just maybe - he might read this blog. If he does and if he reads my previous story (right here) he'll need to be told that it's really his story. Not mine. Or Dale's.

Dale hadn't had a miscarriage. In very rare cases a pregnant woman can bleed profusely. The bleeding is actually from outside the womb. The best medical minds don't really know the cause - they think it's got something to do with scar tissue. Perhaps from previous births. It's painful, but relatively harmless. When it happens everyone thinks it's a miscarriage. We did. So did the paramedics. Poor old Tony, Dale's husband, still did!

It wasn't. I've never in my entire 42 years of inexperience witnessed a complete reversal of emotions quite like it. When the specialist said that the baby - Oakley - was just fine, Dale and I went from utter despair to unbridled joy. In two seconds flat. We hugged each other and cried. Everyone thought we were married. Again.

Dale had lost a fair bit of blood, but she was 100% OK too. She called Tony in Florida. We both thought it was best to let him know the good news quite quickly.

We walked out of the hospital arm in arm. Dale was covered in blood, but she was still pregnant. And I had a wedding to prepare for. Mine. It was 6pm on the night before my wedding. And as we jumped into a taxi it was snowing. Heavily.

Back at 'the building site' another minor miracle had occurred. The manager of the hotel obviously realised that this wedding was shaping up to be 'the worst event known to man' and she had taken pity on me and Picky. We were upgraded to the Presidential Suite.

It was the best hotel room I've ever stayed in. Or ever seen. I didn't even know that hotel rooms like it existed. I do now. But I'll never be staying in one again. Not if I'm paying.

That evening - the night before our wedding - we had fish and chips in newspaper around the banquet table in the Dining Room, in the West Wing of the Presidential Suite. We invited Dale, Dale's mum and dad Sylvia and Adrian, Picky's mum and dad (and Pearl) to join us. We washed it down with a few bottles of bubbly.

Picky hadn't had her hair done, or her nails, she was exhausted and stressed. I hadn't done any of the things I'd planned to do that afternoon. I hadn't written my speech or even thought about it. But no matter. Oakley was safe and well ... and inside Dale. And Dale was fine. It was all good. Things were looking up.

Metaphorically speaking at least, there was a little chink of light on the horizon of our wedding.

Not for long there wasn't.

Sat 18th Dec 2010. A nice day for a white wedding? No. Not really.

When I woke up and opened the curtains on Saturday 18th December 2010 - the day of our wedding -  I saw nothing. Nothing. Only whiteness. I expected to see Hyde Park. It had gone. Poof. Just like that. Overnight someone had nicked Hyde Park. Someone had also turned the whole of London white. Snow white.

I turned white. Snow white. And then I turned grumpy.

It had snowed all night. It had snowed for every single minute of the night before our wedding. In fact, it had snowed so much that it was impossible to differentiate between the streets of London and the 'anything else' of London. There were very few cars. Or taxis. In Central London. It was odd and eery. For as far as the eye could see there was nothing. Nothing except fields of snow. Nothing. If a penguin or a walrus had appeared it would have looked completely at home. Global Warming? Not on the day of my marriage to Picky.

It had snowed so much that the people responsible for putting salt on the roads had clearly woken up that morning and thought 'bugger this'. And they had promptly rolled over and gone back to sleep. Salting the roads could wait.

But we couldn't. We were getting married at 2pm.

O no we weren't!

The first person to cancel was Kelly. She was gutted. She was also snowed in. Then my oldest mate in the whole wide world - Chris - let me know that he was going to struggle too. And then there were Picky's friends from Germany. Most had already arrived in London. Emily hadn't. She called to say that she was stuck in Germany. Her flight was delayed. Probably cancelled.

We spent most of the morning of our wedding day on the phone to various guests in various parts of Europe with various tales of winter snow woe. When we were finally ready to go to the Registry Office I hadn't even had time to shave. Picky hadn't had her hair done or her nails. Princess for a day? Yeah, right!

We all crammed into a black London Taxi. We'd left ourselves 90minutes to get to Islington. On a normal day it would take 20mins. Naturally we thought that 90 minutes was cool.

It wasn't.

When we said we were getting married in Islington in 90minutes the London Cabbie laughed. At us. 

When a London Cabby laughs at your travel plans you know you're in trouble. Real trouble. Deep trouble. The trouble we were in was as deep as the snow. And believe me, the snow was deep.

We were more than an hour late for our own wedding. The bride is traditionally a few minutes late. The bride and groom rocking up more than an hour late might well be something of a first.

By the time we got to Islington Registry Office I was ready to throttle anyone and everyone. It was no-one's fault. The poor cabbie had tried everything. He'd driven up main streets and turned around due to the snow. He'd driven down backstreets and then turned around due to the snow. He'd used every cabbie trick in the book. It was a complete and utter nightmare. The streets of London weren't paved with gold. They were icy carnage. It took so long that Picky had to hitch up her wedding gear to breastfeed Pearl in the back of a black cab. That was a certainly a first for the lucky London Cabby!

When we walked into the beautiful Gothic-style Registry Office - the scene of numerous famous weddings down the years - we thought we'd walked into a wedding convention. There were brides and grooms everywhere.

EVERYWHERE!

Ours was supposed to be the last wedding of the day. We had planned it like that so that we would have the place to ourselves.

The place to ourselves? You've got to be kidding. It was busier than Harrods on the first day of the January sales.

The weather meant that all the day's weddings were backed up! People were bloody well queuing to get married. Queuing. It was like Vegas. We'd arrived in Las Vegas, London. All I needed was an Elvis outfit.

At this point I need to say a few words about Picky - my soon-to-be-wife. Over time brides have developed a reputation - perhaps unfairly - for being a right bloody nightmare on their wedding day. I've heard of brides flipping their lid if the napkins aren't folded absolutely perfectly on the table. Or if a guest sneezes during the service. Not Picky. She was right there in a whole world of white wedding hell and yet she kept smiling the whole time. Her wedding was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish - from pre-start to post-finish - but she didn't complain, or cry, or smack me around the head with anything resembling a bouquet. Not once. She did tell me that, after this saga, she thought we'd 'earned' a decent honeymoon.

Instead of the two of us making a majestic entrance into the beautiful marble atrium of Islington Registry Office and up the stunning gothic staircase as we'd planned, Picky and I waited in a tiny meeting room on the 1st floor with our guests - the ones who had managed to make it through the driving snow - for the backlog of weddings to clear. Tick tock, tick tock, chit chat, chat chat.  It wasn't the most romantic hour we'd ever had spent. Stressful yes. Romantic, no.

Eventually, finally, at long last, it was our 'turn'. Better late than never.

The guests wandered out of the small meeting room and into Room 99. Picky and I stayed back. We wanted to make a little bit of 'an entrance'.

We only had a couple of minutes. Ours was the last wedding of the day, things were miles behind schedule and they wanted to mop the floor and close the Town Hall for the weekend. I sat and held Picky's hand. I kissed her and told her that I loved her.

Forever and a day.

She told me that the only way was up after this wedding. I agreed. It was impossible not to.

& then we started laughing.  What else can you do? When you've had the worst wedding experience ever ... but you're marrying the person you love. What else can you do? It's best to laugh it all off and just get on with it.

So we did. We stood up, walked into Room 99 and got on with getting married.

Look out for the final instalment next week.

Pip pip

Part 6b. Friday. The day before 'our big day'. The worst day in living memory.

When I got back to the hotel on the Thursday evening I was drunk. And alone. I was supposed to be sober and with Picky, Pearl and her parents.

I wasn't.

They were fighting their way through 4 feet of snow on a twelve hour trek across Germany.

I stumbled off the train at Kings Cross ... and right at that very moment the entire rail network was declared 'closed'. Just like that. If Picky did make it to Dusseldorf Airport and onto that flight to London the next morning, I wouldn't be taking the train to Stansted to meet her. I was effectively snowed in and London was effectively cut off from the outside world. I'm not sure that the outside world really cared too much, to be honest.

The 'hotel-cum-building-site' said that they could arrange a limousine to take me to Stansted Airport the next morning at 6am (the day before my wedding day). It needed to be a big one limo. If they all actually arrived from Germany there would be three fully grown Germans, Aussie / English bloke, a baby, a pram and heaps of wedding-related luggage.

400 quid.

$600!

That was the price for the massive hotel limo. Cash only. There was a 15% surcharge for credit cards.

Look, in some ways I could see why it was a tad pricey. It was a sort of luxury minibus. With blacked-out windows ... and a free newspaper. That's what you get for $600. Windows that you can't really see out of ... and a free copy of The Times. I hate The Times. Still, I booked it. Through gritted teeth and salty tears. I booked it. I had no choice. There were no trains.

When the four Pichs emerged from Immigration into Arrivals the next morning at 8.00am they looked like they'd just walked out of an all-night rave. They were utterly exhausted. They'd taken buses and trains, they'd waited on cold dark platforms in the middle of nowhere and they'd sat on freezing trains for hours and hours. All night, in fact. With a five month old baby. Picky hadn't slept a wink. She was getting married in just 24 hours.

At this point I need to pause for a second.

I know that you're thinking something along the lines of, 'Yeah, but they made it. So it's all good'.

I know for a fact that you're right on the verge of telling me to 'stop my moaning, suck it up and get that bloody girl to that bloody wedding'. To her wedding.

But you see, the thing is this; I haven't actually started the story yet. The nightmare hasn't actually begun to unfold. Not yet. It does. Very soon.

Right now in fact.

The nightmare starts here ...

When we finally got to the hotel Picky was too exhausted to notice that it looked like a bomb had hit it. She needed to sleep. So did her parents. Pearl didn't. Pearl was wide awake. I popped Picky to bed, let her parents grab some rest, and took Pearl in her pram on a wee walk around London.

Well, not really. By now the snow was 2-feet thick. We walked down to Harrods in Knightsbridge and I pushed her around Al-Fayed's 'corner shop' for a while.

Then I wandered back to The Intercontinental with my daughter. Reception told me that my best mate, Dale, had arrived. Dale had flown all the way from Florida for our wedding. She'd left her fella, Tony, at home with their two kids.

Tony is one of my favourite people in the whole world. We were both gutted that he couldn't make it to our wedding. But someone had to stay home and look after the kids. I couldn't wait to see Dale. We go back ages me and Daley. Plus she was 12-weeks pregnant with their 3rd kid. She hadn't met Pearl yet. We had heaps to talk about.

I knocked on Dale's door. No answer. I knocked again. I could hear something. Something. Something. The door opened. Slowly. Too slowly. Far too slowly. Dale never opened doors THAT slowly. Dale was lying on the floor trying to open the door from the inside. I managed to get into her room. Just.

The first thing I saw was blood. In the bathroom. Lots of blood. I panicked.

Dale looked terrible. She was lying on the floor bent over, curled up. In a ball. In agony. Clutching her stomach. A.G.O.N.Y. There were no words. None. We both knew. We knew. Shit, we knew. The one person who didn't know was Tony. He was in Florida with the kids.

A question. How do you call one of your favorite people in the world and tell him that his wife - your best mate - has miscarried. In a hotel in London. When he's in a house in Florida. On the day before you're due to get married?

I called 999. I screamed for an ambulance. An ambulance was on its way. I helped Dale from the floor to the bed. She was distraught. That made two of us. Two very distraught people were about to become three very distraught people.

& then I left Dale on the bed and walked out into the hotel corridor. I had Dale's phone in my hand. I called Tony in Florida. He answered. He thought it was Dale. It was her phone. Her number came up. He was sooo happy to hear her voice. It was my voice. I told him. That was when I really lost it. It was also when Picky turned up. Reception had called her, woken her and told her she'd better get to Dale's room. Quick.

Picky. My bride-to-be. My exhausted bride-to-be. She walked straight into Emotion Central, it was just up beyond Panic City. I'd just told Tony that his wife was covered in blood and had miscarried after her long flight to England and that an ambulance was on its way. I promised him that I would take care of Dale. Obviously I was going to keep my promise to Tony ... and not my pre-wedding hair appointment.

Picky. She was exhausted. She'd only had two hours sleep. This was supposed to be her time. Her day. She had an appointment to get her fingernails done. And her toes. Both were cancelled. I was supposed to mind Pearl. Now she had to look after Pearl. Pearl was only 5-months old. You can't just leave a 5-month old baby in the hotel lobby and go and get your fingernails done. Or your toes.

I went to Guys & St Thomas' Hospital with Dale.

I can tell you this right now. Never in a million years did I expect to be sitting in the back of an ambulance, with siren blaring and blue-lights on, shooting across London with my best mate lying next to me in agony. Never. And especially not on the day before my wedding day. Call me old-fashioned if you like. I just didn't.

Nor did I expect to be the person who had to call Dale's mum and dad to tell them that their daughter had miscarried on the floor of a hotel room in Central London. But I did. Poor Sylvia and Adrian. They live in Southampton on the south coast of England. As we whizzed through the streets of London in the ambulance they told me that they were on their way to London. Through the driving snow. I booked them a room at The Intercontinental. It had spare rooms. Course it did. No-one else was staying there. The place looked like a bomb had hit it.

At the hospital everyone assumed that I was Dale's husband. It was beautifully ironic. I was no-one's bloody husband. Yet. Give me a chance, please.

Just let me get married!

I did. Eventually. But sitting there in a cubicle in the Maternity Unit at one of London's leading hospital's, whilst my mate was off being scanned and tested, I seriously questioned whether I would. And whether I could. Whether we could. Especially after the day we'd all had. Friday. The worst day in (my) living memory.

Next came Saturday. Saturday was a big day. THE big day. My wedding day. Our wedding day. It couldn't be any worse than Friday could it? It couldn't. Surely not. Could it?

Of course it could.

Hope you're having a great week.

Pip pip x

Part 6a. Our wedding. D-Day. The worst day ever.

It all started to go horribly wrong as soon as I walked into the hotel.

The thing was that I didn't so much 'walk into' the hotel. I walked round it. And then I walked into it. Through a side door. The swanky main entrance was closed. For renovations. No-one had told me about the renovations. Nor had anyone told me that the renovations that no-one had told me about involved industrial jack-hammering to remove the marble. All day. All day. From 8am til 6pm.

And so began the story of our wedding. The worst day ever.

Describing your wedding day as 'the worst day ever' is a big call. You have to be really sure. To avoid hyperbole and accusations of over-dramatising things, you have to flick back through as many bloody awful days as you can remember, and then be able to write in your blog and with your hand placed firmly on your heart, that your wedding day - your wedding day for god's sake! - was the worst day you've ever had.

It was.

Hand on heart. Firmly. It really was. Hands down. No debate.

It was a complete disaster from start to finish. Actually, it was a complete disaster from pre-start to post-finish. It was a comedy of errors. A story of stuff-ups. A diary of disasters. I kid you not. I dare you to read this and conclude otherwise. You won't. You'll agree that my wedding day was the worst day I've ever had. And that's without you knowing any other bad days I might have had.

You'll finish reading this and you'll be mightily relieved that my wedding day wasn't your wedding day. At times you'll think that I'm exaggerating stuff, or making it up. I'm not, I promise.

This is all true. I guarantee it. Or your money back. Pity I couldn't get my money back!

I'll get the preliminaries out of the way very quickly. I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear the preliminaries. You want juice. Gossip. Dirt. Trust me, you'll get it. But I need to set the scene, so please bear with me for the briefest of moments.

The Preliminaries

Me and Picky were living out our lives quite happily in Sydney. Our 'de facto' status was causing us no trouble at all. But when you've met the love of your life - the one person you know you're gonna be with forever - you really may as well get hitched. For no other reason than Picky would get a nice ring and we might get a nice salad bowl or two. So, one winter whilst we were skiing in Queenstown, I popped the question.

& then I did something that I would caution all blokes to take note of - I convinced Picky that a winter wedding in Europe would be romantic.

Note to self (and to all other blokes in the known Universe): Never - and I do mean never - think that you know more about a) weddings, or b) romance, than the woman you love. You don't and you never will. I didn't. But I didn't know it. I was about to find out the hard way. The very hard way.

A winter wedding in Europe. Picky was immediately sceptical. She wanted a hot, sunny, summer wedding. In Sydney. Her home. Our home.

It wasn't to be. The thing is that I can be a real convincing so-and-so when I want to be. It's been said that I can sell ice to the eskimos. I'm not sure about that. But I did somehow manage to 'sell' a winter wedding in Europe to Picky. The ice and those bloody eskimos will crop up again later, I promise you.

A winter wedding in Europe!

It certainly had its upsides, it really did. My family and friends in the UK could come. Picky's family and friends in Germany could come. We'd just had Pearl, so everyone in Europe would get to meet her. We could 'do' Xmas in Germany. Plus I painted a perfect picture of a crisp, cool Winter's day with the sun low in the sky and a light dusting of fluffy snow on the ground. Ice to eskimos, ice to eskimos. Picky agreed.

The nitty gritty of Our Big Day looked like this -

Wedding date

2pm on Saturday 18th December 2010

Our Wedding

Wedding party to stay at The Intercontinental, Park Lane, London

Official Ceremony at Islington Registry Office, Islington High Street

Private champagne ride on The London Eye

Wedding reception a Theo Randall's @ The Intercontinental, Park Lane

Wedding breakfast the next day for all guests in the world-famous Cookbook Cafe @ The Intercontinental, followed by a walking tour of the famous London sights

That was the plan.

And believe me, it was planned. Meticulously. Down to music that we would enter Islington Registry Office to (Florence & the Machine, You've got the Love).

If I was to pop a marketing spin on my own wedding - as I'm prone to do with these things - I would say that we billed it as 'a romantic winter wedding in London surrounded by the European people we love'. 

The Thursday before our wedding. D-day. Disaster Day.  

So, I walked into the hotel via what was effectively a side-door and my first thought was that the place had been bombed. It genuinely looked like a bomb had hit it. Just hit it. The beautiful marble atrium and reception area that we had seen on the internet was a scene of utter devastation and total chaos. It turned out that the beautiful marble atrium and reception area was being converted into a stunning non-marble atrium and reception area. That would be ready in a month. For now there wasn't an atrium. Or a reception area. But there was noise. Real, proper noise. To remove marble you need a jackhammer or two. Or 50. It was basically a building site. It was the venue for our wedding reception.

O yes and the world-famous Cookbook Cafe - the place we had booked (yes, booked) for 20 people on the morning after our wedding - was closed because of the renovations. Or because a bomb had hit the hotel.

Thank heavens that Picky wasn't with me. She would have been devastated if she'd have seen the beautiful hotel that we had booked reduced to this, a deafening building site. Picky's devastation was coming, of course, but for now my wife-to-be was in Germany with her parents.

Picky had gone to Germany with Pearl a week before our wedding day. She wanted to spend some quality time with her folks before she got hitched. I had 'wedding stuff' to do in London. She was due to fly back to London with her folks on the Thursday evening. Two days before our wedding day. I would meet them all off the plane at Stansted Airport.

On Thursday - the Thursday before our wedding on the Saturday - I left 'the building site' and took the train to Stansted Airport.  I'd bought a nice bottle of wine (for the girls, excluding Pearl) and some great English beers for the fellas. We could drink it on the train back from the airport to London.

I walked into Stansted Airport. And into pure unadulterated chaos. Chaos. At that precise moment, on that precise Thursday evening, practically every single airport in Western Europe had closed due to heavy snow. As I walked into the Arrivals Hall to meet my future family - with a huge smile and huge bag of booze - all the flight boards flicked around to display one simple word .... CANCELLED.  The airport was total bedlam. It was the week before Christmas. More importantly it was 36 hours before my wedding.

& then I remembered something really rather important; I didn't have my phone with me. It was back in the hotel. There were 3million devastated people queueing for the four solitary payphones at Stansted Airport.

When I finally reached the front of the queue and called Picky, she was at Paderborn Airport in the middle of Germany. Paderborn Airport had just been closed down. Their flight had been cancelled and they had been told that Paderborn would stay closed for 'at least a week'. The same applied to every single airport in the whole of Germany. Except one. Dusseldorf.

Dusseldorf is 12hours from Paderborn. By train. By two trains. And a bus.

There was one flight to London from Dusseldorf. It was the next morning at 6am. Picky told me she had to go. It was 6pm. She had a twelve-hour train journey to make. With her parents and a 5-month old baby. She doubted they would make it. And in any case there was every chance that Dusseldorf Airport would be declared closed during those 12 hours.

I put the payphone down.

I found a spare piece of floor in the airport. It was packed with people 'bedding down' for the night, using their luggage as makeshift beds. I opened the bottle of wine. I didn't bother with a glass. The bottle would do just fine. The airport was jam-packed. And noisy. Really, really noisy. It was still a good deal more peaceful than the Intercontinental Hotel, mind you.

I sat alone in the airport drinking red wine from a bottle and I contemplated the cancellation of my wedding day.

That was Thursday. D-Day. Disaster day.

Friday came next. It always does.

And Friday - the day before our wedding day - turned out to be even worse than Thursday. Far worse.

Have a great weekend.

Pip pip