I was outside this hotel in Catalunya at 4 am when the police arrived...

This title is entirely true, yet curiously may need some background explanation:

We have an old friend called Henry, with whom we occasionally keep in touch. Henry recently e-mailed me to announce that he was getting married, and invited us to his wedding. We agreed to go to - as we thought - Spain for this happy event, so we said yes, booked a hotel room, tickets with RyanAir (air transport's equivalent of really bad beer - you hate it but you keep going back for more), packed black tie/ evening dress as per the dress code and so on.

On or shortly after arrival we were disabused of several things - we were not in Spain, we were in Catalunya*, a totally different country which has never had anything to do with Spain, good Lord no! Whatever gave you that impression? Also, Henry was marrying into a seriously wealthy aristocratic family who know how to throw a serious party, and are also full-on Catalan independence supporters (the bride wore a separatist flag at one point. Over her wedding dress, I hasten to add).

Young Guthlac, meanwhile, discovered a previously unsuspected taste for being picked up and cuddled by glamorously dressed Catalan ladies, and at his age (16 months) was easily able to achieve this end by holding his arms out, adopting a cute expression and saying "Ek?" to them.

At 3am we decided to leave, as Guthlac's dancing and flirting were starting to show signs of tiredness. I duly returned to our table, scooped up a dinner jacket that looked plausibly like mine and joined my family in a taxi back to the hotel. On arriving there, I removed the dinner jacket and suddenly realised that various items were missing from my pockets. And that the sleeves were too long. And that it was a different style from mine.

Although it is undoubtedly an advantage of male evening dress that it's all pretty much the same and therefore doesn't require a new outfit to be bought for each event you go to, and that you don't lose any time or suffer any stress working out what to wear, it does leave open the possibility that you pick up the wrong jacket, especially when stuffed with 26 courses of food (yes, twenty-six, 22 of which were tapas-style appetisers) and addled with a selection of outstandingly good wines.

I staggered downstairs and asked the charming and suitably unflappable lady on night duty at the reception desk if such a thing as a taxi was available at this time of night. It was, but I had to wait a while. I opted to go out into the fresh air, where the receptionist joined me for her smoke break and a chat.

At which point, as per the title of this post, a police car pulled up to find me hanging around at 4am outside a hotel with a lady other than my wife in what, strictly speaking, was a stolen jacket.

"This can mean one of two things" the receptionist remarked. "Trouble, or coffee."

The cops sauntered over in the "I have all the time in world" manner common to cops the world over. As in the collapsing Uzbek lamppost incident, one could instinctively understand the entire conversation which transpired:
"Good evening officer. I trust all is well."
"Oh yes, just doing our rounds to check..."
[Expectant pause]
"Would you like a coffee?"
"Ooh - it hadn't occurred to us that you might have some coffee again this morning as on every other morning for the past year, but now you come to mention it that would be very nice!"

*Previously known to me only from George Orwell's book about his experiences importing French cheese to Barcelona, as detailed in his book "A Fromage to Catalonia".

Have a good laugh, and then feel uncomfortable...

A friend forwarded me a slightly old article from the Daily Mail today:

What Daddy's little girl wants Daddy's little girl gets.
So when Missy Quinn insisted on a big white wedding with her boyfriend, her father said Yes. It didn't matter that she was only 16 and the groom 17.
Daddy also said Yes to a £16,000 wedding dress (which looked suspiciously like a crop top and skirt) and Yes to 150 guests at the reception. Then there were the cars, the hotels, the tiara and the £500 bouquet.
In the end, making Missy's wedding dreams come true cost her father - who lives in a caravan and surfaces driveways for a living - a whopping £100,000.
But as his princess, who hasn't been in a classroom since she was nine and wants to be a glamour model, posed for photographs, her father Simon, 35, declared it was worth every penny. 'I'm very proud of her today,' he said.
Missy was just happy to be the undisputed centre of attention.
Her dress, studded with Swarovski crystals, and with a 10ft wide train, was so heavy that it took ten guests to help her struggle out of the Rolls-Royce Phantom that brought her to the church.
'It was huge. I wanted to outdo everyone else's wedding dress,' she said.
'It was extremely heavy and just standing in the church was really difficult. But despite all that, I felt just like Cinderella.'
The bill was around five times the cost of the average British wedding.
Missy said: 'It cost a fortune, but I've always wanted a big wedding and my dad has been saving for ages to pay for it.' She met Thomas at Alton Towers theme park when she was 13.
They continued to date despite her traveller family leaving their caravan park in Stoke-on-Trent every summer to tour the UK while Thomas lived with his parents in Wolverhampton.
Missy said: 'I just knew he was The One from the beginning. He's perfect.'
Her mother Theresa, 33, who married Missy's father at 16, said: 'I was surprised they wanted to get married so young in this day and age. But we could see they were madly in love.'
The couple married six days after Missy turned 16 at St Mary's Catholic Church in Congleton-Cheshire. After the ceremony-guests in feathers and crystals enjoyed champagne and an all-day buffet at the reception. Girls as young as nine showed off bikini tops, high heels and make-up.
Guest Victoria Docherty, 23, who wore a £700 hotpants and bra outfit, said: 'This isn't unusual - it's just what we do at weddings. It's all very extravagant. Everything is paid for by the bride's daddy.'
Missy and Thomas honeymooned in Turkey before moving into their own £18,000 caravan -a wedding gift from her parents.

Do click on the DM article for the photos...

The tone is surprisingly subtle for the Daily Mail, but the article still manages to push all the 'let's have a go at pikeys' buttons that the average DM reader would need (key words: 'lives in a caravan' 'surfaces driveways', 'traveller family', 'hasn't been in a classroom since...'). The person who sent this to the friend who forwarded it to me even titled the e-mail "Chav wedding of the century".

I object.

These people are not 'chavs' - they work for a living, pay their own way, get and stay married and know who their parents are. They're not asking for benefit handouts, nor are they wallowing on drugs and alcohol in subsidised housing or committing petty crimes. They have an aesthetic to which they aspire which - although it may be the target of self-gratificatory snide remarks by London-dwelling arty-farties - is a matter of their taste, not ours.

Moreover, the parents are supporting their daughter by paying for a lavish wedding. Since when has that been a crime against anything? They come from a culture where this is the kind of thing you spend big money on, rather than over-inflated houses or share portfolios (both of the latter investments are looking slightly less wise now than they were last year, it must be said...). Events like this help to bind traveller communities together. Why have a go at them?

(I should also add the standard Roma disclaimer at this point "They's not Gyppoes, they's Tinkers". But I shall still stick up for them. Someone has to. I was pleased and not a little susrprised to notice that many of those posting comments on the DM site also defended the Quinns.)