Do you ever look at your life and go, man, how did I get here? Specifically, how did I get saddled with organising the family reunion for the third year running? I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t doing it again for a good long while after last year’s fiasco – uncle Henry dumping a rented set of lawn furniture in the lake was the final straw. It was me who had to liaise with both park management and the hire company, and that’s not what I signed up for.
It appears, though, that I’ve been assigned the label of ‘best negotiator in the family’, and therefore awarded the dubious honour of organising the festivities once again. Evidently, I’m not that good at negotiating my own terms with regard to event organising, because I’ve somehow wound up agreeing to this. It’s not like I’m a pushover, so I have to assume that my aunts are more skilled in persuasion than I’ve given them credit for. They should do it.
Anyway, here I am, trying to decide whether to have the thing at someone’s house, or have another go at arranging wedding marquee and furniture hire. Melbourne is a big enough city that the company we used last time will have forgotten all about the lake incident, right? I’m sure it’s all water under the bridge… there might be hired folding tables at the bottom of the water, but still.
Maybe they haven’t forgotten. Maybe they’ve blacklisted us with all the marquee hire companies around Melbourne. That’d be just my luck, wouldn’t it? I think it’s important to have a waterproof structure as part of the proceedings, because it’s not like there’s much scope to reschedule the event if the weather’s bad. I mean, there are the cousins flying over from NZ, and the Barrington-Tropleys making the trip from WA. Then, of course, there’s all the local crew to be wrangled, which is much easier said than done. Once we’ve got a date, we’re going to need to stick with it.
I guess it’s time to pick up the phone and find out where we stand with the marquee people. Again, how did I get here?