Wedding in the Algarve (Ridin' Solo)

It wasn’t viable for all four of us to travel to Portugal for our friends’ wedding. Therefore, ever the hero, I took one for the team and went alone. The night before the flight, I didn’t sleep. At all. This was in part down to pre-holiday anxieties (where is my passport? Is it acceptable to wear flip-flops to a wedding?) but also because of my reckless decision to watch the Europa League final on my phone in bed. It went to a penalty shootout so, as I fluffed my pillow, I was hyped up, heart pounding. Once 2 am came and went, I told myself that, on the proviso that I didn’t move much, staring at the ceiling for the next 4-5 hours would be almost as good as actual sleep. As sunlight streamed through the windows, and the dawn chorus began, I finally started to drift off, only to be startled awake by Jacob shouting. I went through to his room where he was standing on his bed, stamping his feet.

“You made me eat dirt, Daddy!” he snapped. “Go away!” 

I admit my cooking is not up to much, but I assure you I have never knowingly fed my 3-year-old son dirt. Mocking my insomnia, he was snoring away within seconds. After pondering whether Jacob’s dream held a deeper message about my parental abilities, I finally gave up on the notion of sleep, made a strong coffee, and checked in online.

Louise kindly drove me to the airport and I was turfed out in what we think was the short-stay car park but may well result in an £80 fine. I gave her and the boys a clumsy hug with our goodbyes followed by the customary, “Have fun but behave yourself, Andy.”

I took it as a catch-all to cover the following:

1. Don’t drink too much.

2. Don’t plough deep into your overdraft.

3. Don’t lose your passport, phone, wallet, or keys.

As I stood in a long security queue, amidst a stag do from Birmingham who were enthusiastically comparing different types of hair gel, I felt both sad and guilty. This was my first trip abroad sans wife/children, and these were not emotions I’d anticipated. I thought I’d be, I don’t know, excited? It’s probably just the zero hours' sleep, I told myself and made plans to doze on the flight to Faro, head straight to my accommodation, and get an early night.

With time to kill in the departure lounge, I looked for a wedding card which proved improbably difficult. The only (just about) passable one in WH Smiths said, “Hell Yeah!” in pink bubble writing but had no envelope behind it. When I asked the lady at the till, she simply said, “Sorry, sir, we have run out of envelopes,” as if this were a common occurrence.

I boarded my flight, eyes drooping, and prepared a white noise playlist. Seconds later, however, a middle-aged woman clattered down the aisle with several bags and asked me to “scootch up.”

“Alright, love,” she said. “I’ve had eight drinks already. How many have you had?”

I opted not to tell her that my only fluid had been a can of San Pellegrino, part of an underwhelming Boots Meal Deal.

“We’re on a 40th. We’re from Warrington. Are you?”

“From Warrington? Or 40? Neither I’m afraid.”

Despite an inauspicious start, my friend from Warrington turned out to be nice enough and we (she) chatted for the entirety of the flight, topics ranging from the best 2-4-1 bars on the main strip to the various misdemeanours of her ex-husband, “the bastard.” She drank four double vodkas. 

I jumped in the first taxi I saw with a grumpy driver who barely spoke other than to tell me that he didn’t like Bangladeshis. Following little research (or disposable income) I’d booked shoestring accommodation at The Musical Hostel in Albufeira's old town, assuming “old town” would mean quiet but seemingly failing to pay any attention to the literal name of the hostel. 

My racist driver said he was unfamiliar with The Musical Hostel but would drop me off where he thought it “might” be. Exhausted, I clambered out around 10 pm to a soundtrack of “Poker Face” blaring out of an Irish bar, and gangs of drunken revellers stumbling down the cobbled streets, shouting. Surely this wasn’t the old town? As I was gathering my bearings on Google Maps, one of the stumbling, shouting groups turned out to be some of my closest friends who'd been on an earlier flight. As I hugged them and smiled through gritted teeth, I saw my chances of a good night’s sleep evaporating.

I agreed to join them for a pint after a quick turnaround at the Musical Hostel which, as yet, I hadn’t located.

“It’s just there,” my friend said, pointing to what looked quite a lot like a nightclub. After attempting to check in at the bar, a confused barman pointed me in the right direction. Next door.

A friendly receptionist showed me to my dormitory where the floorboards shook, and I could hear “Livin’ on a Prayer” word-for-word. A tall man in his early 20s was sitting on the bottom bunk, drinking a large bottle of Sagres, wearing only a vest and boxers. No trousers.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi, man!” he said, going for an unnecessarily complicated handshake. Over a brief exchange, I learned his name was Gerhardt, he was from Utrecht, and he really, really liked partying. He did not, I don’t think, have a job.

“Tonight is going to be wild, man!” he informed me with a wink, before pulling on some jeans and disappearing into the night.

This confirmed I am way past the age for backpacker hostels, and I had made a grave mistake; I have come full circle and turned into the weird older man I used to be wary of in my travelling days. 

I had a quick shower which was interrupted by a completely naked but entirely unfazed Eastern European man, then headed out to meet my pals, eagerly anticipating a cold beer. Instead, I was greeted with three shots of room-temperature sambuca. Predictably, my best-laid plans came undone and by 1 am, we were in a karaoke bar, dancing on a stage, wearing silly hats.

Back in my dormitory, I climbed into my coffin-like bunk, pulled my personal curtain across, and nodded off to bass thumping from the nightclub next door and a group of women (badly) singing one of David Guetta’s lesser-known tracks on the street outside. 

I slept… poorly.

***

I woke up at 6.30 am - I hate my internal alarm – and scrolled through photos of my wife and children while pondering whether I was in a healthy state of mind when I’d booked The Musical Hostel. The dormitory was a sweet cocktail of sweat, beer, and cheap aftershave and the whole room appeared to be vibrating to the rhythm of Gerhardt’s heavy snoring. 

My itinerary involved a pre-wedding run, then going to the market to find a pair of smart shoes (my only pair were last seen, alongside my waistcoat, in a Travel Lodge in Edinburgh.) Hot, dehydrated and, dare I say it, slightly hungover, I was considering whether there was anything in the world less appealing than physical exercise and shopping when I received a text from Louise.

“What time are you going for your run?”

Was this polite conversation or a calculated message to find out whether I had drunk irresponsibly last night? Surely not? Either way, it worked. I pulled on my trainers. 

The run was deeply unpleasant. With no route planned, I ended up stomping uphill alongside a dual carriageway, sweating, stomach-churning, sambuca lingering. When Spotify shuffle stung me with Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt” I threw in the towel, having covered 1.1 km, very slowly. 

On the way back, I ambled down to the beach and sent a photo of the sea to Louise.

“Just finished my run. Lovely morning for it!”

Two can play at that game.

After paddling in the shallows and smashing saltwater in my face, I felt invigorated and phoned my friend, who was staying in a nearby hotel, to discuss plans. He did not, sadly, sound invigorated. He was in A&E with his wife who had picked up a dancefloor injury.

“Oh shit, is she ok? What happened?”

“She tried to climb up to the DJ booth to request a song and lost her footing.”

“What song?” (In hindsight, this probably wasn’t the right thing to focus on.)

“Juicy by The Notorious B.I.G.”

I met them a couple of hours later and, despite spending a morning in an overseas hospital, my friend’s wife was in remarkably good spirits. Some stitches in her shin were not going to stop her dancing at the wedding later, she told me. 

We had a seafood lunch (tuna baguette) at a beachside restaurant before going back to their hotel. It was a stone’s throw from the Musical Hostel but, with a rooftop pool and no European party boys in sight, could have been on another planet. Anticipation was in the air as we opened some chilled bottles of Super Bock and got changed into our fancy clothes.

Predictably, I had not managed to buy a pair of shoes (or an envelope for that matter) so went for chinos and flip-flops. I assessed I could offset my casual bottom half by wearing a tie and cufflinks. Surely that’s fine, isn’t it? There appear to be no hard and fast rules re. what men wear at beach weddings.

I popped back to my room to drop off a towel and bumped into a very pale Gerhardt in the corridor. It was 1.30 pm and he had just arisen.

“How was last night?” I asked.

“Beer. Skinny Dipping. Girls. In that order.”

“Thanks for clarifying the chronology. Sounds like you had fun, Gerhardt.”

“I sure did. Do you have any paracetamol?”

A lovely photo with my friends.

The version that was widely shared on social media. Spot the difference.

My pals and I shared a taxi to the Vidamar Hotel, a stunning resort with turquoise pools, palm trees, and sea views, and headed to the hotel bar where the groom had just arrived. He and I first met on a field one Friday night in 2001; he was wearing baggy jeans with a Green Day patch sewn onto the thigh and a necklace made of seashells, and I thought he was very, very cool. When I was short of cash to buy a second bottle of White Lightning, he handed me a £1 coin and our friendship was sealed. Some 22 years later, here he was taking nervous sips from his half pint of lager, looking terrific in a velvet suit. No seashell necklace.

I’d hoped to quietly slip my envelope-less card onto a table, then briskly leave the scene. Unfortunately, a groomsman was walking around, collecting them, and “Hell Yeah” was on top of his pile, flapping around in the breeze. I looked down at my flip-flopped feet and questioned how good a wedding guest I was. It seems I cannot function as a social being without my wife.

The ceremony, in a tropical garden, was stunning. When the bride walked down the aisle, looking beautiful, my eyes started to dampen. Following the untimely arrival of my friend from Warrington on the flight, it was the second time on this trip that a woman making their way down an aisle had brought me close to tears.

The al fresco wedding breakfast/free bar was a delight, and I thoroughly enjoyed talking nonsense with old pals and brazenly mixing red and white wine in the way you only do at weddings. Similarly, the speeches were terrific, but I felt a pang of envy as I watched the best men concluding to rapturous applause, their status as celebrities for the evening confirmed. When I was best man at my brother’s wedding, my speech was going relatively well with people laughing in all the right places. However, enjoying the attention too much, I went for an impromptu grand finale (in hindsight, a very average story about my brother nearly missing a flight over a decade ago) and progressively lost the room until people were chatting among themselves while waitresses started collecting glasses. 

As the first dance started, my friends and I put our arms around one another’s shoulders, singing along to Ronan Keating, and I started to feel sentimental. Ah, it would be nice if Louise and the boys were here, I thought, before casting my mind back to the reality of bringing children to a wedding. At the last one we attended as a family, instead of Prosecco and canapés in a courtyard, I spent two hours driving around North Yorkshire trying (failing) to get Joshua to nap. Also, when my friend returned from the bar with a tray of tequilas and a tie – my tie – wrapped around his head, I appreciated being on my own wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

The wedding band, The Originals, were excellent and had one of the most charismatic front men I've ever seen; playing a wireless electric guitar, dancing, and mingling with the crowd as he belted out all the classics. There were some lovely nostalgic numbers; “Mr Brightside”, for instance, took me right back to being woken up at 3 am in The Musical Hostel.

After fireworks on the beach, a wonderful day started to wind down around midnight, and we jumped in a taxi. There was half-hearted talk of further festivities in Albufeira, but my eyes were stinging, and I made my excuses. I have learned over the years that continuing the party after weddings is never a good idea. Just accept you have used up your fun quota for the day and any attempts to chase past highs will be futile and ruin the next 2-3 days of your life.

Satisfied with my decision to call it a night, I clambered into my coffin bunk and put my headphones in, excited about the prospect of sleep. As I was drifting off, the door flew open, and my Dutch companion staggered into the room, clattering into the lockers near my bed.

“Hey, man! Shall we go party?”

“Not now, Gerhardt.”

*

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