Wed, Deb Redemption

Almost 30 years ago now, when the hit movie Titanic launched in cinemas, my friend Matthew taught me and a few others to play Celine Dion's anthem My Heart Will Go On on the recorder, that musical instrument only briefly removed from the kazoo, and naturally we all then decided to play it through our noses.

My sister, Lauryn, hated when I did this at home. Largely on account of the fact it was her recorder and my nose. She is seven years younger than me and would scream and scream: stoooooooop! She screamed like that guy on the boat who saw the iceberg first; as a matter of survival.

The most difficult part of her wedding this past week, for me, was re-learning how to play the song and, most importantly, how to re-engage my nostrils in the service of a wind instrument. It was actually Mum's idea, sort of. We were discussing wedding speeches and things we could do on the night when she asked if I remembered how much Lauryn would shout and holler whenever I stuck that recorder up my nose. I think I ruined the movie Titanic for my baby sister, even though I personally think the loss of about 1500 passengers on the titular ship should have done it.

'Oh my God,' I said to Mum, 'I should play it again at the wedding.'

'Where will you get a recorder,' she asked, between fits of laughter.

'I'll buy one if I have to.'

Then Mum realised she knew where my sister's old recorder actually was, got up from the lounge and went and found it within 20 seconds. Such ancient and specific knowledge has she. This must have been what Howard felt like when he opened Tutankhamen's tomb after all those years, the recorder trilling like so much of orientalism's beloved vocal wails in 'Arabic' music, telegraphing desert sorrow, the crypt's curses floating free just as Dion's My Heart Will Go On – sound wearing chain mail, seeming to scrape between a metal fence and a cheesegrater – screeches out of the recorder's end.

Lauryn is the first and most likely the only wedding in our small clan. This is for the best. She was the first and only to have grandchildren for Nanny Mort, too. This is also for the best. There are, however, associated pressures with such a milestone. Re-discovering this neoclassical hymn on the recorder gave me something real to focus on over and above the nebulous but overwhelming notion of sister getting married. And so I played, sporadically, among the chickens at home in Boonah while we waited for the trip to Townsville that signalled the start of wedding festivities.

Because we are a small family relative to the sprawling progeny of my sister's now husband, J, Mum was allowed to bring some moral support in the form of two friends from Boonah: Helen 'one woman platoon' T and Karen 'easily mistaken for a curlew' N.

Somehow I became responsible for all of them. I booked the hire car, the large house in the Townsville suburbs to accommodate everyone (including last minute arrangements for my sister and her fiancé and the two kids) and became the chauffeur. They can each drive, by the way, but they are like all the hobbits that didn't feature in Lord of the Rings and will only drive in the Shire. They are also all mothers which meant that even though I am a seasoned traveller and once was responsible for driving a state minister around on regional Queensland trips when I was 23 while also dealing with media inquiries (worst job I've ever had) they would never cede full control. 'Have you put the address in maps,' they'd ask when we get in the car to go out to the wedding venue for rehearsal. Yes! Four days ago! Have you got your wallet? Welded to my person. Why aren't you turning right here? Because we are picking up one of the bridesmaids and she is staying closer to town. Do we have time for that? Yes, I factored it into my silent planning which is why I was so politely insistent on everyone getting out of the god-damned house.

It's my fault, really. They mistake my relaxed demeanour for carelessness when really what I am doing is exercising a form of restraint. As much as possible, I refuse to let whatever personal stress I am under become somebody else's problem. This is, in fact, very annoying and might also be seen as a lack of communication. At one point during the weekend we watched a 3m python sliding through the trees in the backyard, being bombarded by all manner of local bird. They were making warning calls and also trying to berate the thing out of their home. As a bird, I might have been sitting on a branch further away just watching and checking the speed and direction of the snake. If it was about to be a problem I'd go and have a quiet word to my friends and family and we'd all move along, not making a scene. Sometimes we would get eaten but this is a price I am willing to pay for some silence while I think, and calculate.

This is totally foreign to my wonderful Mum and her friends, who we love, and whose love in turn is loud, practical and always on. Theirs is a Socratic kind of love, monologue-ing at their trial until everyone becomes so annoyed they vote for the death penalty in greater numbers than those who voted to convict in the first place.

I knew the lead-up to the wedding would be busy but, once again on this visit to Australia, we were staying with some grand ensemble of people under one roof in a city I've only ever been to for work. It was relentless.

At the wedding rehearsal I met the groomsmen for the first time, E and T. All three, J included, were wearing crocs. T had a tattoo on his calf, even, of a croc which reminded me of the Range Rover I saw a few weeks ago with the personalised number plate just below the vehicle badge that also said RNGRVR.

T might be the funniest bloke I have ever met. Despite fighting for government transparency for decades, however, I am going to have to redact almost everything he actually said for reasons of propriety.

J the sweet man was in tears and that was just the rehearsal. I love that weddings have rehearsals – I know why they do – because it feels like we are all dismal actors in a community theatre production of Cats directed by the local butcher. None of it is normal or even dignified, really.

'I don't want to come in that way because everyone will be looking at me,' my sister said on the planned arrival of her car on the day.

'Well that's gonna be pretty fucken hard at your wedding,' T said.

And so it was.

In addition to my general duties of brother, assigned at birth, I was also asked to share the Master of Ceremonies role with J's sister R. This meant that we had to be vaguely aware of the runsheet and, ideally, funny. I've been a wedding MC about six times before. It's one of those jobs delegated like The Force in Star Wars; in the hopes that you have some stage presence and don't end up a fascist. Big shoes!

Easy enough, but I've never been a brother on a sister's wedding day before. Somewhere in the foundry of my constitution I've ended up a perfect split between romantic and cynic, never fully committing to one or the other but managing nevertheless to turn this internal oscillation into a kind of levitation. You could run a high-speed rail network on me, if you really wanted. The Disoriented Express. I knew I would feel good about the day itself, because we know the family L and J have already created for themselves. What I hadn't expected was just how beautiful my sister would look and, more significantly, just how happy she would be. Her smile was the most genuine and full of light that I can ever remember seeing on her face.

Lauryn asked me to come around with the kids about 11am on the day to take some candid photos of them all getting ready – the bridesmaids, Mum, Hugh and Rory – which was just so special, even when Rory vomited what seemed like half a tray of cheese platter sausages on herself. Even when I'd been running around all morning ferrying people to this location or Coles and Kmart for last minute supplies. Even when I'd not had time to fully dress and knew that I'd have perhaps 10 minutes max on my return to finish before driving the others the half hour out to the venue. What did time matter in the company of such happiness?

Quite a fucking lot, actually, when you're the only one who insisted on a tie-yourself-bow-tie on purely performative grounds. I wanted to be able to untie it at the end of the night and drape it around my collar, like they do in movies when the cigars come out. But I don't think those men have ever been to a wedding with a croc footwear tattoo, so really, what was I trying to achieve? By the time I'd finished with my sister and her crew and made it back to the house I had five minutes, according to my original schedule, to watch a YouTube video and tie my bow-tie and pop my jacket on before hitting the road.

It took me 45 minutes.

It was humid already on the Friday in north Queensland and regular readers of this dispatch will know that sweat comes easily to me, like Lassie but after she's dragged the kid from the dam. The bow-tie is silk and my fingers are slick. Also, I have what can only be described as a clinically significant inability to register where my hands are in relation to my eyes. And in a mirror? No hope. I knew things were bad because both Mum's friends Helen and Karen, waiting in the next room, were completely and totally silent. No advice, no pragmatism, no wisecracks. The room actually entered negative decibels as I tried again and again and again and again to thread the folded bow tie through the little fucking loop, a manoeuvre that is supposed to complete the arrangement but in my hands had the effect of disestablishing the thing.

Imagine, when Theseus went into the labyrinth to slay the minotaur, he rejected Ariadne's ball of clue in favour of a YouTube tutorial and you're halfway there. I still didn't get it right but after three-quarters of an hour managed to get a bow-tie that was almost appropriate and had genuinely no time left to spare. It was 1.30pm, the wedding started at 2pm and Google Maps said we were 35 minutes from the venue.

I drove, fast, while Helen clutched my recorder for the ceremony. If we crashed, we joked, it would be a peculiar scene. It was our white box drive recorder. Surely the bride would be late?

'If she's not and we turn up there after her,' I told Helen as we drove, 'I'm walking straight into the river and hoping a crocodile takes me.'

Small mercies, my sister arrived a few minutes after we did. She chose, with some pride, to have Mum walk her down the aisle and it was a truly beautiful moment for us. J, the groom, was crying as he turned around to see her and did not stop crying for most of the rest of the afternoon and night. At one point during a speech from his father, who was saying lovely things about Lauryn, I watched from my vantage point as MC to see J rubbing her back as he shed tears and his best man E, in turn, was patting J on the back. It was like one of those monkey lice-picking lines but nice.

My sister's bridesmaid, Rennie, gave a particularly beautiful speech in which she acknowledged how much effort and sacrifice Mum – and to a much, much lesser extent me – had made to give us the woman Lauryn is today. It was mostly Lauryn, of course, but we are a small and dedicated team in this house. Few of us go anywhere alone. Rennie and Lauryn have been friends since early primary school and her mother was my Year 7 teacher and ongoing trivia team mate in Boonah. Which is to say, family.

Mum was nervous about her own speech. I did not help this fact when, the night before the literal wedding I discovered she had only written three lines, and forced her to sit on the lounge and write more. She just wanted to say thank you and sit down to avoid the spotlight. Mum loves craft and cross-stitch, she's never avoided a Spotlight in her life. Just tell some stories, I told her, and if she needs a moment up there to gather her thoughts or what not I would be able to intervene and act as an official Mum Translator. During one such moment when she got a little lost I took the mic and just began speaking French to the crowd. Nailed it.

J's sister R hit on the idea that I should deploy my secret Titanic recorder instrumental just as I announced the first dance for the married couple. This made sense musically and had the added benefit of making J nearly shit himself. I am fun like that. J is not, we were told, a natural dancer and was perhaps most anxious about this part of the night. They had both chosen the perfect song for them, some country and western number about a man who doesn't dance but will because he loves his wife, and J had mentally prepared for this and this alone. Poor guy just wanted to be out fishing with his wife at this point.

'DJ, I know you want to play that song but I have a quick suggestion first,' I said from my wooden pulpit in the barn. There was a murmur of shock in the room, notably from the bridal table.

'No no, I've got an idea. It's so good that Lauryn mentioned in her speech about how much I annoyed her when she was a kid and I think there is a song that she loved when we were kids.'

At this point J stood up from the table, possibly out of fright or possibly because he was about to tackle me. His face dropped.

'It's actually from the hit movie Titanic, called My Heart Will Go On. And if you think about it, it's a movie about a boy who just wants to get on a boat and a girl who wants to get away from her family.'

And then I passed the mic to R, fished the recorder from the rainbow shopping bag Helen had placed it in, and began what might be the performance of a lifetime minus the first few notes when the occasion got the better of me and I had to get my nose in. Oh hell, just watch it:

Long after the official part of the evening was over, during a break from my attempts at dancing which involved running in circles around the action with a sparkler in my mouth and a finely balanced glass of white wine, a woman around my age approached me outside the barn.

'Can I just say,' she said, 'I am in awe of your nostril control.'

Thank you, I said, and did a little bow.

Addenda

Shut the Gate, Mr Greggery

While in Townsville I managed to steal away half a day to catch up with the barrister Justin Greggery who many of you may remember from his role as senior counsel assisting the Robodebt Royal Commission, and his wife T, who was the one that chose most of his ties that became a minor talking point during his appearances.

We've caught up before, after that hellish inquiry wrapped up, but things were still so fresh then. This time was a little different and we managed to talk about things other than Robodebt. For the most part.

Over lunch on Magnetic Island, with some of their friends, I regaled the table with a story about how, during those robodebt hearings, I was living with Mum and absorbing every hearing in total detail, such that it was almost erasing my own persona and replacing it with a simulacrum of Justin Greggery. If Mum made a claim about something – the most notable example being the time something allegedly tried to drag her chicken over the fence and, without any real evidence, she said it was a spotted quoll – I would start by getting her to agree to a series of axiomatic statements. So you saw drag marks on the ground? Yes. And the morning dew was disturbed? Yes. And your chicken was distressed and its feathers ruffled? Yes. And when did you see the spotted quoll? I didn't.

One of my readers here, I think, also a lawyer, told me this strategy is called something like shutting the gate. You fence the witness in with facts we can all agree on and then you shut the gate with a logical proposition that must follow, or by ruling out a proposition that cannot necessarily follow. I was using this method on Mum without knowing it, emulating both the style and and tone of Justin Greggery in my interrogation.

'Mrs Morton, if I take you back to your evidence just a moment ago, you said you have a recollection of someone in the area seeing a spotted quoll attack their chickens, is that right?'

'Yes, that's right, old Mr Turner,' she would say.

'And when was that?'

'Oh it was a while ago.'

'It was in the early 1980s wasn't it?'

'And is it your evidence now that this explains the apparent attack on your chicken some 30 years later?'

On and on we would go like this until I had fenced her in so thoroughly she would snap and, having heard many of the royal commission hearings unfold in real time alongside me, exclaim: 'Oh shut up, Justin Greggery! God I hate that man.'

I told all of this to Monsieur Greggery, of course, with the added caveat that she really did not hate him, that she loved him actually, and that what she really hated was how good he was at his job, some tiny portion of which I channelled into our domestic living arrangements in Boonah.

Anyway, it was a very fun lunch and one day I will learn to develop a filter.

Speaking of Chickens

It has taken more than a few weeks back home now for tiny mother hen Pearl to warm back up to my presence but, having established my reading nook in the warm sun out back of the house, the time has finally come. Pearl has allowed me to pick her up and cradle her, like old times, and together we have solved many of the world's most pressing problems such as where to lay egg and what to do when hawk come flying over. I love her.

All Hat, No Clue

Currently obsessed with this news story from the ABC about the mayoral vote in Clarence Valley Council – which takes in my second, spiritual home of Grafton – that became tied in a four-four draw and thus had to be decided by draw from a hat.

The hat-draw is a tried and true method of deciding things and frightfully simple, which makes what happened next all the more hilarious/upsetting. There were two mayoral candidates, one name was drawn out of the hat and then – presumably because of skulduggery and feigned ignorance – there was some disagreement about whether the person whose name was drawn from the hat was the winner of the vote or the person eliminated. If meat tray raffles were every decided by the latter approach the prize would rot by the time we got to the end.

Now the council is getting legal advice. About a hat.

Nanny Mort and Uncle Ricky Take Magnetic Island

As a little gift for the busy parents and now newlyweds, Mum shouted Lauryn and J a night away on Magnetic Island without the kids. We would take them for the day and night and following morning, a promise that came with various instructions about how to fold the pram which I did not listen to appropriately at all. Everyone else had left us by this stage in the week so it was just the four of us and we tagged along to Maggie Island on the promise of showing the kids the koalas that are thriving on the granite-strewn paradise in the Coral Sea.

Did we see a single koala, even at the Koala Park which keeps its guaranteed sightings for scheduled tours only (a schedule that did not at all align to ours)? No, we did not. Nanny Mort was beside herself. 'Oh God, we're terrible people, we told them we were going to see koalas,' she said. Then I had to ring Loz and ask her how to fold the pram down to put it back in the car.

The good news was that Hughie saw a picture of a koala at the park and got so excited it seemed almost rude to ruin it with the real thing.

I discovered that Rory, just turned one, is a little weapon when awake – glorious, forceful, determined, iconic – and treats her bedtimes the way I treat my daytime naps; non-negotiable. She walked into the room where she was sleeping and just pointed at the cot. Hughie made me take him to the toilet (he chose me over Nanny Mort) despite my longstanding desire, especially in my family, to go through life pretending bathrooms don't exist.

Long story short, has anyone ever written about how having kids is hard work because I reckon there's something to it.