She found our shul too anglicised for her taste: too sedate, not noisy enough – not enough cries of ‘’Shvayg Shvayg’’ – and – shock horror – none of the women wore hats. She would have loved the ambience at South Hampstead, where David is a member, because it is practically revivalist. People pray and sing with robust abandon, kids kick footballs in the lobby, sweets are thrown and rabbis are answered back. It’s a blast.
However, since my groom and I were to be married in a garden and since David has his own Sefer Torah at home – one which was gifted to him long before we met, and one which, oddly enough, came from one of the three shuls in Hull, we don’t know which but it feels very prescient – he decided to turn his house into a shul. He did this overnight after my hen night – or Old Boiler night as I termed it, when I turned the same house into a tailor’s workshop.
Basically, I asked a mere 25 female family members to cut head-sized holes in doubled-over fabric, brandish pinking shears for the hem, tack up the sides and – voila – put on a kaftan, then walk to a nearby restaurant for tapas and a flamenco lesson from Katherine, who works in Bournes fish shop at weekends and teaches tango and flamenco the rest of the week. Adrian accompanied her on flamenco guitar.
The kaftan’d women then paraded en masse, looking like a hip Hare Krishna sect and garnering not a single look from passers-by en route. After Camden, let’s face it we were merely M&S online. It was a night to remember. If any middle-aged or elderly women have let down their hair more than we did that night, doing Sevillanas around our handbags, I should like to shake their manicured hands. I had so much adrenaline when I got home at the ungodly hour of 10.45pm, I lay awake until 4.40am with my eyes out on stalks like a breeding octopus.
When I awoke there was a shul in my house and 70 chairs set out with the women at the back. Zelma would have loved it. Some of the women wore fascinators. One of them was me. The fridge developed scoliosis, there was so much food in it.
The day was glorious, the windows open to the garden where, I forgot to mention a section of the brick wall had been painted – on hen day, while the women threaded and tacked – by Petra Haynes, an old theatre friend, into a mural resembling Monet’s lily pond garden in Giverny, only with a flamingo in the foreground and a dove of peace. The dove is for David, a man of peace, and the flamingo reminds me a lot of myself, big behind, long neck and prominent beak. As the song goes, I couldn’t have liked it more.
It was much admired by all and sundry at the second aufruf. Later that day the women congregated at one end of the room and discussed their outfits, my granddaughter practised her bat mitvah portion to me, in an upstairs room, and sons, grandsons and cousins of the bride and groom gathered around a small computer to grunt and bellow at the Sunderland v Brentford game. My lot are Manchester United diehards and David’s are Sunderland thugs, an addiction they have passed on to their small sons.
This entailed also having smartphones in their hands to, as it were, see the future scores online before watching them on the computer. I overheard one nine-year-old invoke Hashem for the winning goal. It was a little surreal but, believe it or not, both teams won.
So, twice aufruf’d, once Old Boiler’d, the Broiges dance in early stages of rehearsal, Glastonbury toilets on their way, food and flowers in negotiation, a tasteful – for my time of life – dress to be picked up in its plastic casing from the wonderful Joyce Young, small bridesmaids’ tears to be dried, the chief rabbi of Kiev and my friend Bishop Ken Nowakowski on hand for blessings from all denominations, we are set to go with the wedding of the decade between two people with a combined age of 158.
The bride will arrive wide-eyed and possibly legless, in a car, lent for the occasion, which was once owned by Mrs Wallis Simpson and whathisname…at least they stayed married, didn’t they? There will be bedeken, bridesmaids, beigels and a bagpipe. Chaos will ensue and PG order will come out of chaos.
My glass-half-full bridegroom will be taking me on honeymoon to a nice warzone where there will be sheva brachot galore, possible inside a nice shelter. Wish me luck…
PS As of writing today, it happened. The sun shone on the tent, the best man forgot to bring his suit (prompting a whip-around for a shirt and jacket), the broiges dance – with Giacomo Smith on clarinet – went down a storm, a Labour peer – who shall be nameless – knocked a full glass of champagne over the bride’s impeccable silk dress, the bouquet went exactly to my friend Rula, my granddaughter Ava wrote a poem for us of such beauty that the garden was watered, the glass smashed precisely and – as if on cue – the government sirens went off across the UK.
Rabbi Shlomo said it was providently arranged by Keir Starmer and Gyles Brandreth talked it up as a major event on ITV’s This Morning. In the evening, the sky sported a blood moon. The bride and groom had beans on toast and packed to go to a nice war zone and today, I remain, your columnist, Mrs Mo Turner.
Mr and Mrs Turner (Photo Adrian Pope)Adrian Pope
Happy together under the chupah (photo Adrian Pope)Adrian Pope 
