Wedding

A man called Gianluca and I mounted the steps to the Friedrichsbad in pensive silence. We hadn’t made eye contact since we’d met in reception at our hotel, the divine Brenners, for this rendezvous with destiny. At the front desk, we were sternly reminded again of the dress code. We nodded. For the next three hours we were going to be stark naked in a 19th-century, Renaissance-themed, domed and frescoed temple to the God of Thermal Springs, adorned with hand-painted majolica tiles, statuary and a sequence of pools and chambers. ‘Kein Textil,’ the woman repeated. After removing every stitch, we processed to the shower room – me checking that the area, which was equipped with vast ceiling-mounted bronze fittings, had several exits. I was wearing only blue plastic slippers.

It was the morning after the night before and I was picking glass out of my leg by a pool, blotting the blood trickling down my calf with a navy spotted handkerchief. I was trying to work out how the shards of glass came to be there… and then it came back to me. But first, let’s rewind. I was taking my seat on the British Airways 10 a.m. flight to Nice. ‘Not another one!’ a woman right behind me in steerage complained. ‘Is this some special flight or something?’ I stowed my Globe-Trotter in the overhead locker and made eye contact with her. ‘Piers Morgan is up front,’ she explained. ‘And that’s Matt Goss.’ She pointed to a tidy man minding his own business a few rows ahead.

‘How does anyone young and stupid manage to get married?’ I kept shouting at the builder boyfriend as I pummelled the keys of my laptop to try to force the website of the registrar to give me a date. It seems I picked the worst possible time to try to serve notice because, as anyone who has contacted a registrar lately will know, they are experiencing unprecedented demand for their services.