Apologies for the lack of recent bloggings. I have been away, and have returned bronzed, rested, and married.

All three of those things were planned. This wasn’t a trip to Vegas gone drunkenly wrong. It was in fact a trip to Aldershot gone romantically right, followed by a honeymoon in the Isles of Scilly.

The wedding was, for me at least, a marvellous day. I can’t speak for my new wife, whose smiles surely masked the horror at having had to legally bind herself to me for life. But as far as I was concerned, it could scarcely have gone any better. The rain held off, I managed to tie my cravat, and my speech took place without any Labour Councillors shouting “shame” as I rose from my seat, which was a novelty.

This is a family blog, so I won’t go into the detail of the wedding night, other than to express mild disappointment at two things I feel I should warn fellow grooms-to-be about. First, I was bitterly sad to find that the bridal suite I was staying in was comfortably the nicest hotel room I will probably ever legally get into, but that because the wedding didn’t finish until 2am and because breakfast meant being out of there by 8.30, I had no time whatsoever to utilise the facilities. There was a bath the size of David Beckham’s swimming pool, and a space age trouser press that looked like it had been designed by Arthur C Clarke. But I couldn’t use either.

Second, the bride’s dress was not as easy to remove as the movies would have us believe. I was expecting a sleek, slithery manoeuvring something akin to the boozy end of an evening enjoyed by James Bond. In fact the contraption was held in place by a compendium of buttons, hooks and loops so complicated that it made the control console of a Saturn V mission look like an Etch-A-Sketch. For someone as cack-handed as me (I couldn’t tie a double knot in my shoelaces until I was 16), getting her out of that was like drinking two quarts of vodka, donning a blindfold and then trying to build a full scale Meccano replica of the Cutty Sark. I am going to go on Dragon’s Den as soon as humanly possible with the world’s first velcro wedding dress. It will be a sure-fire hit.

Still, she escaped it eventually, which sadly brought us a few minutes closer to the end of what was the single most lovely 24 hours of my entire life. It was quite emotional to think that such an ensemble of my nearest and dearest is unlikely to come together again unless I either get insanely rich and can pay for them all to get somewhere, or I die. I don’t begrudge our photographer his outrageous fee any more, because his photos are all we have left.

Apart from the Debenhams gift list, obviously. Oh, and each other.

So after that we went on our honeymoon, to Scilly, a place so jaw-droppingly beautiful that it renders foreign travel utterly needless. Forget environmental arguments or the fact that you can’t stand the French. The best reason I have ever seen never to leave the UK is called the island of St Agnes, and it’s 25 miles off Land’s End.

We didn’t stay on it, although we could see it from St Mary’s, which was a couple of miles away and was where we were staying, in a 17th century former windmill which had been turned into a cottage for romantics too tight fisted to stay in a hotel (like me). It contained four round rooms, one on top of the other. The bedroom was at the very top, and the bathroom was at the very bottom, accessible only by an outside staircase, which sounded cute in the brochure but which is irritating when my bladder goes to sleep an hour after the rest of me, and wakes up three hours before.

For the yachtless, Scilly is accessible only by a ferry, a helicopter, and a tiny aeroplane. On the way out we took the helicopter, which was a new experience and one which I found much preferably to flying. If it didn’t cost a thousand times as much as any other mode of transport (except perhaps the Metrolink), I might helicopter more often. My fear that the rotor and the blades would become detached mid-flight, sending us hurtling into the sea, proved unfounded, although I was slightly perturbed on arrival at the heliport to be informed by the check-in man / mechanic that there would be a delay due to “maintenance issues.” These issues were overcome enough to prevent airborne tragedy, and we arrived.

On the way back we came by plane, a 15 seat affair driven by propellers and called an “Otter.” I am no expert in aeronautical nomenclature, but if I was I don’t think I’d name a tiny plane carrying people from islands across seas after an animal that specialises in diving headfirst into water.

Whilst on the islands there was plenty of walking, eating and relaxing. I was forced at divorce-point to go horse-riding, which was a terrifying affair I don’t wish to repeat in a hurry. My horse was bigger than anything I’ve seen close up since Jurassic Park was on at the IMAX. Getting on it was like trying to mount Ayres Rock. My terror was made all the worse by the 12 year old girl escorting me, who leapt aboard her own horse and proceeded to thoroughly show me up by leading the way as I bumbled along behind hanging on for dear life.

I was told that the day previously, the actor Jude Law had ridden the very same horse. Obviously there’s a rude joke in there about that being the only time in my life I’ll ride something Jude Law’s ridden. But I am above making it.

We met said Mr Law a couple of days later, in a posh hotel we’d sheltered in to escape the cold. He’s the type of man so depressingly handsome that it confirm’s to me that God is the divine equivalent of Jeremy Beadle – chortling away whilst playing nasty tricks on ugly people like me. His staggering beauty almost put an end to the marriage there and then. Thankfully my wife is a stickler for the types of local Lib Dem fundraisers that Hollywood A-list types simply can’t provide.

It’s been a great couple of weeks. I have another two days off work too, to catch up on casework and answer my emails. The bad news is that I have to contemplate the fact that having used up all my leave in one go, I now have no more holidays until Christmas. The good news though is that when they do come round I have a wife to share them with.

Rick