This is the moment when Jilly and I formally welcome you to the
party to celebrate the marriage of our precious and stunning Princess Helen to
the intriguingly bearded and mysterious Prince Christopher, who has come in his
silver carriage to carry her away.
Welcome!
Just so you know, if there’s a personal issue needing a quiet
moment, for example someone who’s over-challenged the wine supply, or who is
about to give birth, then we have a room in the building and please have a word
with Jilly.
After dinner the band will start up. Later on there’ll be some light food to top
up with, there’s a beer bar with some rather good barrels, wine will continue
to be freely available, and Derek and I will probably be doing our first Dad
dances some time after 10pm when we’ve warmed up.
No doubt my brother, used to my efforts, is running a book on
the speeches but I have to warn him that past performance is no guide to the
future. In fact even he might have got
spoofed because Helen gives such good presentations professionally that I
nearly subcontracted this speech to her.
But I’m not sure I’d want to take responsibility for the
damage she does to the English language – over the years she’s introduced us to
words like totes, amazeballs, hid, horrendi and hilare.
This, then, is the day, dear Helen, when you face a big public, everyone
rooting for you and Chris,
and your own presentation is magnificent but almost silent.
Chris and Helen have already had much to arrange. You may have noticed the video recording
being made in the church. I did wonder
whether Helen had planned to have a word with Tim (nod) and Allie (nod) about
streaming a live relay of the marriage to the new Ocean digital display at Land
Sec’s Piccadilly site near Eros – how apt - but then I thought – Who will need
to see it there?
Almost everyone who really matters is here, and we’re so
delighted to see youthat you all are! Thank you so much for coming.
There are some who couldn’t come for entirely understandable
reasons of time or health: the
Antipodean Team Russell, Bill and Isabelle, Margie and Mike, Paul and Christine, … We miss them.
So – they are married!
The Duke and Duchess of Denmark Hill!
So this isn’t a sales pitch I’m making to Chris, it’s not even an
instruction manual for running Helen, it’s more like after-sales customer
care. <LOOK AT CHRIS> You probably
already know where the rattley bits are, but we’re all here to help set the satnav in the direction of
long happiness.
Helen, from our perspective we see that you’ve chosen a fine
man, he’s kind, and vigorous,
intriguing and determined,
he’s amusing, thoughtful, and quite
idiosyncratic.
All subject to what we might hear later, of course. And he clearly cares for you very
much. We like him enormously.
But I’m standing here to talk of what we know, which
is Helen. When her name comes up people
say, “Helen, ah Helen, she’s lovely”. Weeelll, as her Best Dad it’s my duty today to keep you
properly informed - not just to say
“I do”, but also to say “She did”.
Done it Bravely
And she has done – and done it bravely. She’s
·
jumped out of an aeroplane,
·
she’s bungee
jumped off a gondola – though the video shows an enormous delay before she
could actually bring herself to do so.
She was so scared she would go back and forward, there was a moment she
was peering over the edge and reached back for a safe grip – at that moment I
understand there was an agonised grimace from the crew man and huge laughter
from all her friends who’d saw where she’d grabbed;
·
she goes on the highest roller coasters,
·
and she gives
presentations to some pretty daunting audiences.
Mind you, at the end of one long day of presentations
she was sorting her papers and heard some tittering; her Powerpoint
window had minimised itself and the audience were now looking at a recipe
headed Dad’s Curry. That’s how to
spice up your presentation. [Dad joke].
No fear, then. She
copes, she finds a way. Sometimes the
briefing doesn’t quite sink in. On her
first skiing trip with the girls she did some practice days; on the top of the nursery slope she clicked
her boots into her skis as she had been shown in the shop, sadly she was facing
uphill… Once she had stopped she was
laughing as much as everyone else – probably that cackle that makes you think
there’s a mad hen in the room.
But later on that first trip the team went up the ski lift – and
found that the green run was closed, and only the black run was available. So the black run it was, and Helen took 2
and a half hours to come down, traversing and then deliberately falling over,
then traversing again and falling over, goodness knows how the fast skiers
missed her.
Probably it was the pinkness of her ski suit. Pink!
Helen’s most important things are Pink. She tried orange – we’ll long remember the
fake tan. But Pink
it is. The ski suit. The
pink camera that was lost for seven years down the side of a sofa and was found
still holding pictures of her sister’s wedding.
The Pink suitcase that has seen more miles than a jumbo
jet. And the folder for this
wedding. Well that brings us on to her
organisational skills. If there’s
organising to be done, Helen’s the girl.
Organisation
She takes charge of the family board games and commands
the situation, a roomful of people. She
laughs with a joker’s play, but uses her speed to make the ripostes which stop a
situation getting tricky. She is the
most powerful woman I know. I’ve
certainly been twisted round her little finger since she was 0.
Charlotte tells of her own hen do in France - she was dressed
up by the girls as a French maid and another party of girls took her feather
duster. It was Helen who strode up to
those other girls to retrieve it, wagged her finger at them and forcefully said
“NON” - which was quite a sight as Helen herself was
sporting a beret and a handlebar moustache.
Yes, as ever, done with style. Her opinion of her optimum style does not
include the Lego haircut she sported as a youngster, “inflicted on her” as she
sees it. Maybe that’s why for a time
she believed she was Chinese.
Sometimes it fails.
It’s told that when shopping in Cardiff Helen got locked into an
over-ambitious boob tube and it took a major effort by the shop assistant to
get her out, with a complete lack of elegance.
There was a Take Your Daughter To
Work day and we did a tour of the engineering works. We started in my office, and Helen was much
taken with the relaxed hours, the comfy chairs and of course chatting with
people. After a bit of light letter
opening we went to the machine shop and I got out some safety goggles: “I’m not wearing those!” said Helen. “You have to” I said. “Oh not I’m not,” said Helen. We reached a compromise through gritted
teeth, in front of an amused workforce, so you can see Helen’s firm negotiating
style started early.
Ocean and
work
Ocean and Helen seem to fit very well. She’s been there since she was one of six people
– I was walking in a London street when the call came through from Helen that
she’d won the job she so wanted to move into, and we were both so excited that
I dropped my glasses and they remain chipped to this day.
Now she runs her chunk of a business that’s
sixty-strong, and we’re proud to be told that she’s been at the core of every
decision the business has made.
And she does it with massive enthusiasm. Ocean occasionally does internal awards,
and at one session a new award was created, and presented to Helen, for
passion.
Helen has two speeds – Top speed and asleep. When Helen gets fired up she’s like a
sheepdog, rounding people up, getting them to do things by charm or, in my
case, by a severe talking to.
A business like Ocean has a plan and runs on people. Helen too runs on plans and people: I quote
“She is the absolute master of planning, there will be an elaborate plan that
will tell exactly what, when and how a project is going to happen. It will be beautifully produced, clear and
really well thought-through. And when
she’s asked about the project out will come the plan – it’s all there to
see. This can go on for days and
weeks.” The hard bit is actually
getting Helen to start the project.
Pleasing
and Caring
It was the same when she was a teenager. At exam time she would work out her best
revision plan, write it out, time it, adjust it, refine it – but never really
get round to doing the revision. There
was always a problem to deal with, she used to get awfully emotional, she was
known for crying in sympathy at other people’s problems because she cares so
much that she took them as her own. Or
alternatively, as the loyal friend said when telling me of this, she was a very
hormonal teenager.
This caring started early.
At 12 and 13 Helen loved chewing gum and reading girlie magazines, Big
and Shout, and at 12 she wrote to Big magazine worried about how her younger
sister, then a very modest 10 of course, who was very quiet, was going to find
out all the things a girl needs to know – all the things that Helen had learned
– at 12.
Helen has always been there for people. She was put here for the benefit and
amusement of us all, and has wanted to please all her life, from the beaming
baby lying on the changing mat, daring you not to beam back at her. John says “Whenever I see Helen I
smile.”
Perhaps she feels a bit insecure at times: on coming into her sitting room in London
years ago, where there was a fish tank, all the fish clustered at the corner
closest to her: she remarked “It’s quite nice when you have six fish
interested in you.”
Helen is always there for her friends, just as they are for
her. There are innumerable tales of
personal support and rallying round, doing the unexpected to make it better for
others, rushing to people’s sides.
A comment from a colleague: “If you are having a problem and
tell Helen, then she steps in and takes charge and gets it sorted, or tells you
just what to do. So dependable.”
Helen does like to organise well in advance, and no, that
isn’t why this engagement has been 14 months long. It’s been said that the commitment of Helen
and Chris to family and friends means it’s easier to get a diary date with the
Queen.
But that means Chris and Helen have been able to concentrate
on the detail of their wedding. For
example they’ve made it easy for me to cope, as an old man prone to
confusion; they’ve kindly placed me
between two lovely ladies both called Helen Haines.
Well, Helen of Sparta’s was the face that launched a thousand
ships, the ships sent to rescue her when she was kidnapped by Paris of
Troy. As a unit of feminine beauty a milli-Helen is therefore defined as sufficient to launch
one ship. I think that today Helen
looks lovely enough to launch the whole fleet.
Misfortune
Misfortune dogs her.
She loses wallets, cards, phones.
She had a card cloned in a dubious shop. She had a toffee-yoghurt explosion in her best
handbag ruining her phone, her Blackberry and the bag. She
phoned through from her trip in the South Pacific to say she’s lost her credit
card, with all the kerfuffle that causes.
Some weeks later she phoned through to say it had been in her other shorts
all the time. A case of the Wrong
Trousers. Well that brings us straight
on to her addictions. I gather that the
hen do was a highly respectable event in the Cotswolds, with a focus on wine
and cheese. Of course what happens on
a hen do stays on the hen do – and on Facebook. But it’s no coincidence that the wedding
cake that Chris and Helen wanted is a pile of cheese.
Helen does want people to enjoy themselves as much as she
does, so everything turns into a party. As a good hostess and party girl she is
always concerned that everyone has the drink they want. It’s not often that anyone gets ahead of
Helen. But the other week she was in
charge of Elsa and Henry at bath-time and genuinely panicked as they wound her
up by pretending to drink the bathwater.
If a plan goes wrong she improvises. Surveying a bunch of friends strewn round
her place on yet another morning after, she concluded that they all needed a
Bloody Mary, but searching the cupboards produced no ingredients apart from
vodka – naturally. It turned out that blending tinned plum tomatoes with vodka, adding dried
tarragon, and sprucing it up with chilli paste makes an almost completely
undrinkable remedy. Helen was jubilant
at the laughing congratulations of the team, while they were privately controlling
their gag-reflexes.
Determination
So Helen is nothing if not determined. But it’s not always in her best
interests.
Two Christmasses ago Chris and I
retired to a back room to discuss books and then Chris asked me if it was all
right if he asked Helen to marry him.
I was delighted, and said so. “I
hope to ask her at my favourite place on Cayman,” he said, and I hoped we’d be
on the island at the time.
Two months later Chris took us on a scenic drive round Grand
Cayman to Rum Point to a house kindly lent to Chris for our trip. We arrived at tea time. It is a lovely spot: the house leads out onto a sheltered sandy
inlet and the other houses were quiet, boats were pulled up on the beach, the
sun was shining… Anyway we unloaded and
Jilly started doing the kitchen bit, and Chris asked Helen if she’d give him a
hand moving some kayaks on the beach.
“No, I’m helping Mummy,” she said. Chris said “But I really need your help with
these boats.” Helen said “No, I really
need to help Mummy unpack for the kitchen…”
Eventually Chris did prevail and things went quiet. A bit later I was distracted by a squeaking
sound that was coming from the veranda round the corner. It was Helen, who was as excited as could
be, holding out her hand on which was a perfectly fitting ring “Look, look,“ she was saying “Chris and I are getting married.” So, Helen, listen to your man.
It is of course the case that girls do chatter a lot, and men
are strong and silent. But that’s all right in a romance, because
there’s not much that a man needs to say.
In fact what a man has to say gets less as the romance progresses. For example, a man, thinking he may have
caught the eye of a girl he fancies, may start off with a six word sentence:
“Would you care for a drink?”
Time goes on and the next marker is only five words: “Shall we buy this flat?”
Then there is “Will you marry me?”
Closely followed by “I love you”
And eventually “I will.”
After that there is only one word the girl wants to hear from
her man, again and again: it’s
“Yes.”
But the man will dress it up to show that he is still truly
romantic: And thus we get
“Yes dear.”
In a discussion some weeks ago about the service and who says
what, Chris remarked that he understood his role was well
defined and he should just follow
instructions, whereupon Helen looked over her shoulder at him, smiled sweetly
and said “Just like life, dear.”
But then again, in the autumn I was giving Chris a slightly
hard time about something important, the choice of beers for today I think it
was, and Helen asked me to lay off – “because I love him.”
So that’s all right then.
And so, perhaps we could now Stand and wish this lovely, happy
couple a long and
happy life.
To Chris and Helen, Mr and Mrs Christopher Haines.