What's love Yacht to do, Yacht to do with it?

It was Lav and Laura's engagement do at Sunderland Yacht Club last night. When everyone got their invitations I was slightly shocked that Sunderland should boast a yachting establishment, but that shock quickly turned to saliva-strewn anticipation when I was told we'd have (/get the chance) to wear sailor suits, and thus I'd finally have an excuse in this life to pay a little Holy Bible-era James Dean Bradfield homage. Turned out to be a savage joke though - more's the pity.

I drove up with Jimi on the afternoon and we were later joined by Jen (all the way from France), Welford and Sophie to complete the entourage originating from our neck of the woods. It was a fine evening of jovial spirits, good music and an extremely well-timed finger buffet. I found the chicken legs to be particularly scrumptious. Perhaps the only minor glitches of the night surrounded the administering of audio titillation via the PA, where anyone could wander over to the laptop and line up the songs from Lav and Laura's carefully selected DVD of tunes. Unfortunately, on one of my visits I hit the wrong thing at the wrong time in Windows Media Player and a painful silence filled the room. Worse still, the Lovejoy theme tune - arguably the finest TV theme in existence - was somehow omitted from proceedings. But this wasn't about negativity and it certainly wasn't about Ian McShane (just imagine if it was...), it was about Lav and Laura and their joyous engagement. It's alien territory for us to be seeing the first of our flock taking the steps towards officially nesting up elsewhere through the sacrament of holy matrimony, but if the chicken legs can be as tasty at all these engagement shindigs then the more the better.