Love Is All Around and that time I broke the law (ish)
Christ this song was awful, wasn’t it? And yet, for the entirety of summer 1993 we gave nary a shit. We bought it in our droves, marching like an army of bouncing blue-haired lemmings into HMV to exchange our money for this drippy Hallmark smooch-fest on cassingle.
We loved the song because we loved the film. These days I am in a minority who find Richard Curtis films mildly embarrassing, but at the age of thirteen ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ was the best thing I had ever seen with my own eyes. I bought the soundtrack. I bought the screenplay (I’ve just realised this was the first screenplay I bought and not True Romance, as I have been telling people for years — FUCK). I bought the piano book. I went to the cinema to see it four times.
It was funny, it was grown-up (but not too grown-up), it was sweet, it was romantic. It was as British as Wimbledon or strawberries and cream. It was everything I thought adult life was destined to be.
It also tempted me into my first ever Big Lie To My Parents.
I was a bit (a lot) of a goody-two-shoes as a child. The thought of not telling the truth had the potential to keep me up at night for weeks, lying in a cold sweat, my paranoid brain debating the possibility that my all-knowing parents must surely able to read my mind.
To tell even the slightest fib was a quantum leap out of my comfort zone.
But, that summer, I was destined to commit a rule break at least 1.5 times as daring as eating the last piece of swiss roll and blaming it on the dog.
It was the school holidays. My sweet, innocent twelve-year-old cousin came to stay with us, and my friend and I had been permitted to take her out on a jaunt into Nottingham city centre. My buddy and I had already seen FWAAF at least twice by this time, but my goodness we wanted to see it again.
Sneaking two fairly grown-up-looking thirteen-year-olds into a 15 certificate film wasn’t too much of a stretch. A twelve-year-old was going to be tricky. My lovely cousin had yet to fall down the rabbit-hole of Topshop miniskirts and kohl eyeliner. We needed a plan.
At this point I would love to say we gave her a complete Clueless-style makeover and she waltzed in looking like a 45-year-old divorcee. But, in truth, we just made her stand slightly behind us as we shuffled past the box office.
MY GOODNESS MY HEART WAS IN MY THROAT.
My heart continued to be in my throat as we sat through the entire film (she loved it).
I was doing a Wrong Thing, I was doing a Bad Thing, surely it would be written all over my face. And yet, we were doing it. WE WERE BREAKING THE RULES. I knew my mum would murder me if she found out. And yet, here we were doing it anyway, and nobody was saying anything.
What a rush.
To this day my mum still thinks we went to see the Lion King.
That one delicious sneak opened up my teenage years to a world of sneaky possibilities that I am delighted to say I took full advantage of. My poker face worked.
Thank you Wet Wet Wet, thank you Richard Curtis, thank you Andie McDowall (in one of your most annoying roles ever).
You made a teenage rebel out of me.
#write52 is a writing project by Ed Callow, who basically bullies us into creating original content every week. Follow the gang on Twitter here.
I’m Penny, a freelance writer and content strategist. If you’re interested reading more of my utter bunkum, the best place to follow me is on Instagram.
