Part One - "The Best Man"

"Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding and raise your glasses. To the bride and groom"

"The bride and groom" chimed the thronged masses - just as all the previous thronged masses had done before - this was followed by the sound of clinking of glasses, then of glasses being put back on their tables and then finally, almost apologetically, of a belated round of applause as they realised I'd finished my bit. I nodded politely as some of the people raised their glasses to me and I grinned at the Groom as he slapped me on the back for not giving away too many of his deepest and darkest secrets.

As I sat down, a thought occurred to me, why had he been so worried? What possible dirt was I going to spread? I barely knew the bloke. No, correction, I didn't know the bloke, not at all. And certainly I didn't know anything about deep dark secrets hidden in his past (but to be honest, looking at him, I didn't think he had any).

How the fuck had it got to this? Some people spend their weekends playing football or going to the theatre or even fucking train spotting. But not me, I spend my weekends being Best Man at weddings for people I don't know, people I've never met before, sad people who have no friends.

OK, so there may be a nice slap-up meal, a free glass (or several) of champagne, but trust me it soon begins to get a bit dull, and then it gets tedious, and then it gets as if you never want to see another chicken chasseur again otherwise you're likely to shove it up the groom's arse.

The waiters were bringing over the plates to our table (the good thing about being best man is that you usually get served first) and as they put it down in front of me I realised what it was they were serving.

"Mmmmm, yummy, chicken chasseur" said the Bride with clear delight in her eyes.

I just smiled, nodded and started eating my food.

"The Best Man" is copyright Angus Burns 2006.

Introduction - "The Best Man"

Hi, I'm new to this blogging malarkey. To be honest I've never been one to write a diary or anything like that, so I won't be using this as forum to spill my thoughts to the world. That's just not me. What I do love doing though is writing. So I'm going to use this blog as a way of getting some of my work out into the public domain.

My story is called "The Best Man" and is the story of a man who spends pretty much every weekend of his life being the best-man at weddings. Hopefully you'll laugh because it is meant to be a comedy. If however you you don't find it funny, just pretend it's a dramatic character study instead.

By the way "The Best Man" is very vaguely semi-autobiographical, in that I have twice been a best man. But other than that it's almost entirely fiction and I certainly haven't done some of the things that Jack gets up to.

Now this won't be some old piece work cut and pasted into into the blog, but a new story which I will write as I go along. I'll be adding chapters, paragraphs and sentences to the blog as soon as I've written them. I've got a good idea of where I want the story and characters to head, but if you've any thoughts, ideas or plotlines then please let me know what you think and if they are any good I'll try to incorporate them (and of course, where possible, I'll credit who I got the idea from).

Anyway I hope you enjoy what I write, please let me know what you think, your thoughts will be most appreciated, I can be emailed at angbur@googlemail.com . If you happen to be a literary agent / publisher / or someone else who would like to pay me lots of money to write for a living, then please drop me a line at angbur@googlemail.com
Now enjoy "The Best Man"

"The Best Man" is copyright Angus Burns 2006.