WE went back to Ireland for a family wedding last week.

I think I’m getting more emotional at marriage ceremonies as the years go on. It’s all that young love, hope and optimism, a fresh-faced, fledgling couple with a new life together stretching out in front of them. What is there not to cry about?

I started dabbing my eyes the moment the sweet 12-year-old flower girl began her walk down the aisle.

Slowly, one by one, accompanied by traditional Irish music, the four gorgeous bridesmaids followed. And then came the beautiful bride, along with her father, who was beaming with pride.

I blubbed again through the vows.

And then again as Rhian and Noel, now man and wife, gazed into each other’s smiling eyes, and kissed. And we hadn’t even got to the speeches.

A few days later, seven-year-old Albert came home from school and announced that he had been chosen to stand in front of the class and give a report on his news of the week. “I told them all about the wedding in Ireland,” he said.

I could feel myself getting all emotional again. “Did you tell them about the beautiful bride and her gorgeous dress? Did you talk about the lovely meal we had and all the funny and moving speeches that made us all laugh and cry?”

He looked as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. “No, I told them all about the drunk man.”

Then I remembered finding Albert and his cousins totally entranced by a harmless drunk in the hotel lobby.

I didn’t know who he was, or if he was even with our wedding party, but he was talking utter gibberish, staggering about and, for some reason, lifting up his shirt to pat the bare flesh of his tummy.

As I guided them away, I bent down and whispered to Albert, who was clearly baffled by the man’s bizarre behaviour. “That, Albert, is what you call ‘a drunk man’.”

“So, what did you tell everyone about the drunk man?” I asked him.

“I showed them how he walked and patted his tummy and how he was talking,” said Albert.

Next day, I was about to apologise for the content of Albert’s class talk when his teacher took me to one side.

“Albert entertained the whole class with his tale of the drunk man,” she said. “He certainly has a gift for storytelling. They were all fascinated, especially when I told them that every wedding has a drunk man,”

she said.

When the children got to ask questions at the end, they all wanted to know more, she told me. “The first question was, ‘What did the drunk man drink?’,” she laughed. “And Albert replied, with all the confidence of a learned professor giving a lecture on his specialist field, ‘Beer’.”

When I asked Albert later if he had said anything else at all about the wedding, he told me. “Oh yes. I told them that the singer in the band had sticky-up hair and about how one naughty boy poured a drink over someone on purpose and it was really funny.”

It is hard to believe we were actually at the same wedding, our experience and memories of it are so different.

Yet it would be impossible to say who had enjoyed it more...

I DO worry about our 18-year-old, who is planning to leave home and fend for himself in September when he heads off to university.

When we were back in Northern Ireland, we spent an evening in Belfast, where he did his work experience in journalism last year.

He spent a week in the city, and loved it. But when he told me he hadn’t been to the Waterfront Hall, a huge modern concert hall on the River Lagan, which runs through the centre of the city, I suggested we walk past it on our way back to the car. “The whole area is buzzing with cafes, restaurants and entertainment venues, I’m surprised you never came here,” I told him. As we approached the waterfront, he raised his eyebrows.

“Actually, I didn’t even know Belfast had a river,” he said. Do you think it’s safe to let him go off anywhere on his own?