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July 11, 2007
Must not have gotten the e-vite
Breakdowns in communication happen all the time. Sometimes they have disastrous consequences. Luckily, sometimes they also have comical consequences:
Teacher Dave Barclay flew thousands of miles across the Atlantic to Wales to attend his friend's wedding, only to discover he was a year early.
Barclay, 34, was told about the wedding earlier in the year and assumed it was to take place in 2007.
It was only when he had flown into Cardiff from Toronto, Canada, and rang the bridegroom seeking details of the venue that he discovered the wedding was in 2008.
"I am a year early -- yeah, my mates are loving it, aren't they," he told BBC Radio Wales.
The groom, Dave Best, had emailed his friend at the start of the year.
"He just said July the 6th and I assumed it was this year because if you tell the guy July 6th, they're going to think it's this year," Barclay said.
Now, I don't know who to blame for this one. Obviously the groom deserves some blame. It's pretty stupid to tell somebody something is happening on July 6, only to mean July 6 of next year. 99% of people who are told a date without a year will deduce that the speaker means THIS year. If I said something was October 10, many of you would decide this meant October 10, 2007, and not October 10, 2008. I am loathe to use the term "assume" for this, because it's more of a conclusion: if he meant 2008, he would've said 2008.
On the other hand, the unfortunate teacher deserves some blame. There are a bunch of things he could've done that would have tipped him off that he was wrong, such as: talking to other people about the wedding; wondering why he didn't get an invitation to the wedding; and, I dunno, making damn sure the wedding is happening before buying a $1,000 ticket to Wales. I hope he at least got a good vacation out of the deal.
entry no. 908
Posted by oz115 at July 11, 2007 02:01 PM