Dress codes.

Tomorrows gospel about the incorrectly dressed wedding guest has always been a puzzle for most of us I suspect. The King seemed unduly harsh in his treatment of the guest and not a good role model to follow in this day and age when dress codes do still exist and people do still try to invoke them.
Every year at Henley I see ladies with short skirts and dangerous necklines  being turned away. Gentleman are only rarely allowed to remove their jackets!
Cruising has much the same perils especially on the Cunard liners where standards are maintained rigidly.
We are used to it now but on our first transatlantic crossing we sat with a very diverse group of people. Of the six at table there was only one couple, me and David, the rest were singles.
On the first night we found the girls worked in local government and the two men could not have been more different, one American, the other Welsh. Oddly they had been visiting each others country both looking for old cars to transport back home.
On the first night we all got on well and looked forward to the rest of the cruise.
The second night five of us were ready  at table when the sixth appeared with out his dinner jacket. He apologised and said he hadn't come prepared...would we excuse him, he didn't want to embarrass us.
We were not embarrassed and told him so.
He sat down with us and when the waiters approached we asked them to please allow the man to stay.
They did and we had a lovely six nights of dining where the man got noticeably smarter every night.
At the end we realised that he was by the richest of us all...
It would have spoiled our pleasure to think that he was banished and he went out of his way to look after us all in fine style......we went to the theatre every night at his request, though we drew the straw at the night clubbing!  This was the only occasion when David came to watch the Rocky horror show with me!
Dress codes are I think mostly an anachronism today....so its going to be even harder to persuade  the congregation tomorrow that alls well in the Gospel reading!
But I shall give it my best shot!