My happy memories of shotgun wedding

Before I tell you about my garden – and that's the boring bit, so I'll leave it to the end – I'll share with you my AK47 story. I hadn't intended to. I'd planned to tell you about aquilegia and hostas. But that can wait. Guns are far more exciting.

My friend's dad had an AK rig that went boom boom. He gave it me to fire. We shot rounds at upturned plastic cola bottles. There was a photograph of me taking aim. I used it as my Twitter avatar briefly, before thinking better of it. The AK was wild. I missed the cola bottle and the recoil almost put my shoulder out.

My friend's sister had been getting married in Ethiopia and had invited me along with 2,000 other people. That's the same number that attend gigs at the Civic. Imagine that.

They'd married in a beautiful garden in Addis Ababa. The bride was more beautiful than any I've seen. She was resplendent in lace; her caramel skin contrasting with ivory fabric.

Afterwards, we crowded into cars and drove up country. I've no idea where we went. Place names passed me by in a blur on on-coming lorries that veered out of our path at the last moment. It was the sort of journey that Jack Kerouac would have died for.

When we arrived at our destination, we were ushered into what looked like a vast sports centre. There were video crews, photographers and 2,000 other people who were dressed in all of their finery. When the bride and groom arrived they were treated like royalty. The crowd parted to welcome them in.

The buffet was a laugh. There were no canapés. No sandwiches and no clotted cream scones. But there were two cows. Yes, that's right. Two cows. They'd been killed a few weeks earlier and hung, so that the meat was dark and intense. Butchers with handheld scythes were standing by, chopping off chunks for the guests. The meat was eaten raw. Yes. Raw. No barbie, no marinade, no flash-fry. Just raw. On a plate. "More fat, sir?"

That evening, the family and friends assembled at a hotel owned by the bride's father. The groom's mother was in conversation with the bride's brother: "Have you got the goat?"

I laughed. 'Get them,' I thought, 'Joshing about goats.' I was wrong. There was a goat. It didn't last long . . .

Two days of hard-partying followed. The bride's father took a group of us into the bush to fire his AK. For a laugh. He hid it in a tennis racket cover. Get a load of that, Cliff. We met nomad tribesmen herding camels and were careful to shoot at the cola bottles, rather than the dudes with the braided hair and humpbacks.

And then we flew back to Heathrow. "Anything to declare?" The best time of our lives, sir.

So, anyway, as I was saying; spring has sprung and it's time to get jiggy in the garden. What, I've run out of space? But what about the hostas?

By the way, I was only joking about the bodies under the patios. We don't have a patio. The bodies are in the cellar.