The father of the bride speech, in your own voice.

First the proper bit. On behalf of Pam and me, thank you all for coming. Some of you sailed a fair way to be here and the band tells me they take requests after nine, which Pam assures me is a threat, not a promise.

Now. Bryony.

When she was small she could not sleep unless she could see the lighthouse on the headland from her window. Curtains open, every night, winter and summer. If a sea fog rolled in and swallowed the light she would pad through to our room and stand by the bed, not crying, just checking. And I would walk her back and we would wait at the glass together until the beam cut through again. Then she would nod, like a job had been done, and go back to bed. That is the first thing to know about my daughter. She needs to know the light is still there. She does not need you to fuss. She needs you to stand at the window with her until the fog lifts.

It took me about forty years to learn that lesson properly, and a man at sea has no excuse, because that is the entire point of a lighthouse.

She is a midwife now, over at the Treliske. She spends her nights bringing other people's precious things safely in to shore. I am not going to pretend I find that a coincidence. People meet my Bryony on the worst night of fear in their lives and she is the calm at the glass, waiting with them for the light. They will never know how lucky they were to get her.

Then Marcus turned up. The first evening he came to ours I gave him the long stare I used to give junior pilots, and I asked him what he did. He runs a bike shop. Fair enough. Then the fog came in over supper, proper thick, and Bryony went quiet the way she does, and I watched to see if the lad noticed. He noticed. He did not say a word about it. He just shifted his chair a few inches so he was sitting between her and the dark window, and carried on talking to Pam about gears. He had no idea I clocked it. I clocked it.

Marcus, I have spent three years watching where you put your chair. A man who moves himself between my daughter and the thing she is afraid of, without being asked and without taking credit, is a man I would have trusted with any vessel in that harbour. You can stop borrowing my good torch. It's yours.

Bryony, love. You were the finest cargo I ever had charge of, and I once brought a hundred metre tanker in on a spring tide with the wind dead against me. Your mum and I are proud of you in a way that does not fit in the chest properly. I'll leave it there before the fog comes in on me too.

Ladies and gentlemen, on your feet, please. Glasses up. To Bryony and Marcus. May the light always be where they left it, and may someone always be standing at the window.