Plattie

Watching

Last night Teabelly and I went to see Mamma Mia. I have loved the stage show for years - seen it three times - so I had high expectations for the movie. But it was, sadly, only OK. Definitely not the giddy-making feel-good phenomenon that the stage show is. Also, Pierce Brosnan was woefully, woefully miscast, with hilarious results. The man CANNOT sing, and we burst out laughing every time he launched into another heart-felt ballad. Also, his accent couldn’t make up its mind whether to be British or American, and it had settled on somewhere between the two, with the result that he sounded slightly Dutch. Still, it was an entertaining enough way to spend an hour or so, and I adored Christine Baranski in it especially. But unlike the stage show, I won’t be going back for repeat viewings.

Reading

I’ve been sort of lacking in reading enthusiasm recently, and just vaguely picking at things - a nibble at a Georgette Heyer mystery; a small bite of John’s Economist when I’m eating my dinner; and dips into poetry anthologies in a futile attempt to find the perfect wedding reading. But I’m not really in the frame of mind to just sit down and read a novel from beginning to end right now. I’ll get back into my reading stride soon enough, I’m sure. But the last novel I read and enjoyed, and then read again for good measure, was Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells, which is just a lovely story about magic and good food and love and sisterhood. I thought it could have been better written in parts, but the writing was never bad enough to detract from the story. I recommend.

Loving

Bare Escentuals bareVitamins Skin Rev-er Upper (ridiculous name, wonderful product) has done what years of acne products and more than one qualified dermatologist could not, and almost completely cleared up my skin.  I ADORE this stuff. I just put a tiny dab of it on my face every morning before moisturiser and my skin is the best its been in more than a decade. I have no idea what its secret is. I don’t care as long as they never ever stop making it.

Hating

I am insanely excited about the new X-Files movie which is released this month. Oh, except it isn’t if you’re British. We get the movie a week later than the United States, which means I’m basically going to have to quit the internet for a week unless I want to know every minor detail of the plot before I see it. It’s not as bad as when the first movie came out ten years ago, when there was a delay of several months between the US and UK release dates. Everybody on the internet was going on about some stupid bee, damn the bee, OMG I hate that bee, and so on, and I was over here on this side of the pond thinking WTF DOES A BEE HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?  

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we are utterly perplexed by the ability of one of our cats to keep getting fatter and fatter, while the other one is perfectly normal-sized. They’ve both been on prescription diet food for over a year, and while Molly has been doing fine on it, Milly just keeps getting heavier. And we watch them carefully - Milly isn’t snaffling Molly’s food, if anything it’s the other way around. In short: It is a mystery.

Last night we weighed them and it turns out that not only is Milly getting heavier, Molly is getting lighter. The poor little thing weighs almost two kilos less than her sister now. Two kilos! And she is beginning to feel positively bony. So, we’ve started a new regime. As of this morning, Milly is still on the diet food, but Molly is back on normal cat food.

This is easy enough to enforce because Molly, being lighter, can jump up onto the kitchen worktop and Milly, being lardier, cannot. So I plonked Molly on the worktop this morning with a bowl of sardine cat food, while down below Milly was presented with a bowl of the usual low-fat gravel. You can imagine the reaction:

Molly: OMG FOR REALS? I GET SARDINES? I would tell you at great length how you are the greatest human ever except I am too busy INHALING FISH.
Milly: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL
Molly: Om Nom Nom
Milly: Mummy! Molly has sardines! I don’t have sardines! You have forgotten about me!
Me: Milly your bowl is here. Look! Sweet delicious vet-prescribed gravel!
Milly: This is not the fishy goodness that I can smell! YOU DON’T LOVE ME ANYMORE!
Molly: Slurp Om Nom
Me: It is because I love you that I am feeding you gravel Milly. This is what’s called tough love.
Milly: I WOULD PREFER SARDINE LOVE.
Molly: *licks paw* That was delicious Mummy. You can let that fat bag lick the bowl out if you want. I’m feeling generous.

It’s been a weekend of retail therapy around these parts, as yesterday J and I went to John Lewis to register for our wedding list. It is enormous fun to wander round a department store with a bar code scanner, scanning lots of lovely things for other people to buy for you. Although typically J and I managed to disagree about practically every single item, because we have a long and colourful history of never ever liking the same things ever.

However, after years of practice, we’ve got disagreeing with each other down to a fine art, and we can normally reach consensus fairly rapidly and with no bloodshed or threats of pre-marital divorce. Although we almost came to blows over wine glass designs, because it turns out J is an old woman in disguise and yearns for floral-cut crystal goblets. We eventually compromised on some crystal with a more modern design, but I had to call J a lot of names before he saw sense.

J also revealed a never-before-mentioned yen to own a bread maker. So, yeah, we’ve put one of those on the list. I give it a week before he gets bored and goes back to buying sliced loaves at the corner shop. But it’ll be fun while it lasts. I managed to resist the temptation to list an ice-cream maker, because let’s face it, I’m never going to be as good at making ice cream as Ben or Jerry, even if I’m well-equipped.

So, yeah. We’re all registered. Let the gift buying begin! We kicked it off ourselves today, actually, by taking ourselves shopping on the Kings Road for sunglasses and a new handbag for me. Well, the sales are on! And there’s an economic downturn! Might as well take advantage. But man, being a consumer is hard work! I’m drained now. And I still have all the ironing to do.

I spent this morning doing some of the only-during-office-hours errands required to make a marriage legal. I am still quite taken aback by how much damn palaver is involved in all this, especially if, like us, you live in a different borough to the one you’re getting married in.

So, first thing this morning I walked down to Fulham Register Office.

It has a very nice tiled floor.

For the first of many times today, I saw this sign, which is everywhere you go when jumping through these legal marriage hoops.

I was in Fulham to pick up the marriage license, because we live in the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. So, clutching this precious document, I hopped on the tube to go over to Westminster Register Office (because we’re getting married in the Borough of Westminster) to drop it off. But first, a pause to note the remarkable cheek of the railways, trying to put a positive spin on all their weekend delays.

OK, so, I got the tube to Baker Street, pausing to say a quick hello to Sherlock Holmes.

I walked down Marylebone Road to Westminster Register Office, which is a LOT fancier than its Hammersmith and Fulham counterpart. It has lions! Also, a wedding party was being photographed on the steps and I had to sort of sneak around the back of them to get in.

Heh. You can tell they see a lot of weddings.

I got a bit lost inside, it’s a really big old rambly building, but I eventually found where I was supposed to be.

And once inside, I handed over the license from Hammersmith and Fulham, paid them £375 (£375!) and got given yet another bit of paper, with all the different ceremony wordings we have to chose from. So, that’s what J and I will be doing tonight - deciding whether we want ‘to love, respect and cherish’, or just ‘remain true’.

So, we’re all legal now. And I am knackered, and delighted to be home.

I don’t remember my first cup of tea. I must have been very young, because as far back as I can remember tea has been my beverage of choice.

There is only one way to make it right. Put the teabag in the mug, pour boiling water in (must be boiling, not just hot), squeeze the teabag against the side of the mug a few times, until the liquid turns an impenetrable brown, add just a splash of milk, stir, remove the tea bag, drink.

I’ve never had sugar in my tea. I remember trying to get away with it once and Mum telling me that if I was going to drink tea, I had to drink it properly or not at all. Real tea drinkers do it sugar free, apparently. And even though I know that’s not true really, and Mum only said that because she spent my childhood on an endless and ultimately futile campaign to reduce my sugar intake, I still look down a little bit on people who can’t drink tea without sugar. They can’t take it bitter and unadulterated; they’re not doing it right.

Tea has always been there, a companion through the changes. I remember, at school, the thrill of graduating to sixth form, where we had our own common room with (imagine!) a kettle. There was no fridge though, so my friend S and I, dedicated tea drinkers both, brought in tubs of powdered milk so we could have our grown-up cups of tea in breaks between classes. We felt so sophisticated, out of school uniform for the first time, and drinking a hot beverage we had made ourselves, in our own mugs, carefully selected to reflect our personalities. Mine had Wallace and Gromit on it.

During my study abroad year in America, I had a tiny little electric kettle, brought over in my luggage specifically for taste-of-home tea making. My friends in the dorm made their hot drinks in the microwave. The microwave! I was scandalised and scornful, preferring always to wait the fifteen minutes my kettle took to boil water, labouring against the lower voltage in American electricity, which it hadn’t been designed to cope with.

But even despite coming equipped, I never got a decent cup of tea that whole year. The tea bags I brought with me went stale, and no satisfactory American replacement could be found, despite endless searching. On the plane on my way back to Britain, after a year without tea, I burst into tears when a surprised Virgin Atlantic air steward poured me a cup.

Recently, and incredibly enough for the first time, I think I’ve actually become addicted to tea. I sit at my desk in the morning, head aching and concentration wavering, waiting for my tea to cool down enough for it to be drinkable. And as I start to sip I can actually feel the ache retreating, and my ability to think coherent thoughts clicks into place. All these years a tea drinker, but I’ve never actually needed it before now. It’s a little unsettling.

Working out your notice is really dull. And I have three whole weeks of it left! Wah!

So for the next three weeks, this is pretty much how I’ll be spending my time:

(Idea stolen shamelessly from Teabelly)

So, it has been whole days since I last talked about the wedding. And we can’t have that, because I have been busily organising things in a bordering-on-manic fashion recently, and I demand recognition! In addition to the cake and the photographer, I have also now sorted out, or at least considered, the following things:

My Outfit

The dress is ordered. It’s coming. There are no pictures of it ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET. I’ve looked. And anyway even if there were I couldn’t link to it because J does occasionally read this blog and, you know, TRADITION! So you’re just going to have to trust me: it’s lovely.

Also sorted: hair and makeup, veil, necklace, earrings, underwear, stockings and garter (something blue!). Not yet sorted: shoes. But a friend of mine who was a bridesmaid recently and wore ivory heels has said I can borrow them. We are the same size and she promises they are really comfortable. So, excellent: footwear and my ’something borrowed’ in one fell swoop.

DJ

I am freaking out irrationally about the DJ, because the DJ is the only thing I’ve booked after just finding one on Google that looked good. Everything else has been based on personal or magazine or hotel recommendations. So now I have sent in my deposit cheque I am thinking ‘but what if it’s just an elaborate scam to fleece poor innocent brides of their £450 deposit and then on their wedding there is NO MUSIC?’ Actually the idea of losing a £450 deposit I can live with; the idea of all our guests having to dance to J ineffectually Beat Boxing into a radio mic gives me chills.

But anyway, I am no doubt being ridiculous! Look, they are totally legit, right? RIGHT?

Flowers

I have booked a florist, she’s called Beryl. She has a misplaced apostrophe on her website but I am trying to overlook it. We are meeting nearer the time to discuss floral arrangements. Right now I’m leaning towards just doing everything in burgundy and ivory roses, but I wonder how excessively out-of-season roses are in November? I am trying, if I can, to keep the carbon footprint of the wedding more Lilliputian than Gulliver.

Bridesmaids

Obviously bridesmaids are sorted. They are Teabelly and my friend Liz, who doesn’t have a blog, although this should not be held against her. Liz lives in Holland and isn’t back until August, so bridesmaid dress shopping is on hold until then. My plan A is to find them nice little burgundy dresses, but if that fails plan B is to find them nice little black dresses, which will be easy because you can always buy little black dresses. The wedding is going to be black tie, so bridesmaids in black dresses would actually look kind of cool.

Rings

Rings are J’s department and consequently they have not been organised AT ALL. We’re planning to go back to the same guy who made my engagement ring in Hatton Garden. We were originally going to both just have plain gold bands, but J asked me if I wanted a diamond eternity ring instead and my response was:

But won’t my ring finger look ridiculously bling?

*Pause*

My ring finger will look ridiculously bling! Let’s do it!

Inside every woman of taste, there is a footballer’s wife desperately trying to beat her way out.

150 days to go! Eeep!

Well, I just handed in my notice at work. In a move that will turn out to be either brilliantly fortuitous or colossally stupid, I am going to go work for J’s company.

Plus side: I get to see lots more of him!
Negative side: I get to see lots more of him!

I feel reasonably confident that it will all work out for the best.

Plus side: Lifts to work
Negative side: No not-really-sick sick days. EVER.

So, four weeks from now, I’ll be leaving my nice safe little job in the city and entering bizarro world in which my boyfriend is my boss, and my boss is my boyfriend.

Plus side: My boss will be my boyfriend. Hee!
Negative side: My boyfriend will be my BOSS. Eeek!

So, following on (sort of) from my previous entry, in which it was established that I am not and never will be remotely trendy, owing to my inability to wear skinny jeans and my desire to live somewhere quiet and safe, we have this:

J and I are going to a Bon Jovi concert tonight.

Oh yes. Oh yes we are! And I cannot WAIT. J got me the tickets for Christmas, so I have been waiting for this for six months. Six months of having the Crossroads album on near-permanent repeat in the car. Six months of wailing along unharmoniously to Bed of Roses.

Also, we have great seats. Last time we saw a concert at Twickenham it was The Rolling Stones and we were all the way at the back so Mick Jagger just looked like a frantically-leaping midget. But tonight I expect to be able to see the sweat on Jon Bon Jovi’s brow.

I am an unashamed lover of cheesy pop / rock. This sort of thing is so fantastic live. Take That were BRILLIANT in concert, and I challenge even the most serious NME-reading music nerd to go to one of their shows and not secretly rather enjoy themselves. The atmosphere is amazing, the crowd unapologetically shrieky, the songs familiar and the band at their best.

Tonight is going to be just as brilliant. I know it. And yes it will be full of middle-aged women lusting after Jon Bon Jovi, and yes it will be sneered at by all those trendy types with their serious music, but I do not care. Because I will be having more fun than they are.

I went to see a wedding photographer after work this evening. He was a very nice man who spent half an hour showing me all his magnificent wedding album options (gold leaf! Perspex covers! leather binding! etc) and then looked utterly crushed when I said ‘actually we’re not that bothered about the album, we just want pictures to frame’. Poor guy. But he was very nice and I’m pretty sure he’ll get the gig. He had a cat in his studio. Cat people always get my business.

He was, however, a North London trendy. I have very little tolerance for North London trendies - these scruffy young people who wander around in impossibly tight jeans looking underfed and under-washed. Also, disturbingly, the mullet seems to have made a comeback amongst them. Who authorised the mullet’s re-entry into acceptable status? I am appalled.

Actually, I have more spleen to vent. Because not only do I despise, in a sweeping and utterly-unjustifiable manner, the North London trendy (keen and artsy cat-loving wedding photographers notwithstanding) I am also not very keen on North London in general.

There is in London an oft-mentioned North/South divide, with people from South London telling people from North London that they are stupid and uncool, and people from North London doing exactly the same thing back.

I have no time for either North or South London and think they are both revolting stink-holes full of noise and crowds and people putting a huge amount of effort into being effortlessly cool. There are nice bits, of course, but they are surrounded on all sides by nasty bits.

Give me West London any day, where it is leafy and quiet and you never hear emergency sirens or vibrating base. In West London nobody has been caught dead with a mullet for at least twenty years. And that’s the way I like my neighborhoods, thank you very much.

But that said, I have a North London trendy doing my wedding photography, skinny jeans and all. I am so open-minded it hurts.