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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.
I had a ridiculously busy day yesterday. I do not like my Saturdays to be busy, it’s most unsettling. But this one was quite a fun busy day.
It started off at 9.30am in Brixton, of all places, to see a wedding cake designer. I met Teabelly, maid-of-honour extraordinaire, outside Brixton tube. I HATE Brixton. I know there are people who sing its praises because it is so cool and funky and lively, but personally, I prefer to live somewhere where I don’t get offered drugs and / or women for sale every time I walk down the street. So I was standing at the entrance to the tube station trying to look like someone who was very uninterested in drugs or women, and I was most relieved when Teabelly arrived.
We met with the cake designer, after some unfortunate map misinterpretation on my part, and selected our wedding cake. It’s being made by this woman, and it’s going to look something like this, only with ivory icing not pink:
So, hurrah! That’s cake off my list of things to organise.
After Brixton I said goodbye to Teabelly, who headed home, probably to go back to bed, like any sensible person would. But not I! I got the train to Wimbledon, on the other side of London, to meet up with another friend and go to Wimbledon Village Fete.
A fete is a peculiarly English tradition involving, basically, obvious and low-fun-level ways to extract money from people in order to raise funds for some worthy cause – normally mending a church roof or something like that. So you spend your pound coins on lucky dips and tombolas and coconut shies, and it’s all very jolly in a Victorian and traditional sort of a way.
Yesterday, the highlight of the fete was the fancy dress dog show. About which I need say no more, because pictures tell the story so much better:
Rockstar dog! And look! Rockstar dog had her own wig and guitar!
You’ll just have to believe me that the red thing on her back is totally a doggie-sized Stratocaster.
There was also Supergirl and her Superdogs. Who seemed to want to fight crime in different directions:
Cowgirls and their cow dog! Also, Dorothy and Toto coming up behind:
But our favourite was definitely Bat Dog. Who, it turned out, was called Lulu.
Lulu the bat dog:
And after the fete, my day still wasn’t over! I came home and promptly fell asleep on the couch, despite noble intentions to do housework. And later our pals C and E came over to watch the football, bringing with them all sorts of delicious picnic food, so I gorged myself on cold meats and swiss roll, talked to C about weddings while E watched football with J, and then went to bed and slept the sleep of the just.
And today? Today I have to do the housework I should have done yesterday. Woe.
…until I posted one of these internet quiz things. And today is a fabulous time to do it because I am up to my ears in work stuff and about to head off up to Manchester for a work trip for the rest of the week. So, look! I am tagging myself!
1) What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was 17, and it was the summer holidays between the penultimate and final years of secondary school. I don’t remember much about that summer, except that Mum and I went to the Edinburgh Festival for a week, and I saw The X-Files movie about ten times. Oh and I also failed my driving test.
2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
Well, I have a billion things on my work to-do list. OK, not quite a billion. A million, maybe. But none of them is remotely interesting. However, I also have to:
Interview a florist who may be providing our wedding flowers;
Watch the season finale of Beverly Hills 90210 Season 2 with Teabelly;
Entertain J’s brother who is staying with us tonight;
Tidy the spare room so that J’s brother can actually find the bed he’s supposed to be sleeping in; and
Buy milk.
Man, my life is thrilling.
3) Snacks I enjoy:
This list will never be complete, because I just in general enjoy snacks. However, I will always be pleased to meet a plate of cheese and crackers, a bag of Haribo Star Mix, or an indecent portion of a tub of Ben and Jerry’s.
4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Go back to university to do a PhD
That’s it! I can’t think of anything else. Am I disgustingly contented or just cripplingly unimaginative? Or both?
5) Places I have lived:
Yorkshire, Lancashire, Illinois, Hampshire, London. In that order, roughly.
6) Jobs I have had:
Waitress
Bookseller
Call-centre phone answerer
Sex-education advisor
Editorial Assistant
Royalties Administrator
Researcher
J and I are really rubbish about actually doing anything in London on our weekends. On Saturday he spent the day in the office while I stayed in my pyjamas until well into the afternoon watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, interspersed with a little light laundry.
When J came home he announced that we should go out. I was initially unenthusiastic about this because, generally speaking, going out requires things like showering and you know, not wearing pyjamas. But J was quite insistent and unwilling to accept that staying in and doing a jigsaw puzzle was a better option. So I grudgingly put some clothes on and brushed my hair and we got in the car and drove to Soho.
And actually, we ended up having a really lovely time. I mean, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. We were out in the centre of a major European capital on a Saturday evening in early summer, driving around in a convertible. I grudgingly admit: it was way more fun than a jigsaw puzzle.
We had a lovely dinner at Cafe Boheme, sitting next to a table of four women, who we originally thought were quite mannish-looking. We were well into our main courses before we realised they actually were men. Bless Soho! And afterwards we wandered the streets and went into a few porn shops.
It is very entertaining to go into porn shops as a woman, because the men in there find it really unsettling. As soon as I went in, the few nervous-looking customers did a double-take and then immediately scurried into another room. So we were left on our own to have a look around and horrify ourselves with some of the titles in the ’speciality section’. (A prize to the person who can explain to me what a movie entitled Leaking Tranny Juice might involve.)
We were actually trawling Soho porn shops for a specific reason though, besides alarming male customers. J has for a while now been on a mission to find high-definition porn. I’m not really sure why, I think he’s just intrigued to see what it will look like. Personally I think porn is just fine in regular definition. I mean, you don’t need to see every individual pubic hair, you know? But J does like to be at the forefront of technology.
But it turns out, to J’s dismay, hi-def has not yet taken the porn industry by storm. It seems that regular porn punters are just fine getting their jollies to normal-def. So backwards! But despite this crushing disappointment we did have a lovely evening, and have promised each other that we will try to resist the lure of the sofa and the telly on a Saturday night more often. Although I still maintain, sometimes only a jigsaw puzzle will do.
I am determined not to write another wedding post, so here, have a cat post instead!
This is Milly. Milly is ENORMOUS. She has little tiny stubby legs and a great big huge massive GUT:
It wasn’t always like this. When we got her two years ago, Milly was the size of a normal cat:
But since then, Milly has seriously let herself go:
The bizarre thing is, we honestly don’t over-feed her. For the last year or so, both our cats have been on a special diet food from the vet, which we carefully measure out for them morning and night. Consequently, Molly (the one with the ‘tude) is now a completely normal cat size:
And frankly she’s pissed that she still has to be on the diet food just because Milly’s a lard bucket. We try to make it up to Molly with cat treats, and ice-cream-spoon-licks when Milly’s not looking. But that cat holds a grudge:
WHERE ARE YOU HIDING THE HAM?
The mystery of the lardy cat remains unsolved…
Hello! I have been woefully neglecting the internet of late. I am sorry! My only excuse is that these days all I think about is either work or the wedding, and I am pretty certain that nobody besides me finds those topics remotely interesting. Do you really want to hear about my shortlist of wedding photographers or the debate about bridesmaid dress colours, or the fact that I have ordered personalised confetti?
Actually that last one is kind of cool. Personalised confetti! Of all the downright ridiculous over the top ludicrous waste-of-money ways there are to make your wedding special, personalised confetti has to be up there. And consequently I love it and must have it. Come November 29th J and I will be showered with little burgundy and gold hearts that say J & L on them. IT WILL BE PRECIOUS!
Anyway, see what I mean? Planning a wedding is mostly just a very long list of things that must be dealt with, usually at vast expense and at inconvenient times. Clearly nobody who gets married has any kind of workaday commitments like, you know, a job or anything, since the hours when you have to go to your local registrar to give notice of marriage are between 10am and 4pm Monday to Friday ONLY. And you both have to go, at the same time, which is extra hard to organise, because the afternoons when I can finagle a couple of hours away from work are rarely the same afternoons when J is also free. Stupid laws of the stupid land, with their stupid inconvenient protections against forced marriages. Bah.
That said, I was working from home for two days last week, writing a very long and very dull research report, and I didn’t sneak out of the house once to organise wedding things. So my work ethic hasn’t totally gone out of the window with the forthcoming nuptials. Nobody is more surprised about that than I am.
Well, look at that – I wrote a whole post about work and the wedding. I am sorry! I will think of more interesting things to write about next time I PROMISE! Like, um, the fact that I drew flipping Turkey in the office sweep stake for Euro 2008, and am consequently utterly certain not to win, or the mysterious enormous fatness of one of our cats, who eats exactly the same amount as the other normal-sized cat. You see? It is all thrills around here, kids. Stay tuned.
I have this handy little count-down clock on my Google homepage, which until recently was counting down the days until The X-Files movie comes out (I am a geek and I’m proud) but has now been put to more vital use – it is counting down to November 29th, our wedding date.
This means that I know that right now I have 178 days, or 4261 hours, to plan a wedding. And let me tell you, that’s powerful motivation right there. I am a wedding-planning MACHINE. Last weekend I bought my wedding dress. In the history of brides, nobody has ever bought a wedding dress as quickly as I bought mine. I was in and out of the shop in less than 40 minutes. And it’s gorgeous and I love it, but more importantly, I can now tick ‘wedding dress’ off my long list of things to attend to in the next 178 days.
There are still plenty of un-ticked things, however, and I start feeling a bit faint when I think about all the stuff I still have to sort out – a hairdresser and flowers and a cake and wedding favours and menus and table plans and invitations and make-up and a photographer, and music and AAAAAAAAAAARGH. But, it will all get done. I have a list. I am dangerously decisive and I have a list and 178 days and it will get done. Breathe.
Incidentally, in case you are thinking that J is a complete lazy arse and should be shouldering some of this burden, I should tell you that in his defence he is a) paying for it all and b) planning our honeymoon as a surprise. How cool is that? I love the idea of not finding out where we’re going until I get to the airport. But more than that, I love that the honeymoon is officially not on my list.
While on my way back from Lisbon on Saturday afternoon I witnessed possibly the most sublime display of collective Britishness I’ve ever known. At the airport my flight was assigned three check-in desks, 28 – 30. Even though I was flying TAP (the Portuguese national airline – affectionately known as ‘Take Another Plane’) the majority of the passengers were British holidaymakers. And because we are British, and queuing is our national sport, everybody lined up behind check-in desk 29, and then as one of the three desks became free the person at the head of the queue went forwards to it.
This is what we do. We are incredibly efficient queue-ers. This single-queue-for-three-desks system was enforced with no discussion, no eye-contact, even. We just did it. It never even occurred to me, or to anyone else in line, that this was in any way remarkable. Until a hapless Portuguese family arrived to check in, and seeing no queue in front of check-in desk 28, but a massive long queue in front of check-in desk 29, did what to them was the most logical thing, and walked straight up to desk 28.
There followed an unbelievably passive-aggressive but almost silent ruckus. Nobody stepped up to the Portuguese family and said, ‘Excuse me, the queue starts back there’. Oh no! That would be far too confrontational. Instead, everybody in the queue rolled their eyes at each other, frowned, shuffled their feet, and made muttered comments about ‘those continentals – bloody savages the lot of them’ and so on. Unaware of any of this, the Portuguese family checked in and walked off towards passport control, with about a hundred British eyeballs burning hatred into the backs of their heads.
This is Britishness summed up to a tee. We like order, and fairness, and not taking liberties. But we also hate confrontation, or awkwardness, or making a spectacle of ourselves. So we will rigidly enforce and stick to our own social rules, and we will hate on anybody who ignores them, but they will never ever know about it.
