Further Adventures of a middle-aged bride

 

Final plans and preparation – but was it all for nothing?

 

Saturday 11^th December: Schrodinger’s Wedding

Well, as the final week before The Big Day begins, we are in a state of suspense, wondering whether we will be able to go ahead with our plans after all. If Boris decides to shut down entertainment venues from Saturday, the Reception at least will have to be postponed, which means several guests will lose train fares and the cost of hotel rooms. If Boris would make his announcement sooner rather than later, we could make sure the florist and cake-maker and car hire and venue decorators know in enough time for them to postpone their work.

If we do have to cancel the Reception, P and I still intend to get married on 21 December 2021 if possible because we really want that date. It’s an easy date to remember, for anniversary purposes (21/12/21), and is also the Winter Solstice. So, it might end up with just P and me, plus two witnesses, in the ceremony suite, and the party postponed for several months – by which time, of course, the Christmas theme will no longer be relevant. There are carols on the playlist and crackers for the table and the venue decorators are putting up Christmassy trimmings, but that won’t have the same impact in April!

              Anyway, at this moment in time, I’m hoping for the best. Everyone at the wedding will be fully vaccinated (except for the seven year old) and will have done a lateral-flow test the day before, so I think the risk of the event becoming a ‘super-spreader’ is limited.

              Our top bedroom, where the Best Woman will be sleeping in a week’s time, looks like this at the moment:

 

 

The Best Woman reassures me that she doesn’t mind ‘a bit of mess’, but I think she’d draw the line at stepping over pictures, pushing boxes and packaging out of bed, and clambering over the hoover and half-wrapped Christmas presents when she wants to use the toilet.

              Due to my ‘fad’ for acrylic painting, I decided to paint individual pictures for each guest and make them into place-settings for the table. This has turned out to be much more time-consuming and complicated than anticipated. The pictures themselves took ages to paint, and I still haven’t painted them for one or two of the guests. There are others whose paintings aren’t as good as they might have been because they were completed early in the process when I’d had less practice, so I was hoping I’d have time to do new ones for those people. Then, actually making them into name-cards involved several false starts. The pictures were mostly but not always small, but it soon became obvious that the original paintings weren’t going to work so I ended up photographing them and printing off electronic copies. The card I’d bought wasn’t strong enough, even with two cards fastened together with blingy decorative tape, so I had to make them smaller and add some thicker card between the two outer sheets. Then I had problems with the glue not setting quickly and decorative elements such as sequins sliding down the picture, and then the little ‘crystal’ stands wouldn’t hold the cards so I had to put two on every card (and some still won’t stand up!). A few days ago, I realized I didn’t have enough of these ‘crystal’ feet, so I ordered some more from Amazon – they arrived two days later but I’d ordered the wrong size and they were only half the size of the ones I needed!

I also had the idea of using the images to decorate gift tags for favour bags, crackers and the thank you gifts we had bought for the two witnesses, Best Woman and MC , and making these was also far more difficult than they are worth. I have enjoyed the bling-y tape, however – but it is so sticky that it adheres viciously to your fingers and you just can’t get it off without losing bits of skin!

 

 

I had the over-ambitious idea of filling favour bags with miniature bottles of home-made flavoured alcohol – sloe gin, pomegranate whisky, blackberry vodka, etc. Then I realized I needed an alternative for teetollers so I made blueberry jam, and bought chocolates, and a few small toys for the seven-year-old. At this moment in time, I haven’t finished the place-settings, favour bags or gift tags, and it is getting more stressful as the Big Day looms ever closer.

 

Sunday 12 December: The Master expresses concerns!

The Master of Ceremonies (hereinafter referred to as The Master) paid us a visit this morning so he could try out the route from West Yorkshire to South Yorkshire ahead of the Big Day itself. He normally travels here by train. P had given him his old satnav and The Master kept ringing us to tell us it wasn’t working. Naturally, we assumed it was simply his advancing years and technophobic tendencies that were the problem, but it turned out it was actually the satnav. The Master was right – it was buggered, as they say in West Yorkshire.

              Anyway, he got here without mishap. However, his first question was whether we had decided whether the whole shebang was going ahead or not. Boris has ramped up the nation’s paranoia about Covid while offering no mandatory solutions – just suggestions for behaviours which will help to stop the spread if people follow them.  The Master’s cousins, with whom he normally spends Christmas, have cancelled their annual in-the-flesh get-together and they are doing it by Zoom now, which has made The Master jittery.

              Up to this moment, I hadn’t seriously considered the idea that we might really postpone anything. However, I said I would ask every guest what each of them thought.

 

Monday 13 December: More Covid concerns!

Devon guests emailed to say that, after giving it a lot of serious thought and discussion, they had decided it wasn’t worth the risk. They felt that a five hour train journey was bound to expose them to the virus which they might then bring to the wedding and the other guests, and they were also concerned about infecting their families and ruining Christmas. Kentish guests followed close behind with very similar concerns – one is spending Christmas with her new-born great-grandson (she is planning on spending the whole time staring devotedly into his gorgeous little face) and didn’t want to pass on the virus to him and his parents.

              By the end of the day, a further six or seven potential guests had advised us to postpone the reception party and two more out-of-town guests had decided not to risk it. Everyone seemed to feel that the wedding ceremony itself would be no risk as it wouldn’t last long, people would be wearing masks at least outside the ceremony suite, and it was all well-ventilated, whereas the reception would last for several hours, involve dancing and possibly singing, people getting close to each other to shout over the noise of the music, some people would be drinking alcohol, the relatively small room wouldn’t be well-ventilated in winter, and there would be venue staff and people like the cake-maker, taxi drivers, the venue decorators etc who might potentially bring the virus with them. There was also concern about long train journeys.

 

Tuesday 14 December: Reception postponed!

We decided to postpone the Reception. 

Most guests have greeted the news with either relief, agreement, sympathy or resignation, except the two witnesses whose main reaction was indignation and outrage. I think they just really wanted an opportunity to get drunk and have a dance.

The people at the venue were fantastic, immediately offering us a full refund and booking the postponed Reception in for a provisional date next year. The venue decorators have also been great, and are prepared to change the Christmassy décor we had decided on, if necessary, with no extra charge, if we end up holding the delayed reception earlier in the year. The cake maker had already made the bottom, fruit-cake, tier of the wedding cake so she only gave us half our money back, making this the most expensive fruit cake I have ever bought. She did put marzipan and icing on it and a few icing snowflakes, however, and it was a nice-tasting cake with LOTS of brandy in it. The car-hire company didn’t offer us a refund even though we would require the car for less time than originally specified, but we were past caring by this stage.

I still have to complete the place-settings because I need to clear up the top room as the Best Woman will be sleeping in there this time next week. She is coming up from London. Working on them now feels like a chore rather than a pleasure.

Here is one completed place setting:

 

 

 

 

Friday 17 December: Hair!

Hairdresser coloured my hair and practiced a couple of up-dos. I have spent thirty years avoiding hairdressers but this is the third time I’ve visited one in past six months! It still feels faintly like going to the dentist, but there is no doubt she knows what she’s doing.

              The first pic below shows the front and back of her efforts (and also reveals how much weight I’ve put on over past few months as my face looks really chunky – and this is one of the more flattering pics!!!). Still, you can see the hair, pearl earrings and necklace, and pearl and gold-leaves hair-vine. The second pic is a cropped version of a photo that shows the back of the hair-do with the hair-vine twisted through it:

 

     

Sunday 19 December: Wedding Cake and party favours (or lack-of-party-favours)

P and I spent all afternoon driving round ‘local’ guests’ houses delivering pieces of wedding cake and favour bags, as we couldn’t take them to the Town Hall with us. We drove as far afield as Chesterfield and Penistone, Sheffield and Barnsley and Rotherham, mostly in a thick fog, and we were exhausted by the end. [We later gave pieces to hairdresser, florist and car-driver].

Here are a selection of the paintings I did for guests (I have removed guest names):

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

          

  

    

 At least the delaying of the reception gives me time to paint some new images to replace the worst of these!

Monday 20 December: flowers, cards, presents, Best Woman’s arrival!

P and I are growing very nervous about tomorrow, although it also feels weirdly unreal. After living together since 1993, it seems almost inconceivable that by this time tomorrow we’ll be a married couple. I also felt quite down for most of the day about having to postpone the reception.

Sis and partner dropped by on way to stay at Niece’s house, and she gave me this card she’s made (it looks like a box and when you take off the lid the sides open out to reveal a tiny cake decorated with pearl beads – she runs a small business called Nic’s Crafty Corner - https://www.facebook.com/nicscraftroom):

 

 

               

 

 She was just in time to collect her buttonholes as the florist had just delivered them, plus my bouquet (pic below) and a flower arrangement for mum which we were going to give her at the Reception but which we will now have to take round for her.

Best Woman arrived a little later and P cooked us a nice meal. Best Woman made us feel much more relaxed. She was really positive and practical – it felt like a grown-up was taking charge, which was fantastic!

              We didn’t really expect anyone to buy us presents for the wedding, as we’ve been together for so long anyway, but in fact we have received some lovely presents – a whole new set of high quality saucepans, a sandwich toaster, three gorgeous vases, money, gift cards, the professional photographer, a photo album, etc.

 

SO THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!

Tuesday 21 December: THE BIG DAY!

When I got back from the hairdresser’s with my hair up and the hair-vine threaded through, the Best Woman and The Master were in the front room, which was handy as I couldn’t decide whether to wear the ivory or the navy blue jacket – the unanimous decision was the ivory one.

              I had to re-do my make-up twice as I stupidly decided to try out a new eyeshadow and ended up looking as if I had two black eyes (I mean, who decides to experiment on the morning of her wedding?), and then I poked myself in the eye with my mascara wand and made my eye water, and smudged my lipstick, so I just washed it all off and started again. I rarely wear make-up these days but I have put it on thousands of times in the past, so I think it was just pre-wedding jitters. I got my top caught up in my up-do, as well, and it was only the admirable foresight of the hairdresser – who had sprayed on so much heavy-duty hair-spray that it set like concrete – that saved me from looking like Bellatrix Lestrange. Instead I looked like a short, fat, middle-aged beachball with a nice hair-style. In the absence of hair that would cover me from head to toe all the way round, like a Wookie or Dougal from The Magic Roundabout, I figured the bridal bouquet would be the next best thing to help cover some of my fatness.

 

P, The Best Woman, The Master                               Me, in our living room

 

Some people might think that drinking a bottle of Cava between us before the wedding-car arrived was a mistake, particularly as our next door neighbours on both sides turned up with further bottles of fizz and gifts and congratulations, but in fact it helped us relax.

We had hired a Nissan Elgrande (with blue ribbons on the front, of course), simply because it was a reasonable price and could seat four people comfortably. It turned up promptly and the driver was absolutely lovely. He did take a peculiar route to the town hall however – we expected him to drive the five mins up to the M1, up one junction, and then take what is essentially one main road into the centre of town, but instead he picked his way down some very tricky meandering country lanes, narrowly avoiding oncoming vehicles, then down some small and windy residential roads, narrowly avoiding parked cars. He obviously enjoyed mixing things up and giving us our money’s-worth of scenery, as he took us home via another unlikely route. When he dropped us off, he gave us yet another bottle of fizz – our fridge looks like it belongs to two real party-animals! Fortunately, The Master gave the driver a generous tip after P and I realised we had no money on us at all – we had left the house relying on the kindness of strangers, like Blanche Dubois and the Queen.

              I was wearing high heels for the first time in twenty years, and at first I was happily surprised by how easily I could walk in them. It’s like riding a bike, I thought to myself, smugly. You never lose the knack. True, I needed help climbing into the Elgrande – hey, it’s not easy being short and fat and wearing heels! Try it before you roll your eyes! But it wasn’t until about halfway through the ceremony that my toes began to complain. By the time we strolled (hobbled, in my case) out of the ceremony suite, I felt like ballet dancers must feel every day of their professional careers – as if my toes were broken. I fully expected to find them twisted into hideous deformities when I removed the shoes, though actually they  looked completely normal later with no sign of maltreatment, despite the agony. When I was young and wore high heels all day at work, and danced in them in night clubs, my feet weren’t holding up so much excess fat, and my muscles were stronger. I remember walking home in the early hours in heavy snow as a teenager, with my friends, while wearing stilettos. Now I can barely stand in them. I should have drunk more Cava before we set off!

              It was a freezing cold day but there was no rain. Some guests were waiting on the steps of the town hall, in masks. To be honest, I kept forgetting to put my mask on, though we were supposed to wear them inside the town hall, except for in the actual ceremony suite. My problem was my bloody bag. It was a champagne-coloured glittery clutch-bag that matched the shoes, but I didn’t want to have to hold it in my hands along with the bouquet so I was using the chain-link strap that came with it. However, the strap would not stay on my shoulder – maybe I have unnaturally sloping shoulders or my clothes were particularly slippery, but that bag was determined to fall off my shoulder literally every few minutes. My mobile with its camera was inside the bag, but every time I tried to get it out I found myself getting bouquet, bag and phone entwined in a clumsy, comical fashion, and actually taking a photo was more or less impossible. My mask was in there too, so every time I took it off for a photo and tried to stuff it back into my bag, one-handed, as I was carrying the bouquet in the other, I looked like I was performing an extremely poor-quality juggling act. 

Immediately after the ceremony, the bag’s strap fell into a floral display in front of the registrar’s table and became instantaneously entangled with the foliage. It took three of us to untangle it, one being the assistant registrar. That was my main Norman Wisdom moment. It was soon after that incident that, with a resigned expression, the Best Woman patiently but forcibly took the bag off me and carried it round, herself, for the rest of the time we were there.

We had been told to arrive fifteen minutes before the ceremony began but we were waiting a long time outside the ceremony suite, and then the guests were confused by an announcement that referred to me as ‘Tracey’ – I am called Tracey Louise Wilford but I have never been known as ‘Tracey’. Apparently, my father put that name on my birth certificate while my mother was still in hospital recovering from a difficult labour, but she hadn’t actually wanted me to be called ‘Tracey’ so she always called me ‘Louise’. Most of the guests had no idea who this mysterious ‘Tracey’ was and they thought there must be a mistake.

I had told the registrar about my name when we gave notice of our intention to marry, but she obviously hadn’t taken the information in or written it down. The registrar was a pleasant woman, very good-looking, but she was wearing a weird outfit – a kind of ‘Where’s Wally?’ t-shirt top with a black smock-thing which buttoned across her chest, over the top. It looked like the kind of outfit I might have worn to university lectures in the 1980s, or maybe how Audrey Hepburn in bohemian mode might have dressed in a film, while lounging about in a mock-up of an artist’s studio. She looked very attractive in it but it didn’t seem quite appropriate for her role as registrar. She did jer job very competently, however.

Our Best Woman had paid for a professional photographer as our wedding present and I’m glad she did because most of the photos taken by friends and family weren’t all that good. We haven’t yet seen the professional pics – the few I’ve put on here were taken by us or by other guests. There were actually a good number of guests at the wedding, despite the out-of-towners who had decided not to travel up north due to Covid. Two of P’s schoolfriends and two of my schoolfriends were there, with their partners; three of P’s work friends, plus four of his friends from university; my mum, sister and her partner, niece and her partner, and seven year old great-nephew; several other mutual friends. P’s mum had decided not to come for various reasons including worrying about Covid, other health issues, a large dose of Covid-related agoraphobia and paralysing shyness. I haven’t included photos of guests beyond the central wedding party as I haven’t had time to get their permission.

 

              

 

                        P and me, immediately after ceremony             My niece, Vanessa, and my sister, Nicola - the two witnesses

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

After the ceremony, there were photos inside, and then outside, in front of the coloured fountains. P had a momentary shock when he saw a young boy wearing a suit, running in and out of the fountains as we came outside, and he thought it was my nephew – ‘Good grief!’ he said (or words to that effect), ‘His mum is going to have a fit! He’ll catch his death!’. My great-nephew recovered from Covid only a few weeks ago. Anyway, it turned out not to be him at all but some other negligent parent’s child!

The photos seemed to go on and on until hypothermia was setting in, even though most of the guests were wearing coats. Oddly, I was wearing only two layers of flimsy chiffon-type stuff but I felt perfectly ok. I think the agony in my toes was distracting me from the frosty weather conditions. One of my friends has hurt her back and was using a walking stick, and I felt a strong inclination to rip it from her hands and let her take her chances while I hobbled off with it, but I resisted.

              I hate having my photo taken. This was actually the thing I’d been dreading most. I cannot smile naturally when someone wants me to, and I usually look like I’m gurning, pissed off, deeply depressed or giving an evil smirk, like Voldemort, in photos. I am just hoping that the professional photographer got some better pics, because in all the photos guests have sent me so far, I either look like the proverbial back end of a bus or I am wearing an expression suggesting I am rethinking my decision to get married.

 

 

Great-nephew, looking like Jacob Rees-Mogg (he actually looked lovely in his suit, though Niece 

forgot the buttonholes we’d paid for and sent over to her the night before!

 

 

The car dropped us off back at the house, where I immediately changed into more comfy clothes and particularly more comfy shoes.  The original plan had been that we would go to the reception straight after the wedding, and then The Master and The Best Woman would sleep in our house while P and I spent the night in a local hotel. Even though we weren’t going to have a reception, the Best Woman would still have to stay at ours as she lives in London, so we had decided to book a table at a local Indian restaurant called Thaal, which meant that The Master would also stay at ours overnight as originally planned so he could drink but not have to drive a long journey home afterwards.

We were all so hyped up on adrenaline that we drank a further three bottles of fizz, including one bottle of actual champagne – neither Philip nor I really likes fizzy white wine, and I can’t honestly say that I would be able to tell the proper champagne from the Prosecco or Cava, but it’s surprising how quickly bubbles make you tipsy. By the time we set off for the Indian restaurant, the Master, the Best Woman and I had reached that loud and giggly stage when you feel as if you love everyone. None of us had eaten any lunch, which didn’t help. P was driving so he couldn’t drink much, and we must have been quite wearing for him. We arrived at Thaal in a state of giddy inebriation and it was great, for once, to be the sort of people who get on other people’s nerves! The restaurant wasn’t as full as it normally would be, but there were a good number of people there, and we had an absolutely lovely meal which The Master paid for which made it even more enjoyable!

              Philip dropped The Master and The Best Woman off at our house and we went on to the hotel we’d booked, which is only fifteen minutes away from our house. It was peculiar staying in a hotel so close to our house while other people stayed in our house, but the room was non-refundable so we thought we might as well make use of it. Originally, I had booked it because I knew I would find it irritating, after the reception, when I was tired and consequently grumpy and anti-social, to have to keep remembering to pull on a dressing gown every time I went on one of my frequent nocturnal trips to the loo, in case I bumped into The Master or the Best Woman on the landing – I usually sleep naked and I wouldn’t wish to give them nightmares.

P with his Badger cuddly toy

The hotel is a four-star Mercure Hotel with a pool and spa, but we had booked an ordinary room and didn’t stay long-enough to make use of these facilities (we didn’t even eat breakfast there, but joined The Master and Best Woman for a hearty cooked breakfast in a local garden centre) – the room was spacious with a huge TV and an excellent shower, however. P had to help me dig out the hair grips from my hair and I washed my hair twice but failed to remove all the hair-spray! I was awake all night, and not because of the usual reason newly-weds stay awake all night. I think it was all the alcohol I’d consumed. I felt completely sober by the time I went to bed, and P fell asleep quite quickly, but I just couldn’t sleep at all.

 

Thursday 30 December 2021: After Effects!

The sleeplessness has persisted over the past few weeks – both before the wedding and since – so I am now walking around like a zombie with eyes like poached eggs and a head that feels like it’s stuffed with bubble-wrap. I thought marriage was supposed to improve your health, but both P and I have been excessively tired, aching and lethargic since the 21st. We have done several lateral-flow tests which have all been negative, so I am assuming it is just the stress of the months of preparation, the actual wedding, and then Christmas. The fact that we have both been eating virtually continuously since the wedding day and doing very little exercise isn’t helping!

              There is a degree of anti-climax, of course, not least because we weren’t able to have the reception as planned. However, to our knowledge, no one has contracted Covid as a result of the wedding ceremony. Ironically, several of the out-of-town guests who decided not to risk the journey have ended up having to isolate themselves over Christmas after members of their families contracted the virus, but people who were there all seem fine. It is just the way the cards fall, I guess, and I believe we all made the right call. 

Our Best Woman told me that she felt different when she married her husband (they had lived together prior to getting married, though not for thirty years like us!), and she is right. We both feel a little different, though it is very difficult to describe or explain. This has actually taken us both by surprise as we didn’t expect to feel any different after the ceremony than we did before, having been together for so long.

              Neither of us is used to wearing rings of any kind and we are both finding it slightly irritating. We have both had mini-scares when we have taken our rings off in order to wash the pots or take a shower, then forgotten where we put them!

              I am considering changing my name by Deed Poll to get rid of the vestigial ‘Tracey’ and keep ‘Wilford’ as my official middle name, but I can’t face the bureaucratic hassle at the moment.

              P’s mum viewed our attendance at the Town Hall as being on a similar level of terror-inducing danger as an extreme sport such as snowboarding in polar-bear territory or walking a tight-rope over a tank of piranhas. Her response when P rang her after the deed was done was to say ‘Oh, thank goodness it’s over!’. This wasn’t quite the response we were hoping for, but there you go. She did send us a Christmas card to ‘Mr and Mrs Badger, from The Old Mrs Badger’ however, which was sweet.

My own mum sent us a card after the ceremony congratulating us on being married. She wrote: 'Your wedding ceremony was lovely and Louise looked beautiful especially her head'.  I suspect she meant ‘her hair’, but ‘her head’ is so much better, don’t you think?

So, from me – and my head:

HAPPY 2022!

And I promise not to mention the wedding again until we have the postponed reception, if and when that happens!

               

 

Playlist:

The playlist is finished. It took me weeks to decide on the final list of tracks, and I had many fabulous suggestions from people in the OU Write Club and several other groups I belong to on Facebook, plus ideas from family and friends. So, thanks, guys! We are saving it for whenever the reception does take place.

The final list is massively long and I doubt that anyone will stay at the reception long enough to hear it all – the songs become increasingly random towards the end! We start with an hour of gentle romantic 1950s songs, including ‘True Love Ways’, ‘La Mer’ and ‘All The Way’ – they aren’t all 1950s performers, however, though Sinatra and Holly feature. This segues into a range of songs from 1960s to present day, mostly slow romantic ones during the meal and then becoming more lively and danceable. I’ve tried to include tracks that I know different guests might like. For instance, there is some Adele for my mum, some Nickelback for my seven-year-old great-nephew, some Pink and Shania Twain for my sister, Mary Hopkins singing a Christmas carol in Welsh for the Welsh guest, etc. Everything is something that either myself, P or both of us like, except maybe Abba as neither of us are fans but we don’t hate them either and they are always a crowd-pleaser! My guilty pleasure (‘Witchita Lineman’ by Glen Campbell) and my favourite romantic song (‘You do something to me’ by Paul Weller) are both there. I have snuck in Elvis Costello, The Jam, The Clash – but all quite mainstream tracks. There’s some Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel for P, and a smattering of our favourite Christmas tracks – ‘Stop The Cavalry’, ‘Fairytale of New York’, Mahalia Jackson singing ‘O Holy Night’.

In case you want to see the entire playlist, here it is:

             

No of track on playlist	SONG	ARTIST	TIME	CUMULATIVE TIME	NOTES
1	True Love Ways	Buddy Holly	2.53		Start at 5:00 [ish] Milling-about music – background – mostly 50s songs, some sung by modern artists                                             Segueing into 60s stuff – trying to represent our favourite artists and musical genres but saving more lively dance numbers for later       A few more lively ones here and there to change pace
2	La Mer	Tatiana Eva-Marie and the Avalon Jazz Band (from album April in Paris)	3.29	6.22
3	All The Way – remastered	Frank Sinatra (from Ultimate Sinatra album)	2.52	9.14
4	It had to be you (Big Band and Vocals)	Harry Connick Junior (from music for When Harry Met Sally album)	2.38	11.52
5	At Last	Etta James	3.00	14.52
6	Let It Be Me (remastered)	The Everly Brothers	2.38	17.30
7	La Vie En Rose	Emily Watts (or the version by Jolie Mome, or by Zaz)	2.38	20.8
8	The Way You Look Tonight	Michael Buble	4.40	24.48
9	The Best Is Yet To Come	James Darren (from This One’s From The Heart album)	2.28	25.16
10	They can’t take that away from me	Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong	4.40	29.56
11	Here Comes The Sun (remastered)	The Beatles (from remastered version of Abbey Road)	3.06	33.4
12	Waterloo Sunset	The Kinks	3.19	36.23
13	All My Loving (remastered)	The Beatles (from remastered With The Beatles album)	2.08	38.31
14	You Never Can Tell	Chuck Berry (From St Louis To Liverpool album)	2.42	41.13
15	Rescue Me	Fontella Bass	2.51	44.6
16	Delilah	Tom Jones	3.24	47.30
17	I only want to be with you	Dusty Springfield	2.38	50.8
18	Ain’t No Sunshine	Bill Withers	2.05	52.13
19	Dedicated To The One I Love	Mamas and Papas	2.58	55.11
20	Wichita Lineman	Glen Campbell	3.07	58.18	Approx. 6:00 Meal served about this time         Move through different eras and genres, but generally slow-ish songs to form background to meal                             Approx. 7.00                           Approx 7.30 SPEECHES ROUND THIS POINT – HALF AN HOUR?
21	Handle With Care	Travelling Wilburys	3.19	61.34
22	Love Is The Drug	Roxy Music	4.11	65.45
23	She Makes My Day	Robert Palmer	4.22	70.7 [1 hour 17 mins]
24	You do something to me	Paul Weller	3.38	73.45
25	Late In The Evening	Paul Simon	4.02	77,57
26	The angels (wear my red shoes)	Elvis Costello	2.47	80.44
27	Somewhere only we know	Lily Allen version	3.28	84.12
28	Make You Feel My Love	Adele	3.32	87.44
29	English Rose	The Jam	2.49	90.33
30	Use Somebody	Kings Of Leon	3.51	94.24
31	One Day Like This	Elbow	6.34	100.58 [1 hour, 41 mins]
32	Cloudbusting	Kate Bush	5.10	106.8
33	Bright Side of the Road	Van Morrison	3.46	109,54
34	London Calling	The Clash	3.20	113.14
35	Scarborough Fair/Canticle	Simon and Garfunkel	3.10	116.24
36	Come up and see me (make me smile)	Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel	3.59	120.23
37	O Holy Night	Mahalia Jackson	3.32	123.55 [2 hours, 4 mins
38	The First Time That Ever I Saw Your Face	Roberta Flack	4.20	128.154
39	I’ll Stand By You	The Pretenders	3.59	132.1
40	Say Hello, Wave Goodbye	Marc Almond, Jools Holland	4.34	136.35
41	Heroes	David Bowie (2017 remaster)	6.11	142.46
42	Mad World	Tears For Fears	3.35	146.21
43	Stop The Cavalry	Jonah Lewie	3.01	149.22 [2 hours, 29 mins
44	Get It On	T.Rex	4.23	153.45	8:00 roughly Start with some upbeat, feelgood stuff
45	A Message To You Rudy	The Specials	2.53	174.38
46	Planet Earth (2010 remastered)	Duran Duran86	4.03	178.41
47	The Tide Is High (remastered)	Blondie	4.40	183.21
48	Groove is in the heart	Deelite	3.52	187.13
49	Rockstar	Nickelback	4.12	191.25
50	So What?	Pink	3.35	195
51	Dancing In The Streets	Martha Reeves  and the Vandellas	2.45	197.45
52	Valerie	Amy Winehouse/Mark Ronson	3.39	201.24
53	Take me out	Franz Ferdinand	3.57	205.21
54	Ruby	Kaiser Chiefs	3.24	208.45
55	I bet you look good on the dancefloor	Arctic Monkeys	2.57	211.42
56	Mr Brightside	The Killers	3.43	215.25
57	Common People	Pulp	5.52	321.17
58	Park Life	Blur	3.07	324.24
59	Wonderwall (remastered)	Oasis	4.19	328.43
60	It must be love	Madness	3.20	332.3
61	Love Shack	B52s	2.12	334.15	9.00 roughly
62	Time Warp
63	That don’t impress me much	Shania Twain	3.39	337.54
64	All Over The World	ELO	4.03	341,57
65	You Sexy Thing	Hot Chocolate	4.05	346.2
66	Cecilia	Simon and Garfunkel	2.55	348.57
67	I’m a Believer	The Monkees	2.47	351.44
68	Twist and Shout [2009 remastered]	The Beatles	2.35	354.19
69	Happy Hour	The Housemartins	2.25	356.44
70	Tubthumping	Chumbawumba	4.39	361.23
71	Fairytale of New York	The Pogues	4.32	365,55
72	Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard	Paul Simon	2.55	368.50	9.30 roughly
73	Come on Eileen	Dexy’s Midnight Runners	4.47	373.37
74	You Make Me Feel	Bronski Beat	3.56	377.33
75	A Little Respect	Erasure	3.28	381.1
76	Dancing Queen	Abba	3.50	384.51
77	Praise You	Fatboy Slim	5.24	390.15
78	Disco Inferno	The Trammps	3.34	393.49
79	Hey Ya	Outkast	3.55	397.44	10.00 roughly
80	Vogue	Madonna	5.17	402.1
81	Billy Jean	Michael Jackson	4.54	406.55
82	Girls just wanna have fun	Cyndi Lauper	3.45	410.40
83	Come as you are	Nirvana	3.39	414.19
84	U can’t touch this	MCHammer	4.17	418.36
85	You’re my best friend	Queen	2.51	421.27
86	Shake It Off	Taylor Swift	3.39	425.6
87	You can’t hurry love	The Supremes	2.46	427.52	10.30 roughly
88	River Deep, Mountain High	Ike and Tina Turner	3.35	431.27
89	Tears Of A Clown	Smokey Robinson	3.02	434.29
90	Whisky in the jar	Thin Lizzie, Derek Varnals	5.45	440.14
91	Jailhouse Rock	Elvis Presley	2.26	442.40
92	Handbags & Gladrags	Rod Stewart	4.25	447.5
93	Subterranean Homesick Blues	Bob Dylan	2.21	449.26
94	Pump It Up	Elvis Costello and The Attractions	3.18	452.44
95	I fought the law	The Clash	2.43	455.27
96	The Eton Rifles	The Jam	3.58	459.25	11.00 roughly
97	Shipbuilding	Elvis Costello and The Attractions	4.53	464.18
98	Ziggy Stardust	David Bowie	3.13	467.31
99	The Sound of Silence	Simon and Garfunkel	3.05	470.36
100	All along the watchtower	Jimi Hendrix	4.01	474.37
101	A Change is gonna come	Sam Cooke	3.11	477.48
102	Silent Night	Annie Lennox	3.49	481.37
103	Joy To The World	Celtic Woman	3.30	485.7	11.30 roughly

Book Review: A Writer's Opinion

 Mrs England by Stacey Halls

I think I came across Mrs England on Goodreads. It was a Sunday Times Bestseller. Stacey Halls' debut novel, The Familiars, based on the Pendle Witch Trials, was the biggest selling debut novel of 2019, and I had heard of it, if not of her. Her second novel, The Foundling, was also a bestseller, but I hadn't read either of these earlier novels when I started reading Mrs England, and the name Stacey Halls was unfamiliar to me.

    

                                                          

The novel is set in Edwardian England and its heroine, Ruby, is a young working-class woman who has recently trained to be a Norland nanny. The details about the training of such nannies is fascinating, and Halls maintains an intriguing mystery about Ruby herself that is not uncovered for the reader until late in the story. Ruby's personal story was one of the elements I found most compelling and, though Halls releases hints throughout, it is still a suitably dramatic and poignant narrative device, adding an extra layer of reader-understanding of Ruby's character and an extra layer of mystery to the central plot which concerns the Yorkshire mill-owning family for whom Ruby goes to work.

The Mrs England of the novel's title is the lady of the house, an apparently neurotic, secretive, peculiarly distant character who seems strangely lacking in interest in her children. Halls makes full use of the 'northern gothic' aspects of the Yorkshire setting, and is clearly indebted to iconic novels such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, The Turn Of The Screw, and to other versions of the archetypal governess story such as The Sound Of Music (there are even hints of Kipps and Hobson's Choice here and there), though her novel has a much more modern sensibility. She has been described as the successor to Hilary Mantel, but, based on this novel, I consider that a stretch. Nevertheless, the book is a well-written, well-plotted historical narrative which refuses to dissolve into cliche and sentimentality. It is frequently surprising in its twists and turns, and the melodrama, though present, is carefully controlled.

I found the novel enjoyable but it didn't make me want to read Halls' other work - I might well do so at some stage, but I can't imagine Mrs England becoming a novel I return to any time soon. I am not a particular lover of historical fiction, except when it is given a shot of energy by being exceptionally atmospheric or being played for laughs or being in a specific subgenre of fantasy such as steampunk. Mrs England is firmly in the realist tradition, though the plot is moderately far-fetched, and Halls is clearly an advocate for women's rights. Her work highlights the way that toxic masculinity constrained women in the past, but also presents us with a couple of women who overcome these constraints. This is uplifting but ultimately unconvincing in a story which presents itself as a realistic tale. When I compare it to the other novel I know well, set in the Edwardian period and focusing on a wealthy family - The Go-Between by L.P.Hartley - Halls' novel falls very short.

Nevertheless, I would recommend this novel to readers who enjoy historical fiction and who are looking for something competently-written and engaging.

RATING: Mrs England **** 

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good -  worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way

Book Review: A writer's opinion

 The 'Circles of Hell' series by Mark Cain:

Novels in order:

Hell's Super

A Cold Day In Hell

Deal With The Devil

The Reluctant Devil

I'm No Angel

Beelzebub: A Memoir

Saint Peter Takes A Holiday (or It's About Time)

The League Of Unusual Denizens

A Room Of Steve's Own

Website address:  https://markcainwrites.com/

Every so often, when I can't face a 'proper' novel but I need a bit of relaxing distraction, I turn my attention to what I mentally categorise as 'easy reading cosy comic fantasy' - the Inspector Hobbes series, reviewed elsewhere on this blog, is one such series, and Jodi Taylor's time-travelling historian is another. Most books by Heide Goode and Iain Grant fall into this category too (at the top end). Mark Cain's 'Circles Of Hell' series fulfils this requirement in my reading repertoire.

        I have to come clean and admit that these books aren't great literature. They aren't even high up on my mental list of 'easy reading' novels. BUT they do have a soft heart, a gentle humour, amusing characters and a ridiculous premise, so if you are looking for something to read that will pass the time in a doctor's surgery or a queue or at a bus-stop, or will lull you gently to sleep at night, this might be a good choice for you.

        I will say that I am currently reading The League of Unusual Denizens and I'm enjoying it, in a mild, unthinking way. The basic idea of these stories is that the protagonist, Steve Minnion, died some decades ago and has been sent to Hell. It is a traditional hell with lots of fire, brimstone and torture, demons with pitchforks and suchlike, but mostly it is just a place where things that would be irritating in the real living world reach their apotheosis. Steve is Hell's Superintendent when the series begins (he later becomes Heaven's ambassador plenipotentiary), accompanied by his best friend Orson Welles (yes, the Orson Welles). The role of superintendent essentially means he is a kind of janitor, all-round incompetent handyman (this being Hell), and was appointed to the position because he has absolutely no aptitude for the job.  Except that, in fact, Steve has many excellent qualities - he is quite clever, good-humoured, kind and caring, loyal, friendly. He even gets on well with Beelzebub. He clearly isn't evil. And Hell seems to be full of people who you feel don't deserve to be there, including Steve's love-interest Florence Nightingale (yes, the Florence Nightingale). You find out later in the series why this is. 

        I think you can gather from that summary what kind of novels these are. They are full of puns, silliness and daft ideas, with very little making sense. You have to suspend your disbelief (and indeed your critical faculties) in order to enjoy the stories, but the warmth and good humour are very relaxing. It is difficult having a hero who is such a good guy - Steve is a rebel in Hell because he is clearly too nice a bloke to be there. He is Everyman, if Everyman is a kind-hearted, thoughtful, cheerful sort with excellent people skills. 

        The stories are mostly flimsy and nonsensical, and the writing is straightforward and at times naive in its style, but I find the books are like a reviving hot chocolate after a warm bath at the end of a long day's labour - easy-going, simple, mildly humorous, often ridiculous. Just don't try reading the next one straight after the previous one as I would imagine it would be like eating too many macaroons or jam tarts.

 RATING: Circles of Hell series  ***

    

    

Book Review: A Writer's Opinion

 

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Erin Morgenstern is a young, good-looking, talented multi-media artist who has written two best-selling fantasy novels, so I ought to be intensely jealous of her. However, there is something so magical about her writing that it just makes me feel waves of warmth.  I can even forgive the fact that she seems to be into horoscopes and drinks a lot of tea.

           

I read The Night Circus probably around a decade ago, soon after it was published, and I found it strange, mysterious, gripping and beautiful. However, I have never been tempted to re-read it, and I can’t remember all that much about it now. It had a quality shared by another of my favourite writers, Frances Hardinge: the creation of a peculiar but compelling world, similar to but more interesting than the ‘real world’. In Morgenstern’s first novel, this was the world of The Night Circus, capturing the timeless weirdness of all that is carnivalesque – circus, travelling fair, theatre. In The Starless Sea, this other world that exists alongside our own is an underground universe, level upon level, with a sea made of honey, a pirate who is also a metaphor, trompe l’oeil doors that actually open and a series of ornate library rooms lined with enough books to satisfy the most ardent bibliophile.

              The protagonist of The Starless Sea is Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a postgrad student at a US university who, as a child, failed to take a chance and thereby missed his first opportunity to discover the endless libraries of the harbour. He is drawn into a mysterious and dangerous world, meets the love of his life, and helps to complete a story that has been unfolding for generations. In this respect, it bears some resemblance to Little,Big by John Crowley (also reviewed on here). It also reminded me a little of Scarlet Thomas’s novels, though the style is quite different. Morgenstern writes in an alluring, dreamlike prose, verging at times on the purplish but generally remaining on this side of enjoyable.  In fact, it is the beauty of her writing that kept me reading, though I can understand that it might wear thin for some readers. She does share Thomas’s interest in symbols and magic, however. Zach’s mother, the clairvoyant, could have stepped straight out of a Thomas novel.  

              One particularly skillful aspect of the writing is her use of original ‘fairy-tales’, short fables which pepper the central story and lend it depth and variety. The novel moves about a lot, jumping from character to character, location to location, and making excellent use of intertextuality – the fables, and the extracts from one of Zach’s university friend’s diaries, revealed Morgenstern’s skill at writing in different voices and styles. Morgenstern is a skillful and thoughtful writer. Her characters are interesting and her ideas highly imaginative, but there is a slightly-too-large psychic distance between story and reader at times.

              I did enjoy this novel. At least, I did until the last fifth when the narrative became unruly and unclear (to me at least). I found myself, towards the end, beginning to wish it was over. I felt that I was losing interest in the plot which seemed increasingly convoluted and, even after the novel ended, I wasn’t absolutely sure about what the story actually was. This probably suggests a defect in my understanding as much as anything. I felt that a great deal of mystery was set up early on, and though it was resolved I was still left a little confused and unsatisfied. Nevertheless, I think it is a novel worth reading, if you like fantasy of the off-beat, magical, New Age variety.   

RATING: The Starless Sea ****

BOOK REVIEW: A writer's opinion

 

Kate Atkinson

A God In Ruins (Costa Award Winner 2015)

Not The End Of The World (short stories)

 

I am a great fan of Kate Atkinson and, if I could write like her in even a small way, I would be thrilled. Ever since I read ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’, in my early twenties, I have loved her work.

I particularly enjoyed the Jackson Brodie series, helped by the TV dramatisation starring Jason Isaacs at the height of his sex appeal. Atkinson is an award-winning, literary writer, ambitious, confident and original, but she also has the ability to write in an extremely compelling and readable style, and the capacity to bend, combine and reinvigorate genres. I have tried to analyse her technique but it is difficult to actually see it, which I think is the point. She writes in an apparentky effortless way.

There is a pacy fluidity to her prose, which is tightly packed with narrative detail but still not bogged down in unwieldy imagery or purple prose. Her characters leap off the page, poignant, plausible, monstrous. Her plots twist and turn, taking the reader down unexpected alleys. She is not averse to making use of magic realism and exploring new ways of telling a tale, but her writing never seems forced or precious.

This year, I have read two of her books. One was a collection of short stories I downloaded when I was doing my MA in Creative Writing last year, as I had to write an essay on the short story as a genre. However, I never actually got round to reading her collection at the time as I had so much else to read. I started reading it a few months after I graduated and found myself rapidly pulled into the linked but independent tales, which was quite a surprise as I don’t generally read volumes of short stories very often (except for the purposes of university essays!).

 

I’m not generally keen on volumes of short stories, though I like the genre in itself. I prefer to read short stories in occasional small doses and collections tend to invite you to keep reading. Generally, I find I end up with a cloying feeling of having read too much, my mind clogged with different characters and events that each exist in its own bubble.

Atkinson’s collection overcomes this by being a series of interconnected short stories, bound together by the classical myths that underpin them, though this classical inspiration is not always obvious to a casual reader despite several newspaper reviewers implying that the magical realism aspect is overdone. Personally, I felt it was often very subtle, as when a dead woman who later comes back to life sees pomegranate seeds in a dish, reminding us of the tale of Persephone. Where it is more obvious, as when the nanny, Missy’s, boots turn into silver sandals and a quiver of arrows appears on her back, it felt quite natural and thematically appropriate. One critic I read suggested that Atkinson’s use of Latin and Greek quotations at the start of the stories serves mostly to highlight the triviality of the tales themselves, and that it was unclear why Atkinson had chosen Ancient Greek mythology as her underlying inspiration, as opposed to myths from other cultures. However, I would counter this by asking why not?  And I would also say that, for me, these stories sparkled with vivacity and were a sheer pleasure to read, so if Atkinson wishes to indulge herself and show off her knowledge, that’s fine by me.

            The links between the stories aren’t always obvious, particularly on a first reading. Some characters are referred to in different stories, and there is an echoing here and there of themes and ideas. One review I read claimed that Atkinson was in love with the sound of her own voice in these stories, implying that they lacked depth and genuine meaning, and I can see how readers might feel this, certainly with some of the more superficial tales. However, I felt that even the most obvious, the ones that used most literary trickery and experimentation for its own sake, were still highly readable, and some of the stories have stayed with me months after I read them – particularly the story of the boy whose prostitute mother is dying of cancer.

              What makes these stories so compelling is Atkinson’s characteristic verve and energy. They fizz along and carry the reader with them. I found the characters vivid and convincing, though their stories were often far from realistic. The stories also radiate with flashes of Atkinson’s wonderful dark humour. All collections of short stories are going to contain individual pieces that appeal more or less to different readers, that are objectively various in terms of quality even, but I enjoyed even those stories I felt were the weakest in the collection. I have read this collection twice this year, which I can’t say about any other volume of short stories I’ve read, including those of the fabulous Alice Munro.

 

RATING: Not The End Of The World *****

 

 

The second Atkinson book I read this year was a long novel which won the Costa Prize in 2015. I had downloaded a few of her novels, and decided, quite randomly, to read this one, not realising quite how long it is until I was well into it and fully involved in the story.

It tells the story of Teddy Todd, a World War 2 fighter pilot, beginning in his childhood and narrating his life story and those of his daughter and grandchildren.  Having not read ‘Life After Life’, I didn’t realise that Teddy is actually the much-loved younger sibling of a character from that novel, Ursula, but that doesn’t matter at all as this novel stands entirely on its own.

              As I write this, I haven’t finished the book so this review is rather pre-emptive. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the chapters I have read very much. The novel moves about in time with little warning – the reader simply has to keep up – but this didn’t feel like a chore, and I found it easy to work out where we were in chronological terms. Teddy is a charming child, realistic and sympathetic. He has the fortune/misfortune of being immortalised by a family friend in a series of popular children’s novels (clearly based on Richmal Crompton’s Just William books) about the redoubtable Augustus, novels he is vaguely embarrassed by. Teddy grows up to be a decorated war hero, but his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Nancy Shawcross, is an unhappy, unfulfilling one, and his daughter, the hideous Viola (a brilliant monster of a woman whose behaviour made me laugh and cringe simultaneously), is a disappointment. He has a better relationship with his grandchildren, however, who are both damaged to some degree by their ridiculous, self-centred mother.

              I had to leave the novel at the point where Atkinson is just beginning to describe Teddy’s experience of the war, which has been hinted at in previous chapters but not fully explored, but the writing so far makes me know that I will return to it soon to finish reading it. I have an inkling of where the story is going due to reading some online reviews, and I now want to read ‘Life After Life’ too. 

             

RATING: A God In Ruins *****

Further adeventures of a freaked-out, middle-aged bride-to-be...

 A fad or an enthusiasm?

Earlier this year, I watched a few online videos about painting with acrylic paints and stupidly thought ‘That looks easy’. 

    It was but the work of moments to reach the next step in the inevitable process: spending money I can’t really afford on paint, brushes and canvas, donning an old blue and white spotted smock-top that is three sizes too big for me, and trying my hand at painting. Honestly, if I still had the red beret I bought when I was seventeen, I'd have worn that too.

I have a history of what my mum would refer to as ‘fads’, but which I prefer to think of as ‘experimental enthusiasms', aka ‘the learning process’. There was the craze for making homemade chocolates, the cake-baking phase, the soup-making whim, the jam-making vogue, the embroidery rage, the greetings-card-making obsession, the quilt-making frenzy… 

However, to be fair, many of these things weren’t just fads, they were all about learning a skill which I’ve continued to use, particularly the food-based ones. I still make fantastic soup on a regular basis, for example, and that's because I put in the legwork learning how to do it, trying things out, until I mastered the art of soup-making and discovered what kind of soup I particularly enjoy eating and how to make it brilliant. Anyone can do this, but most people can’t be bothered – or just don’t like soup that much! Similarly with baking – I have always made cakes and related goods, but I have got much better at it over the years, particularly in the last few years when I’ve developed enough confidence to try out my own ideas, and the only reason I don’t bake more often now is that I have pre-diabetes and can’t eat the fruits of my labour. My baking is good enough for the young admin assistant where I work to pay me to bake cakes now and then for her and her boyfriend, and generally people seem to enjoy my cakes these days. Several people have suggested that I could make money selling my cakes. So they must be ok. They certainly taste good to me. Again, there's no particular skill involved except that which arises naturally from enthusiasm, lots of practice, the right equipment and being a gluttonous foodie.

On the other hand, some things clearly were fads. The jam-making, for example. It did last several years and I was beginning to see my skill level increasing, but in the end I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and the mess. Good-quality jam is readily available in supermarkets and, to be honest, neither of us eats it much. I like cherry jam, whereas P prefers orange marmalade, but the reality is that a jar of either of these will sit in our fridge for a year until I finally throw the mould-encrusted stuff away. Incidentally, we have very different tastes in food. Tastes I absolutely adore, such as aniseed and almond and coffee and cherries, are things he hates, and tastes I loathe (such as vanilla and tea) are his favourites. We can never share a dessert. We can't even agree on which fruit goes best with chocolate - he loves chocolate-orange (which I hate) and I love chocolate and cherry or raspberry. If compatibility was down to food preferences, we'd never be allowed to get married. 

I used to make fruit curds, chutneys, pickles and herb jellies too, but it became a faff rather than a fad. I am, however, using the skills I’ve learned to make blueberry jam to put in miniature jars for the favour bags for guests at the wedding, alongside miniature packets of calendula and marigold seeds from my garden (thank you for that idea, Amanda) and miniature bottles of flavoured alcohol (I’ve made blackberry vodka and sloe gin for around a decade now every Christmas, so does that still count as a ‘fad’?). Foraging is another thing my mum refers to as a 'fad'. A few months after I left my teaching job in a school sixth form some years ago, I met up with some of my ex-A Level students and, when they asked what I'd been doing since I left, I told them I'd started foraging. They thought I meant that I was so hard-up without my teacher's salary that I was being forced to live off wild nuts and berries, like Frankenstein's creature in Mary Shelley's novel! They actually became quite enraged as they already blamed the headteacher at the school for forcing me to leave (which wasn't the case in reality). I think they imagined me, a wizened old woman in rags, staggering about the hederows, plucking rosehips and stealing ears of wheat from the farmer's fields, muttering curses against all headmasters under my breath as I struggled to extricate myself from bramble bushes and burnt my hands on giant hogweed...

I also have fads which come and go.  About thirty years ago, I started making a hand-stitched quilt out of P’s old shirts and it’s still half-finished in the cupboard. It’ll probably end up being used as my shroud. Every few years, I get it out and do a bit more. I once read somewhere that Jane Austin used to quilt (a respectable past-time for a young lady) so she could drop the quilt over her current manuscript if visitors arrived (writing being considered rather unladylike). Visiting Chawton once, I saw a quilt made by Jane and her sister, Cassandra, and I remember being impressed by the fact it was hand-stitched and the stitches were so tiny and precise. Whenever I prise my half-sewn quilt from its drawer in the cupboard under the stairs, I think about this.  

A friend once asked me why I didn’t just buy an electric sewing machine and sew the patches on that way, but she missed the point. I have a tendency towards OCD. If I decide it will be hand-stitched, it will be hand-stitched – and it will also be finished: the only question is when. Some of those patches make me think about the programmes on TV or the radio I was listening to, or the conversations I was having, or even the things I was thinking about, as I stitched – it’s better than a diary! There is something about sewing by hand that kind of stitches your memories into the fabric. It’s probably because it is slow enough to give your mind time to wander. Very soothing – until the point where it becomes very irritating, of course.

The Covid-lockdowns saw the quilt expand in size quite substantially. In fact, I even made my mum a quilted cushion as a Christmas present last year. It was entirely hand-stitched, and was actually a nice object in my view and in colours that matched both my houseproud mother’s bedroom and her living-room (even my sister liked it, and she hates everything I do or buy or think!), Nevertheless, my mum clearly hates it. She’d never say so openly, but it's obvious to the trained eye. I think the cushion has been thrown in the back of a wardrobe, or even into the bin. I suspect she thinks it’s unhygienic because the patches are made from fabric from old shirts – she's a hygiene-freak who has a panic attack if people share a dip in a restaurant. She would never let us drink from public water-fountains or use public toilets without first laying sheets of toilet paper over the seats, when we were children, and she literally redecorates her house every year just to make sure it is clean. It’s a wonder she can still get into her rooms as the walls must be so thick with layers of paint by now. She even gloss-paints the inside of her kitchen cabinets. I hasten to add that the shirts were thoroughly laundered before I cut them up to make patches, and they weren’t very old when they were abandoned by P (because they were ‘too small’ or ‘the cat had ripped the front’ or ‘they were too fashionable’ or some other lame excuse he came up with to buy a new shirt!).

In my early twenties, I had a craze for embroidery, particularly cross-stitch, and I made some things which were incredibly time-consuming. I have always eschewed the sorts of cross-stitch where you are given a design and you just have to copy it. That feels like the needlecraft version of painting-by-numbers to me. So everything I stitched had to be a ‘Wilford original’. This culminated in my creating three designs which were based on the notion of a sampler – a piece of embroidery that displayed the different stitches and patterns of the embroiderer. I stuck to cross-stitch but did abstract designs which entirely covered a rectangular piece of canvas. I framed them and had them on my walls for years, simply because after all those hours of work I’d put in I felt they deserved to be displayed, even if they were rubbish! I used to hang them in the spare room where people hardly ever went. During Covid, in the middle of my cushion-making fad, I took them out of their frames and made them into tiny cushions and gave two of the three away to friends as extra Christmas gifts. I personally think they are lovely but I expect the friends were secretly disappointed! I mean, what can you actually do with a cushion the size of a large pencil case? In fact, they would have made good pencil-cases, now I come to think of it…

Anyway, this gives you the background to my current ‘fad’, the acrylic painting. The reason I mention it is that I had a stupid, painting-related, idea for the place-setting name-cards at the wedding, but I’ll leave that until the next instalment…

Further Adventures Of A Freaked-Out Bride-To-Be

 Mail-Order Bride

In my ever-more-depressing quest to find an outfit to wear on The Big Day, and also as part of our general house reburbishment, I have been ordering and returning so many items online that I’m sure our neighbours – not to mention the delivery people – think I must be considerably more wealthy than I appear to be, in terrible debt and/or I have a shopping addiction.

In fact, it has reached the point where it now gives me a weird giddy sensation each time I order something – strip out the frisson of guilt and it must be how rich people feel all the time.

                                 champagne-coloured, glitter-covered, stiletto-heeled slingbacks

Of course, the vast majority of these items are returned to the stores, which in itself is an act that varies considerably in stress-level. Some stores simply include a sticky-backed returns label and a simple form on which you indicate the reason for your return by means of a code number. You then just repack the item in its original packaging, stick on the label and take it to the post office or courier service. Others require you to also inform them by email or via your account on their website, which is a pain if you don’t have an account as you then have to set one up. Sometimes they forget to include the Returns label or the Returns form, or you have to print off your label and stick it to your package with sellotape. And I sent P to the post office so many times when I was giving away my Terry Pratchett books (see last blog post) that he’s considering eloping with the postmistress.

What I have found is that I am much more likely to buy from a store which makes it very easy to return stuff, particularly if they also make it very easy to buy the stuff in the first place. This is why Amazon is so successful. Once they have your card details, you can buy with a click of the mouse or the press of a finger against a screen. When I was young, the idea that you could buy new books for your Kindle while lying in bed in the middle of the night with insomnia would have been a source of fabulous wonderment. It is incredible, really – and horrifying too – that, if you have a sudden yearning for a biscuit tin decorated with an etching of a 1920s Orient Express, you can probably buy it while sitting on the loo in your friend’s en suite. I hate the fact that Amazon pays so little tax and puts so many people out of business – but, boy, is it convenient!

I’ve had problems with delivery people who don’t understand what a bin-shed is, or who leave parcels on the doorstep – we live on a main road and such parcels are ripe for pilfering. But I have to say that so far none has gone missing. I’ve also been refunded all the money for items I have returned, thank goodness – though every time I return something, I get the nagging suspicion that I’ll never actually get the money back. I am in fact deeply impressed by the efficiency of courier services and the Royal Mail – you don’t realise how great they are until you have to use them a lot. The email and text messages online companies send can be weird though: I recently had one telling me that the ‘first package’ in an order was on its way, which alarmed me as all I’d ordered was a mattress topper!

So where am I now with regard to The Wedding Outfit?  In a perfect world, I would be intending to wear the beautiful midnight-blue velvet wraparound dress I bought (online from Bombshell) two months ago, but I don’t live in a perfect world. The dress just about fits me, as the wraparound design gives it some flexibility, but it would definitely look better if I lost weight. The neckline is a bit too plunging, so even with the ‘body-improving’ underwear (bought online from M&S), including the push-up bra, I would still need to pin it together to avoid an embarrassing nip-slip. Incidentally, I was quite impressed by my decolletage in the push-up bra – the bra might be extremely uncomfortable, but feeling like someone is trying to saw through your rib-cage is a small price to pay for suddenly having an eye-catching bosom! 

I tried the dress on the other day with the glittery champagne-coloured stiletto-heeled sling-backs I bought (online from Paradox) and it was the right length and, from the front at least, it looked pretty good. However, from the side and back I looked like one of those cottage loaves made from two fat rolls of bread (the smaller one stuck on top of the larger one).

There is no way I’ll lose enough weight by 21 December to make a useful dent in that blubber, sadly. I lost two stone last year, after learning I was pre-diabetic, but I have gradually put most of it back on over the summer this year. A month ago I went back on the diet and I was very strict – for a fortnight I ate three small, low-calorie, low-carbohydrate meals a day, and I felt hungry constantly. At the end, I weighed myself and I’d put on 7lb!!! This was so depressing that I immediately gave up! The ‘giving up’ coincided with a two-day trip to Northumberland, our only holiday since 2019, during which we spent most of our time in restaurants and teashops due to the permanent heavy rainfall (we’re rain-gods – we have had summer holidays in Cornwall during thick fog or thunderstorms), so I ate too much then.

                                               Alnwick beach, Northumberland, late October 

For the past fortnight, though I haven’t exactly been stuffing my face, I haven’t exactly been cutting down much either. I weighed myself yesterday, out of interest, and I’d put on a further 5lb! So, if these scales are to be believed, I have become 12lb heavier during the past four weeks while either dieting strictly or eating a modest amount of food and an occasional treat. I admit that I haven’t done much exercise during that period, but I still suspect the scales just aren’t working properly!

Anyway, if I’m not going to wear the blue velvet frock, I need an alternative, so I’ve gone back to my original idea of wearing a trouser suit of some sort. I have decided on navy blue trousers and top and an ivory jacket. I bought the jacket (John Lewis online) some time ago – it’s one of those floaty loose-fitting things which are longer at the back than the front and don’t fasten, made of chiffon or some such. They look great on tall, willowy models in photos but not so good on short, fat women, but needs must. After many, many online purchases and returns, I have three pairs of potential trousers – one has a chiffon over-layer so it looks dressy, one is a kind of crepe material and the other is a bog-standard M&S pair in a thin material. They are all too long so need shortening.

Buying the top has been a nightmare, however.  Many places claim to have perfect-looking tops but then it turns out they only have one size 8 in stock. I’ve bought several which only go up to the size below what I really am, but which I have bought on the slim chance that a miracle will occur and I’ll fit into them or maybe they’ll be made slightly big. All of those have had to go back, though I kept one which I thought might be nice if I did lose weight (ha!). I even bought a sleeveless navy-blue vest made out of t-shirt material to wear if all else failed! I have now ordered a navy blue chiffon top from Evans which, if it ever arrives, should look appropriate – I’ve ordered three sizes to ensure one fits! The ivory jacket would look better if it was a thicker material, but I should at least feel comfy in this outfit. It looks much like what I wear for work! Except that, not being a drag-queen (if only I looked that good!), I don’t wear glitter-covered stiletto-heeled slingbacks for work.

So, visualize this: I’ll probably be wearing navy-blue, loose, dressy trousers with a loose, navy-blue sleeveless top, and an ivory floaty jacket. I’ll be carrying a bouquet of blue and white flowers (blue thistles, white roses, eucalyptus leaves, apparently). I’ll be wearing the aforementioned glittery champagne-coloured stiletto-heeled slingbacks. I’ll be having my hair ‘put up’ in some fashion by the nice hairdresser I mentioned in a previous post and I have two ‘hair vines’ (one with gold leaves and tiny pearls on it and the other with larger pearls) which the hairdresser thinks she will be able to twist together and thread through my hair. I’ll be wearing drop earrings with three pearls on them, and a necklace consisting of several strings of pearls loosely twisted together. And I’ll be wearing make-up and a new pair of glasses which I am collecting next week. So I should also be able to at least see what’s going on, having recently had a long-overdue eye-test.

I won’t look great. I’ll look like a short, fat woman in her fifties who is trying hard, but who should have lost more weight by now. But speaking as someone who has been having sleepless nights thinking about what I’m going to do if I can’t find anything to wear, I’m just grateful I have something halfway presentable.  Though I love the shoes (my niece took one look at them and asked drily if I was channelling Dorothy, but I ignored her), I haven’t worn heels for about two decades so I will be at serious risk of falling over.  As you know, I am prone to falling over at the best of times. In fact, I had another of my ridiculous falls very recently, this time right outside my front door while I was attempting to creep up on P (who was unlocking the door with his back to me). That’ll teach me to be childish! I jarred my side and sprained a couple of toes, but – much worse – I’ve cracked the screen on my mobile phone which was in my hand when I fell. Let’s hope that I can avoid falling down the stairs at the Town Hall – I’ll have to use P and our MC, Dave, to prop me up as I walk.

Now I’m just going to have to spend my sleepless nights worrying about the various stupidly time-consuming ideas I have had for place-settings and favour bags…