Is London ready?

Let the chaos commence. In just a few hours my 'chicks' will be starting the hen madness.

Nerves are setting in as the knowing grins and muffled laughter is turned up a notch.

Still, I suspect my 'last night' of freedom will be one to remember for the rest of my life!

Roll on chickerees!

Surpise surprise!

I'm a bugger when people are planning stuff for me as a surprise!

I met Jenny last night for a drinky-poo and she kept giggling at me whenever the topic of the hen night came up.

Most of the girls I rang over the weekend were just sniggering too when I tried to get some clues from them!

Arrgh! I love and hate not knowing what the plans are in equal measures! Even TOH knows what we are doing.

But not long to go now. I am sooo excited. I can't wait to have all the girls out for a night of fun and larks. So long as I don't have to wear L-plates and a knob-on-a-string round my neck!

Good weekend

A big cycle ride to Oxford St yesterday to carry on with the 'gift list'. It's a very strange feeling going round a store looking for things you want, zapping them into a machine and hoping that some people, who you don't really want to buy you a present just because you are getting married, buy them for you. That said, we should have some pretty cool stuff if people are feeling generous!

Afterwards, while the rest of the nation was watching Arsenal steal the FA cup from Man USA, I (I am almost too embarassed to admit this) went to a beauty shop for a .... no. I can't say it. Let's put it this way, I am becoming a make up obsessive.

It's all down to the fact for the past 32 years, I have gone au natural pretty much everyday. Maybe because my mum was never into make up, I had no older sister to teach me about it, and I generally hung about with boys. Or, and this is probably more likely, I was basically too lazy to be bothered with it, especially since in the bigger picture, it really is a total irrelevance to human existance.

But now, well, I am getting quite sucked into the whole beauty regime thing. I have finally emerged as a swan from a rather prolonged ugly duckling stage!

Last night, we stayed in and watched the Eurovision Song Contest. Add that to the list of unexpected interests TOH has!

And today, I put some of my new kit into action for lunch in Putney with the Chief Usher and his girlfriend. We went to look at the wedding venue, and the pier (note to self: tie ribbons and balloons on the pier so people will see it and not just wander off down the hight street after a few glasses of bubbly!) and then stuffed our faces with tapas. Mmmmm, lovely.

Test results

It was so long ago that I had the MRI scan on my back that I cannot remember when it was. Maybe this year? Or was it last?

Anyway, I finally got the results yesterday after making an official complaint to the hospital at the ridiculously lax treatment I have recieved.

Apparently, my back is showing nothing more than normal wear and tear for a girl of my age. The consultant was 'not at all worried' by what he saw. He reassured me that there was nothing wrong with me.

So why was I in so much pain? Why did I spend a day paralysed in a Portuguese hospital getting injections in the bum? Why do I still get lower back twinges?

He had absolutely no idea. He also seemed to have no recollection of meeting me before, even though his own notes were in my file. But he did had a good moan about working for the NHS.

Half way through the consultation another fella came in who is apparently some physio-tsar whose waiting list I am now on. He said he could give a through examination (which will be a first from the NHS in the years and years I have been complaining about my back) and maybe he can help.

In the mean time, I suppose I will just have to carry on with my chiropractor (magic hands that man, magic hands) and stretching etc. It has cost me thousands.

Full-face slap

Last night I trekked all the way across London town to Weybridge to have a hair and make-up trial for the big day.

The artist, and she really was like an artist with a pallette of eyeshadow and foundation, is a very nice girl. which is what I want on the morning when I am kacking myself.

The make up was very nice, it is extremely relaxing having someone paint your face with soft brushes, and the hair was lovely too. It's hard to say whether it was 'perfect' or not because there is so many different things you could do with hair, an' that, which would look nice so ... well, who knows. I am going to rely on the pure joy and exhileration of marrying my wonderful, perfect, handsome man to make me look beautiful on the day.

What I do know is that it was a bloody long journey home afterwards, with a full face of slap!

Alliance against urban 4x4s

A group of people, which may or may not have included myself and TOH, braved the constant drizzle last night to wander round the Isle of Dogs putting yellow leaflets under the windscreen wipers of gas-guzzling SUVs such as Land Rovers and the like.

Now, these leaflets may well have looked just like parking tickets but the group told me they actually carried information as to why these dangerous, enviromentally damaging and space-hogging vehicles are unsuitable for city roads.

Hopefully the owners read them, after getting a bit of a shock that they had been given a parking ticket, and would think twice about buying this kind of car in the future.

But sadly I suspect these sorts of people couldn't give less of a shit about the environment and the fact we are very close to the point of no return with the volume of greenhouse gasses we've belched into our air. Why should they? They will all be dead within 50-60 years so it doesn't matter, right?

Probably most SUV owners think like this

Strike a pose - there really is nothing to it

I'm a supermodel! Kinda.

TOH bought me a makeover/photoshoot day for Christmas to give me a confidence boost that I am not so pig ugly after all.

Normally every photo of me makes me look like a champion gurner - a chinless, goofy-toothed, slitty-eyed minger.

But not yesterday, my friend. A bit of slap and some cunning poses and a talented photographer later, and I was a stunning cover girl!

The company that runs these days are very clever because not only do you have to pay for the transformation, they take a lot of photos of you so that when you get to choose your 'free' one you are so overwhelmed by the fact that there are about 10 really good ones that you end up buying more.

So we paid for three more portraits and two of the pair of us posing (one in quite an hilariously 70s-stylee) so that we have some nice pix of us not wearing wedding clothes (because there ain't normally any nice ones as I tend to ruin the shot somewhat).

On the way home, we took the bus so TOH could film out the window for another of his little movie projects.

This afternoon (after we went to the Turner/Monet/Whistler exhibition at Tate Britain and to John Lewis to make a start on the gift list (which they have already fucked up by 'losing' our reference number, the one we've sent to everyone on the invites!)) he speeded it up on the computer so the hour journey lasts about 5mins and set it to some Chemical Bros track.

It is so brilliant I am genuinely impressed with the boy's skills!

Mixed feelings

You know how you imagine trying on your wedding dress for the first time and it's so perfect you burst into tears of happiness? Well I tried mine on yesterday and nearly cried with disappointment.

It was so big it looked AWFUL. I sat there trying to get excited when the tailor(ess) held it tight and stuck in pins where she was going to alter it but to be honest, it was taking quite a bit of imagination to get the idea.

When I tried on the style in the first instance, it was only a size 10 or so, and looked fab as it created a big cleavage and small waist! But my ACTUAL dress did nothing for me at all.

Christ! I hope I have made the right choice.

One good thing - I didn't need those bloody Bridget Jones pants.

Our lucky day

Last night was a cracker. I met Steve at Westminster tube for an evening of blading and gigging (watching, not performing).

Boy did we look cool staggering, or it's wheeled equivalent, through London's parks on our rollerblades. It was hard work but I totally enjoyed it. I looked on with envy at all the experts in Hyde Park whizzing up and down and weaving in and out of cones on two wheels.

After about an hour it was time to head over to The Forum in Kentish Town for The Magic Numbers.



What a great band. Four fairly chubby and geek-looking siblings (two sets of brothers and sisters) who teased the crowd into a 60s-style love-in but indie rock sort of frenzy.

Their music was a mix of ballady-indie-country, which sounds better in real life than it looks on a computer screen. Highly recommended, if you like that sort of thing!

And why is it our lucky day? TOH and I met on a dark and windy night outside Cafe Nas on a Friday 13th! We always celebrate the nation's least favourite date.

Apple catchers

Oh it's all very well for Trinny and Suse to loftily say in their money-spinning books just to go out and get some decent underwear and it will give you a figure like Marilyn Monroe but they obviously haven't had to suffer the idignity of trying to explain to the cheap labour employed by Oxford St department stores that you need HUGE knicker to hold in the cake gut.

Selfridges, even the temple of shopping had only very bored non-English-as-first-language people running its lingerie dept who couldn't help me.

I ended up in Debenhams buying a home-brand pair which I am absolutely certain are not what T&S had in mind. All this so I don't look pregnant on the wedding day.

Hail Gail The Hen!

A very civilised (not) weekend! Ten (although someone told me it was nine after I though there were 12 of us) of Gail's girly friends headed up to a cottage near Stratford Upon Avon for her hen weekend.

It was an enormous converted barn, with huge dining table, lots of sofas, an real-flame gas fire and more than adequate number of spoons.

But that's where the civilisedness ends - once the boxes of wine and bubbles were opened we turned into a screeching hoarde of over-excited girls letting out our most shocking secrets and too much information about the various men in our lives.

I have to say we were very kind to the hen - she only had to wear a fluffy pink tiara in the country 'local' which attracted the attention of a demented woman who was clearly desparate to talk about her recent nuptials, probably as the village had been throughly bored to tears with it by then.

Other than eating (thanks Bellen) and drinking the only other activity we indulged in was a bit of rowing on The Avon, where we got attacked by a gang of ducks intent on getting their ends away with a lone lady duck!

It was such a brilliant time, all that girly bonding, that I felt quite sad to be home.

Roll on June 11!




(*Nice hand-on-hip action there, Gail!)

Messing about on the river

As TOH headed off to Barcelona for his football-based stag weekend, I decided to take my lovely boat up the Thames for the bank holiday with Alex B.

Saturday morning I was up at the crack of dawn to drive him to Gatwick (I felt a little twinge of sadness waving him off!) before heading home and back to bed for a while.

The advantage of not living on your boat is that it is now generally ready to go all the time. So I didn’t have a great deal to do before setting sail at 2pm for the rocky trip through London town.

As the narrow boat isn’t really designed for open water, I did get the fear for a bit as we see-sawed our way through all the pleasure boat’s wakes and waves but once we were past London Bridge, it all calmed down a bit and we were able to relax in the glorious sunshine.

Past Westminster, Battersea, Putney and into the countryside. The banks of the Thames are remarkably verdant. You really could be anywhere in the temperate world once you are past Richmond. It’s totally unrecognisable as the capital from the water.

Saturday night, we moored up in Kingston and headed off to get some food from the busy quayside bars and restaurants.

The weather was still glorious so we decided to eat outside at Frere Jacques, a large French place complete with red check tablecloths.

The sign which read ‘wait here to be seated by the duty manager’ wasn’t joking. Fifteen minutes we stood there saying hello to passing waiters who returned a look like that a gardener gives to slugs. They were not there to be polite to people waiting!

Eventually the duty manager came over and looked slightly baffled when we asked for a seat and only agreed to let us in when we pointed out there was an empty table behind one of the bushes!

Luckily we were in a very chilled mood and found it all rather amusing. And the food was very nice so we were happy.

The town had a real holiday atmosphere with girls wearing hardly any clothes and boys staggering about in untucked Ben Sherman’s leering and swigging lager.

Sunday morning, I eventually woke up at 10am! We had breakfast on the roof in the sunshine and fed the swans and geese stale bread. We were visited by a pair of Canada geese and their tiny goslings waddling along the towpath. So cute, little yellow balls of fluff on stumpy legs.

We cast off and headed on up the river to Sunbury lock, where we had a very nice pub lunch before turning round and mooring up outside Hampton Court Palace – one of my favourite spots on the river.

We wandered around ‘town’ and tried to take a look at the gardens but they had shut. We found an Indian restaurant that was prepared to deliver to the end of the towpath, so that was dinner sorted!

A bottle of wine and feast on the roof, and to bed.

Monday, we were up very early and down to Teddington to catch the tide home. Passing back through London just two days later but it felt like a week. The river was very choppy again between Tower Bridge and Greenwich but as I was more relaxed I didn’t panic so much!

The next time I sail down that river, I shall be a freshly married woman!