Dress stress, money less

We've had a small amount of dress stress, now that everyone has tried theirs on. Most of them were too long, and will need adjusting in the neck strap and in the length of the skirt part, but that's not serious and is quite easy to do apparently. However, one of them is significantly shorter and tighter than its designated bridesmaid. Something must have gone awry with the measurements there, which I suppose was always a risk seeing as they all measured themselves separately and probably all did it in slightly different ways. We're lucky that most of them fit in the waist and bust as well as they do.

So anyway, we had a bit of a panic when we realised that. You can take dresses up or in, but not very easily down or out because... well, you can't make material where there is none. But, having had our chief bridesmaid and dress organiser-extraordinaire contact the Chinese dress lady, it is hopefully not as bad as we first thought. We are told that, for this very reason, the dressmakers cleverly build in extra fabric sewn into the sides and the hem, so that there is scope for increasing the size if need be. How clever is that? I've had a feel of the dress, and I can't feel any hidden fabric, but I hope what she said is true. So hopefully we'll be able to find a good dress alterer and, even if it doesn't end up quite as long as the others, we'll end up with something acceptable.

In other wedding news, we went to the hotel last night to firm up final details. The wedding man asked lots of questions like do we want everyone to be seated for the meal and then him announce our entry, which hadn't even occurred to me as an option. I suppose I've seen other people do that. But anyway, we thought about it and decided we'd be too embarrassed so we'll just sit down when everyone else sits down. It's not a formal affair really.

And having carefully transferred money around in order to pay our bill by the 28-days-before deadline, he didn't actually want the money in the end anyway! He said "oh don't worry about that, just a week before or whenever". So we have managed to avoid being punched in the bank balance to the tune of several thousand pounds for a little while longer.

This weekend will probably be a quiet one as Chris is off at Rob's stag do for all of it. So I am footloose and fancy free, what's a boy to do? I can't wash my hair ALL weekend.

I bet I end up watching Bridget Jones, drinking wine, and dancing round my living room on my own. I am SO cool...

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Naughty schoolboys and 60-year olds

I had quite a nice weekend, if a little hectic. It always is these days when we go home, we end up trying to pack in far more than in reasonable so we don't have to go home again for a while. By 'home' I mean my parents' house. I'm not sure why I still say that actually, I've not lived there properly for nine years. Come to think of it, 'Home' in my mobile is still my Mum's number too, I really must change it.

It was my Dad's 60th birthday at the weekend, so on Saturday we went up to my brother's house for lunch with them and my parents. Mum didn't come, she wasn't feeling well enough, but I wasn't that surprised. I think Dave was a bit annoyed, but also slightly relieved because it makes it less stressy. It's a shame for her of course, because then she feels like she's missed out and she ends up spending the day on her own again, but what can you do to fix that? She can't come, but she wouldn't be well enough to have people at their house all day, so basically she misses out. It's either that or cancel and everyone misses out. It does make me that extra bit worried about her making it to the wedding though...

Then it had also been our friend Paul's birthday earlier in the week, so in the evening we went out with them to a school disco at G-A-Y. I don't like going out in London quite often, I find it a stress and loads of effort, and I tend not to feel very safe on the night bus home. But I made the effort to go anyway, and am pleased to say that my school blazer still fits 11 years after I left school - when Mum bought me a size 'to grow into', she really meant it. It was quite good there anyway, we got in cheap because we were dressed up, and the music was alright. I was disappointed only about 50% of people had dressed up for it, lazy buggers. You only have to put a white shirt and a tie on, it's not that hard. I also thought there would be more cute boys there, given the club is so big and it's in London, but there were only a few I liked.

There was a freaky old man there (by old I mean about 40) who was wandering around off his face and topless already at 11.30pm (far too early for that), and he kept pushing his jeans down really low so you could almost see his... bleurgh.... in a way I assume he thought was alluring. It wasn't. He came too close to Chris at one point, so Chris glared at him. I think he panicked, because he dropped all his cards and money on the floor and then had to crawl around trying to pick them up while we sniggered at him.

The night bus took FOREVER to get us home, an hour in the end, so it was 4.30am by the time we got to bed and the sun was coming up. The bus wasn't too bad, I didn't feel as unsafe as I usually do, but a sleeping girl did get her mobile phone stolen out of her hand while she slept and woke up a few minutes later by which time her assailant had got off. But at least nobody tried to stab anyone else.

Chris has tried to assuage my public safety fears before by saying people very rarely actually get attacked, which I suppose is true, but I got mugged four times when I was growing up and it has left me a bit damaged. I'm still afraid of groups of 11-year old boys in the street, how ridiculous is that? They clearly wouldn't attack me, I'm twice their height, but the worst children know you can't actually do anything to them without getting arrested, so they can freely harass you, and that's just as bad. I hate the fact that after you've been mugged, YOU'RE the one who's left feeling stupid and ashamed. Anyway.

So then after too few hours sleep, we had a nice restaurant lunch, then trundled back to Brighton, and the weekend was over. And that clock continues to tick on, four weeks three days to M-Day now...

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Photos

I have been having a little play with my new camera, trying to work out what all the settings do. So far I think I understand what the shutter speed, aperture and ISO things do, but I'm not that good at picking the right ones yet. Also, as I've only been playing in my living room where the light is not that great I think I'm making things harder than they need to be.

Here are a couple of ones I took when playing around with reflections and colour. I had to do the blur in PhotoShop, I haven't learnt how to make it focus just on the foreground properly yet.

Death by dustcart

Being backed over by a dustcart must be a pretty awful and ignominious way to meet your end. That's what happened to a 61 year-old grandmother last year in Brighton, and they've just finished the court case to decide if blame should be apportioned to someone. Honestly, if someone said to me "you're going to die by being backed over by a dustcart", I would think fuck what a rubbish way to go (hilarious pun there, not intentional).

The woman was on a pedestrianised street, but which the vehicle was allowed to be on to collect rubbish. Although it had flashing lights on, its reversing warning siren (that annoying beep beep beep thing) was switched off, and the camera that allows the driver to see behind the truck wasn't working. So apparently he should have asked a member of the crew to stand at the back and check it was safe, but he didn't and it wasn't. The driver has been fined £2,500 for driving without due care and attention and given nine points on his licence, but not convicted of anything like causing death through dangerous driving. The family seem fairly happy with that, they just didn't want it labelled 'an accident' with no-one at fault.

But seriously, of all the ways to go. It's like dying on the toilet or falling into a septic tank or something. I've often wondered how I'll go. Hopefully I'll be really old and no longer frightened of it, at the moment it terrifies me. I'm quite a morbid person sometimes though, I should really cheer up...

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Blogging

I've been thinking about why I write this blog, if it's interesting, what sort of things I should be writing about, and other things like that.

I suppose I write it for the same reasons I used to write a diary - it's quite a nice thing to do, to help you think things through, and it's nice to be able to look back on it later. I suppose if any other people find it vaguely interesting or amusing, that's a bonus that you don't get with a paper diary.

The second question is more complicated. Is it interesting? Hmmm, sort of. Sometimes. I think some of things I've written giving my opinion on things, or talking about something funny that's happened, are sort of interesting. General narrative about "I did this, then that happened" is a bit dull though, and I must try to avoid it.

As to what to write about, that's also more tricky. I don't know if people like some of the posts I've written more than others. Things I could write about are:

• my daily life, the wedding, work, that kind of stuff
• current events, occasionally I put stuff on here about politics or interesting things I've read in the Economist. Not that often though, I could do more
• interesting pictures, videos, websites and stuff that I find
• more personal sort of stuff, like boys, boys I like, sexual adventures (when I have them), lack of sexual adventures (more likely)...

Any comments (from the vague few who read this) would be appreciated. I've been reading about what makes a good blog, and lots of places say "write about what interests you, write what you think, keep it short and accessible". So I suppose that's a good place to start.

It's also a bit tricky when yes I could write about my thoughts about people I know, people I like, people I hate, but they might actually READ this themselves. Especially because I link this to my Facebook, so all my friends could potentially read it. Do I just throw caution to the wind and write it anyway? Would people get upset? Would I have to anonymise it somehow?? Ah so many things to think about...

Thoughts anyone? Shall we just got for red hot gossip and sexual perversion?? I know that's what you're all dying for...

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Dresses and photography

I'm rather excited because I heard yesterday that our bridesmaids dresses have now arrived in the UK from China. They are at the factory-owner-lady's house in Swansea, and at some point are either going to be posted to us or to our chief bridesmaid Jennie. I hope they look good, the prototype they made up and sent over looked really nice.

They're a total bargain too, as they've been handmade to order, which presumably would cost quite a lot of money over here. They had to make them based on measurements the girls took themselves, so there's a chance they might need altering, but at least they've arrived five weeks before the event so there is time to sort that out if need be.

I hope that the girls don't end up looking better than we do... Although I suppose we're fortunate it will be less directly comparable than a bride with bridesmaids, and so we haven't needed to sabotage the bridesmaids by sticking them in tartan or whatever. Our hire suits are nice, but obviously not tailor made or anything. We have the upside that our suits don't belong to us, and are insured for accidental damage, so we don't need to worry about random spillages or whatever. If the girls want to keep their dresses for anything else, they're going to have to behave in them!

I'm also quite excited about the new camera I bought at the weekend. It's a point and shoot digital one, not an SLR one or anything, but it's really good and it lets you control loads of the aperture and exposure settings and things. I've been saying for a while that I might like to get "into photography" but that I'd need a better camera to do so. So now I've got one I guess I should start taking some pictures! I might see if I can find a nice book that explains about light and composition and things, and also what the different settings on a camera actually do for you.

I'm not quite sure what it is exactly that I want to photograph in my new-found and possibly short-lived interest in photography, but I expect I'll start off with some interesting macro shots and sunsets and things.

We had a semi-controversial photography competition in the office recently, to choose photos that people had taken to go up on our walls. It very quickly became apparent that people can have quite different opinions on what makes a nice photo, in the same way I suppose as people like different types of art. It did at least give me the chance to see lots of photos taken by other people though, to build up an idea of what I like.

And, for the record and in case it hasn't been made clear enough, no I do not like photos of dead rabbits with glassy staring eyes. I don't have a particular problem with the killing of rabbits if it's necessary to keep numbers down, but I don't think that it makes a nice photo. The same as I wouldn't poison loads of rats and then go around photographing their corpses.

I will try to put some of my photographic efforts up here from time to time. Dead animals are unlikely to feature.

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5 weeks 3 days til M-Day

I haven't been on here for a while as I've been ill AGAIN. Honestly, it can't be normal for someone to catch viruses quite as often as I do. I was ill at the start of April, a bit ill at the start of May, and now again in the middle of June. It should not be a monthly occurrence! I'm starting to suspect that it's actually the same virus, and I'm never getting rid of it properly. I've read that can happen, it just goes into hibernation somewhere in your body, and then when you get particularly stressed or run down it pops up again. I'm not quite sure what I can do about it either, as doctors can't do a lot for a virus apart from tell you to rest, take paracetamol and drink lots of fluids.

So anyway, I was off for two days last week, afflicted with horrible all-over aching, and a massive gland in my neck that meant I couldn't turn my head or lay on that side. Nice. Thankfully it's gone away now, until next time at least. My current pattern of illness every six weeks is concerning me slightly though, because it means I'll be due again either at the wedding or during the honeymoon. Hmmm... maybe I should eat LOADS of oranges between now and then or something.

My wedding stress about the rooms as been assuaged somewhat, as the nice man at our hotel has said they can have some, if not all, the rooms ready at 1pm for us. Much better. Or at the very least he said they'll have somewhere where people can change, but I'm pinning my hopes on getting a couple of rooms because I'm sure people will want a bathroom etc too.

There are only a few bits and bobs left to do for the wedding now really. People are asking about it lots again, I can't remember what we used to talk about with our friends before we got engaged. The seating plan is all done and made, which is good because it took a while, but annoying if anyone wants to drop out or add guests or whatever. So we're having to be firm and say no more changes - I think that's fair given it's only a few weeks away now. And hopefully the dresses will arrive from the Chinese sweatshop soon. We're seeing the man at the hotel next week to confirm final numbers and pay our invoice, eek! So that'll be several thousand pounds, which is a bit harsh. You wouldn't think it would be so expensive to have dinner and a bit of music and dancing would you?

Mum is stressing out a little more now about how she'll cope with the day. I'm stressing a bit about it too, because I know she's going to find it hard, and her being stressed will just make her feel more ill. She's said she "doesn't want me worrying about her on the day, I'll be busy enough as it is", which is fair enough because I really can't be focusing on her the whole time. But it's going to be a bit hard for me not to... Well anyway, she'll go for a rest after the ceremony, and then she'll probably not stay that long after the dinner either as long as she's being sensible. So then she won't be around for me to worry about anyway, so I'll have no choice. I just hope Dad and Dave do a good job of keeping an eye on her.

Arrgh I still can't believe it's been booked for 18 months and now it's five weeks away!!! Where does the time go?? I'm getting so OLD!! It's been five years since graduation now, that's longer than the whole degree course was, and everyone at Boogaloo these days is practically a child. I'm sure they look at us suspiciously and wonder why such old people are there... I've been going there since they were about 11 years old! Some of them still look about that age actually.

I'm still cool anyway. Sort of. We still go out clubbing, and I don't feel old. Plus I've got loads more money than the 11 year olds, and a nice flat and a car, so I guess I'm doing alright...

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