Will it be cold there? Will I get a seat? And other things grown-ups think about

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hand-gelYour brain changes as you get older.

You think more about the weather, the next time you’ll get to sit down and how much washing you need to get done, and less about about parties and hair glitter and whether you’re ready to take the dance routine you made up to Picture Of You by Boyzone to a wider audience.

And I guess it’s inevitable now that we’re responsible for more than just our social life and our cassette collection – there are bills to pay and gardens to weed and conversations about the benefits of online grocery shopping that just have to be had.

And this change of focus affects pretty much everything – our approach to going out, to seeing friends, to deciding what type of surface we’re willing to sleep on…

And even though we’re not so old that we’re not still presented with some of the same opportunities as there were when we were younger – there are still parties (weddings), and gigs (YouTube) and even sleepovers (cohabitation) – when they do come up, our grown-up brains will think about things that wouldn’t even have occurred to us when we were younger. Allow me to compare – though please note that, as a person who was young in the nineties and early noughties, my concept of what a young person thinks about may be slightly out of date.

Scenario 1: Going to a party/pub/wedding/on holiday/on a train/leaving the house to do anything whatsoever
Young person thoughts: Will there be booze? How do I get the booze? Will he/she be there? Is this the right occasion for me to wear my skirt-trouser?
Adult thoughts: Will I be too cold? Will I be too hot? Will water be readily available? Will I get a seat? What is the toilet situation? Is there a lot of walking involved? Will there be dickheads?

Scenario 2: Selecting a new dress
Young person thoughts: Is this something Baby Spice would wear? Do my platform trainers go with it?
Adult thoughts: Does it have a pocket that will hold a tissue? Can I wear proper pants with it? Is it dry-clean only? (Because if it is, you can forget it.)

Scenario 3: Choosing a new handbag
Young person thoughts: Is it big enough to hold this inexplicably enormous ring binder I insist on owning? And this tin pencil case I’ve covered with my initials written in Tipp-Ex?
Adult thoughts: Does it have a good zip? What is the pocket situation? Is it so deep that I’ll never be able to find anything? Is it big enough to hold an umbrella, cardigan and Tupperware box? Does it have a good handle?

Scenario 4: Somebody coming to stay at your house
Young person thoughts: Is it a boy? Does he smell? Could I beat him at Street Fighter II?
Adult thoughts: Are they clean? Do they respect bathrooms? Will they notice that I haven’t dusted the television?

Scenario 5: Going away for the weekend
Young person thoughts: Will there be a TV? Can I watch Gladiators?
Adult thoughts: Will I be back earlier enough on Sunday to do my washing? Will there be dickheads?

Yes, we think very differently now.

I don’t remember when things changed; when antibacterial hand wash started mattering more to me than my mobile phone, or when I first wanted to bail on a trip to the cinema on the off-chance that somebody might sniff during the film… but now that we’re here there’s no turning back.

But thankfully it doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun, we’re just a little more prescriptive. If you can find us a wedding party with comfortable chairs, a steady supply of H2O, sparklingly clean toilets and with a minimal number of dickheads on the guest list, then you’re in for quite the party.

And if there happens to be some Boyzone on the playlist then that’s even better. I’ve been working on a little something I think you’ll enjoy…

Relationships: Six ways to help keep things interesting

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Bunting

I’ve read dozens of women’s magazines about ways to make a relationship more exciting.

And they all suggest similar things – weekends away, writing each other love letters, getting dressed up and pretending to be completely different people for an evening…

And that’s all well and good but what if you don’t have the time, money and interest in fancy dress required to make them happen? What if your idea of role play is having him fill the dishwasher while you play on the X-Box for once?

The problem with these suggestions is that they don’t cater for those of us wishing to spice up the mundane. What a relationship needs is small scale, every day gestures to keep things fresh.

So, seeing as lady mags refuse to do it for us, I have stepped up and written some suggestions of my own. Follow these steps and see daily life move from monotony to out-of-this-world excitement before your very eyes. You’re welcome, ladies.

1. Serve snacks in your very best vessels

So what if all you’ve got to offer for pudding is a packet of Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons? It doesn’t matter that it’s not a homemade trifle or a hand-crafted tart, all you need is to bring out one of your best bowls (you know, the ones that don’t have any cracks in at all) and all of a sudden pudding has become dessert. You’ll be so blown away by the effect it has on the atmosphere in your house, you’ll be looking for a waiter to ask for the bill.

2. Schedule at least one night a week when you won’t fall asleep in front of the telly

Now, this will take some planning but it’s well worth the effort. Think how amazing it’ll be to have just one evening where you don’t wake up dazed and confused on the sofa at midnight to the sound of your other half shouting from the bedroom “I won’t call you again – please just come to bed!” Think how amazed he’ll be to see you conscious for an entire night – you might even get to see a whole television programme together! All you’ll need to make this happen is an early night every night for the week leading up to the event, a bowl of water on hand for face-splashing purposes, and something extraordinarily compelling to watch on TV. I recommend Don’t Tell The Bride.

3. Make outlandish culinary suggestions

The secret to a happy relationship is to integrate the element of surprise into everyday life. For example, when my husband got home the other day, I suggested that we ate a sauce I’d originally made to go with cod, with steak. I KNOW. And then, when he was already dazzled, I floated the idea that perhaps we could explore other sauces to liven up our dinners. If that doesn’t keep him coming back for more, I don’t know what will.

4. Incorporate jokes into everyday life

“Would you like a little bit of chocolate?” he says.

“No, I’d like LOADS!” I say.

“Are you in the bedroom?” I say.

“No,” he says, clearly sitting in the lounge.

“Oh I just assumed you were, seeing as THE LIGHT IS STILL ON IN THERE.”

NB: Sarcasm can be considered relationship kryptonite when used incorrectly so think carefully before deploying it. Always ensure the person you’re dealing with realises you’re trying to be funny and that you’re not just being mean.

5. Suggest very small-scale home improvements

Some people might think redecorating a room or building a conservatory is the perfect way to liven up a relationship. Those people do not live here. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to make our home better, we just want to do it at a rate we can handle – i.e. very, very slowly. Today, for example, I suggested we put the garden bunting we received as a wedding gift up on the fence. We did it together, it took us ten minutes (after which we both had to have a sit down) and we can now bask in our domestic success until the autumn – winner!

6. Make him find loyalty points as exciting as you do 

A woman with an eye for a bargain is worth more to a relationship than 20 mini-breaks, and that’s a fact. Sure it’s not something for the early dating days – nobody wants to have a chat about your most recent Advantage Card points coup on a first date, but once you’re living together, a money-saving win classes as high quality banter. And what could bring more joy to a relationship than knowing you’ve made that saving together – that your combined efforts are the reasons you’re going to the cinema for free, or purchasing baked beans at half the usual retail price? Splashing your cash only gets you so far, it’s 241 coupons that are at the heart of a truly happy marriage.

Well, if those tips don’t add a touch of spice to your relationship then I don’t know what will. And sure, you can still partake in the odd weekend away or love letter writing marathon should you wish, but it’s these bad boys that will keep you going through the mundanity of modern life.

And of course, you can always try a touch of role play should it take your fancy. My current favourite costume involves my pyjamas, dressing gown, slippers and pretending to be a woman so exhausted she just falls asleep as soon as you turn on the television. I’m not sure it’s quite what Cosmopolitan had in mind.

Friendship: It’s about quality not quantity

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IMG_6367It’s a strange moment when you suddenly stop worrying about whether you’ve got enough friends.

For years it’s a genuine concern. If you have a party, will anybody come? Do you get enough text messages that aren’t just from your mum or Domino’s Pizza? And exactly how many non-family birthday cards did you get last year?

At school, it always felt like size mattered in the chums department. The bigger the group you were a part of, the smaller the chance that you would find yourself sitting alone in French with nobody to tell that you’d been “à la piscine” at the weekend.

And at university a heavy group of pals meant people to sit sleepy-eyed with in lectures, to consume large sandwiches with at obscure times of the day, and to go out with of a Wednesday evening, rather than sitting at home doing a glossy magazine quiz about which FRIENDS character best reflects your personality. You already knew the answer to that anyway. (Gunther.)

And that’s not to undermine those friendships – they’re the making of some of the best days of your life – it’s just impossible to keep up with that volume of people once real life starts getting in the way.

The combination of going to work, eating meals, sorting through your post, washing clothes, filling the dishwasher, entering online competitions, watching The Magaluf Weekender, and actually going to sleep for more than four hours a night dominates most of the week. It’s a wonder you can keep on top of what’s going on with you, let alone anybody else.

So if you do manage to spend time with another human being – aside from your colleagues, the dude at the sorting office and your grocery delivery man – it’s because you really want to.

And now that you’re an adult, though you don’t demand much of that person in terms of time, you do when it comes to quality of friendship.

If I meet up with a pal and I ask how they are, I’m looking for a proper answer. I’m not looking for a fluffy “Yeah sure everything’s fine – shall we get the chicken?” response (although my answer will of course always be Yes), I want: “Right, strap in for a full-blown analysis of my life”. If I didn’t care then I wouldn’t have blocked out my Thursday night – you do know that Eastenders is shown on Thursday evenings, right?

And of course it works both ways. I want to know the ins and outs of what’s happening with you and then you, dear friend, are going to get the precise same from me. I have a husband who doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of “Please unplug the iron”, a fringe I can’t control, and a marshmallow habit I fear is getting out of hand – who else am I going to talk to about this sh*t?

A good catch up with a good friend is better for your soul than any drug, massage or – dare I say it – confectionery item money can buy. And the truth is that, at this age, most of us would rather spend our time with the buddies we know we can really chew the fat with – metaphorical and literal (and ideally BBQ sauce-covered) – than spend an evening with 50 people we hardly know just so that Facebook can see how popular we are.

Because those are the chums that are really worth giving up a night in front of the telly for. And that, my friend, is no small compliment.

How’s married life? Exactly the same.

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Charlotte and Leon 2013_ Ceremony Photograph _68Aside from “When are you going to have a baby?”, “Are you pregnant yet?” and “Will you name your firstborn after me?”, “How’s married life?” is the question I get asked most frequently.

I don’t know what people think will happen when you get married but, in my case at least, it hasn’t changed anything at all. Sure, I got a new surname and now spend most of the day trying to remember what I’m called, and I had a ring put on my finger that has to stay there forever or the world with explode (or something like that) but otherwise things are just as they were before.

But that’s a good thing. And here’s why:

1. That’s why you got married in the first place
Getting married means: I want to be with you as I know you for the rest of my life. It doesn’t mean: marry me and then immediately change into somebody else to help keep things interesting. The fact that you get to spend your life with somebody exactly as you find them (with perhaps just a few small wardrobe improvements) is one of the main reasons marriage is so popular. There’s that, the fact that you no longer have to pretend to like nightclubs, and knowing that there will always be someone there to help you take the bin out.

2. You’ll face enough change together as it is 
Life is full of surprises – some of them good, such as the release of Cadbury’s Pebbles (have you tried them? They’re delicious) and some of them bad, like when Coronation Street gets cancelled because of sport. But that’s OK because whatever comes up, you’ll take it on as a duo, so the least you can do is remain the one consistent thing in each other’s lives. If you got married, changed into different people and then ITV altered its television schedule, do you really think you could handle it?

3. If you were going to change you’d have done it by now  
Remember all those hours you put in at the start of the relationship? The showers, the shaving, the pretending to be up for watching Transformers when you’d have preferred to just stare at the cinema ticket for two hours instead? Couldn’t keep that up for too long, could you? No, after a few months you settled into being real people – with opinions that differ! And bad habits you refuse to change! Like his inexplicable love for leaving boxer shorts in the middle of the bathroom floor Every. Single. Morning! And if you thought marriage was going to change any of that, I’m afraid that you were mistaken. Marriage changes nothing, it just means there will be somebody there to comment on all of your faults for the rest of your life.

4. It’s OK that you don‘t have any news 
You have to accept that from the moment you said ‘I do’, you became the least interesting people in the world. Whilst the engagement is all “Oh my god!” and “How did he do it?!” and “How many strippers do you want on your hen do?”, your marriage will only spark a reaction if you co-create a human or start asking your friends to put their keys in a bowl when they arrive at your house for a dinner party. So it’s best to just take advantage of those first few months – sit back, relax and enjoy being out of the limelight. And if the only news you have to share is that you’ve started watching Modern Family or that you’ve discovered that ten is the optimum number of marshmallows to have with a hot chocolate, then so be it.

So if you want to have an interesting conversation with a newly-wed, don’t ask them what married life’s like, ask them what’s good on telly at the moment or what snacks they can recommend – they’ll have so much more to say. And if you think you can see a bump forming around her middle, I recommend checking the bin for sweet wrappers before putting yourself forward as a namesake.

Women’s magazines: Which ones are aimed at me?

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Magazines

My relationship with magazines started with Shout. Remember Shout? Ah, it was great.

I would attach every set of stickers that came with it to my bedroom door (much to my mum’s horror) and stare at PJ and Duncan, Paul Nicholls and Boyzone each night as I drifted off to sleep. Then came the wonderful Smash Hits and a weekly instalment of lyrics for me to use to sing along to the Spice Girls and Peter Andre like the totally cool dude that I was back then.

Then I moved on to Sugar and Bliss and learnt that – hey guess what – other girls get bad skin/knotty hair/inexplicably angry once a month, and that we were all agreed that farting – or ‘parping’ as they called it – in front of another human being was definitely the single worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody EVER.

But then I became a grown up. And with more and more mags to choose from these days, it’s hard to know exactly which ones are aimed at me. What publication should a 28-year-old married woman who thinks the fact that she still wears Converse trainers means she’s right on trend and that Coronation Street is cutting edge television be reading, I wonder?

So, in the interests of research, yesterday I ventured out and bought five magazines to help me find the answer: Grazia, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Red and Glamour.

There’s something so wonderfully indulgent about buying lots of glossies at once, like all I’m going to do for the rest of the day is sip hot chocolate and glide through the pages in front of a roaring fire. Sadly I don’t have a fire, only radiators, and if I am drinking hot chocolate, I tend to neck it whilst throwing a large marshmallow down with every gulp, so my consumption of these reading materials was less glamorous than you might think but I still had a very nice time.

And whilst I was reading them I noticed five things:

1. Grown-up magazines don’t come with packs of free stickers (more’s the pity).
2. I now enjoy looking at clothes in magazines more than I do in shops. I can sit down whilst I’m doing it, eat a chocolate bar at the same time, and fool myself into thinking that I still have a size 8 waist (though the size of the chocolate bar I eat tends to make that illusion rather short lived);
3. People are still talking about twerking (and I’m definitely still too old to try it);
4. Magazines will never run out of things to write about sex;
5. Reading this many glossies at once could prove to be a very expensive habit.

And I loved it. I stared at shoes I can’t afford, I read an article about the importance of empathy that I enjoyed, I noted that ankle boots and boyfriend jeans are now considered to be a perfect match and quietly disagreed, and I read a review of The Wolf of Wall Street that made me want to see it even more than I already did. I might do this every Saturday.

And I realised that there is thankfully still plenty out there for me. OK the fashion has changed a little bit (although I notice crop-tops still haven’t disappeared back to the nineties where they belong), the celebrities I read about are new (what ever happened to Shampoo?) and Sugar never suggested I consider quitting my job and setting up my own business (school was kind of a non-negotiable commitment). But my reasons for enjoying them are still the same – for a little light relief, a quick fix of celebrity, and to maybe even learn a thing or two. It’s just a shame they don’t include song lyrics any more so I guess I’ll have to google them like everybody else.

As to which magazines are aimed at me, I guess the good news is that the answer is all of them; there was something in every single one that I enjoyed. Granted there were also a few bits that were of less interest – with a chocolate habit like mine, features about diets and exercise regimes are never going to be my thing – but a quick turn of the page and I was back onto something more up my street.

My only disappointment was that none of them included any pictures of Boyzone for me to put up so I suppose I’ll just have to find my own. My bedroom door’s looking awfully bare.

10 things that should not happen during your first three months of marriage

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10 things that should not happen during your first three months of marriage1. You get a sore throat that makes your voice deeper than his.

2. You get new blinds. Because when people ask what’s new with you, the answer is that you got new blinds. Nobody cares about your blinds.

3. You discover that one of the walls in your flat is riddled with damp and that you’re going to have to rip out your entire kitchen to fix it. Some of the dust might get on the blinds.

4. You find a wall of mould behind your wardrobe, that all your clothes are covered in mould and that if you’d just opened the chuffing window every once in a while this never would have happened.

5. You discuss the damp and mould situation over email and text message. I understand some people are into sexting; the only photographs we’ve sent each other recently are of dehumidifiers.

6. You spend more time speaking to British Gas about your temperamental boiler than to each other.

7. You fail to notice that your prescription for The Pill is running out, have to spend a week without it, and turn into an, albeit short-term, psychopath.

8. You develop a daily craving for boiled eggs and soldiers and start every post-work conversation with an update on the gooey-ness of that morning’s breakfast. He is not interested.

9. You get a water bill. Nobody deserves a water bill.

10. You’re forced to say “Well, thank goodness the wedding is over!” when you discover how much cash you have to spend on all of the above. Eggs don’t come cheap, you know.

What a bride is really thinking two weeks before her wedding

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IMG_27461. Is it ok to watch TV when you get back to your hotel room on your wedding night?

2. I wonder if I can get away with putting a label that says ‘Don’t eat any of the red ones’ on the sweets table.

3. Will I have time to watch the Coronation Street omnibus while I’m getting ready?

4. The honeymoon will be the perfect opportunity to grow my over-plucked eyebrows back.

5. If only you could legitimately put DVD box sets on a wedding list.

6. I’m so glad I didn’t get a wedding dress that meant I had to reduce my cheese consumption.

7. I can’t wait to let the power that comes with wearing a wedding dress go straight to my head.

8. I hope nobody tries to make friends with us on our honeymoon.

9. Bank balance-wise, eloping would have been a much better choice.

10. The plus-side to the wedding being over is that I’ll have more ambitious things on my to-do list than ‘Find tongs small enough to pick a marshmallow out of a jar’.

11. Having so much time off emptying the dishwasher should not be the most exciting thing about going on a honeymoon. And yet it is.

Honeymoon booking: The curse of the online review

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IMG_2897We’re planning our honeymoon.

With the trials and tribulations of deciding how many sausages to allocate each guest at the wedding day barbecue, and which hairdresser is resilient enough to take on my mane, the promise of a massive holiday is doing wonders for morale.

We’re going to Bali. It’s very far away, so any unpaid wedding suppliers will have to really want their cash to travel for 17 hours to get it; it promises to be sunny, otherwise I’ll demand my money back; and, as far as I know, the Northern Line doesn’t run that far, and I could really do with a break from it.

Now that we’ve booked the flights, we need to choose where to stay. And, thanks to the internet, we can peruse every hotel, beach and bathroom Bali has to offer from the comfort of our lounge. But, like it or not, we can also see what every joker with an internet connection has to say about it.

Most of the time, reviews are very useful. I want to hear from real people whether a hotel’s sheets were clean and the doors were on their hinges, or if they would sooner sleep under a bridge than stay there again, but there are some details that should be left on the plane.

And so, I’ve put together a list of questions wannabe reviewers should ask themselves before they start typing, to save future holidaymakers some time…

1) Have you actually stayed at the hotel in question?
Now, one would assume this was an obvious requirement but apparently not. When investigating why a hotel we were considering was deemed ‘terrible’ by a reviewer, we discovered it was because they had ‘popped in for an evening drink and been very disappointed with the fruit cocktails which did not contain anywhere near enough tequila!’ Firstly, unless you checked in and spent a night there, I don’t want to hear from you. And secondly, maybe just ask for a bit more Tequila…?

2) Did you check a map before you booked?
You have nobody but yourself to blame if you are disappointed at the proximity of your hotel to the sights. Yes, I know you should be able to trust the words the hotel (whose main aim in life is to get your cash) wrote on their website, but if you didn’t take a millisecond to google the place and do a bit of measuring, then you deserve to be a 15 minute walk from the beach (instead of the advertised seven).

3) Would you have preferred to spend your holiday at home?
It seems that some people just go on holiday to be frustrated at how much harder it is to live their lives exactly as they do at home, abroad.
“The selection of TV channels was ludicrous! There was only news and foreign programmes I couldn’t understand!”
“It took 10 MINUTES to log onto the hotel Wi-Fi. Margaret and I were spitting feathers!”
One would hope that having paid to fly to the other side of the world, you could find something better to do than tweet your disappointment at not being able to watch QI repeats on Dave, but if not, I’m not sure it’s grounds for a one star rating.
If you’re on a business trip then I understand – you need your screens – but otherwise a couple of weeks without the internet will be good for you. Especially if you’re just going to use it to write a review about how long it took you to log on.

4) Did you converse with any human beings?
I appreciate that if the mattress was made of glass, the food saw you bedridden for three days, or the receptionist told you to bugger off on arrival, then a bad review is justified. But if you just didn’t bother to speak up when simple things that could have been resolved annoyed you, just so that you could write a bitchin’ review when you got home, I don’t want to hear about it. Yes, it is frustrating when hotels don’t telepathically work out that you’d like a second towel for your sun lounger, or that your toilet roll has run out in the middle of the night, but if they’ve got a nice pool, are near the sea, and have a healthy approach to cleanliness, I’m probably still going to consider staying there.

And so, after we’d filtered through the good, the bad and the shouldn’t-ever-be-allowed-near-a-computer-again of the online review world, we made a selection. For the first five nights of our trip, we will be staying in a hotel that, according to TripAdvisor, 664 people think is Excellent/Very good, and that 39 people think is Terrible/Poor.

I can only hope that the majority is right. Otherwise, the internet will be hearing from me.

Wedding dilemmas: The guest list

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IMG_2901They say it’s the hardest part of any wedding. And they’re right.

I thought the dress would be difficult. Finding an item in which you look so incredible people gasp for air in your presence sounds tough. But it turns out that anyone will look nice in a wedding dress. Even someone who still has a skin condition only babies get 27 YEARS after they were born.

And finding a venue was easier than I thought too. They have food and tables and are willing to serve you booze until the early hours of the morning. What’s not to like?

But the guest list is tricky. It’s sensitive, it’s complicated and – above all else – it determines whether you’ll be so strapped for cash after the honeymoon that you have to eat your wedding cards to survive.

So how do you choose who to invite? There’s a lot of advice around about what justifies an invitation to a wedding: how long you’ve been friends, how close you are, the likelihood that they’ll buy you that Cath Kidston rolling pin you’ve had your eye on… but very little on how to rule people out. So here’s a check list to help slim down those numbers:

1) Do they get dangerously over-excited in the presence of food and booze?
It’s customary for guests to be given some kind of meal and beverage at a wedding. And if black or deep red were the colours brides wore then this may not be a problem, but white and cream are much less forgiving. One ketchupy paw here, another gravy soaked cheek there and all of a sudden your couture looks like a mucky tea towel. So choosing guests who don’t need hosing down after dinner is advisable.

2) Will they think it’s funny to shout out mid-ceremony?
When I’m standing at the altar and the shit is about to get real, I can’t imagine I’ll be in the mood for jokes. As entertaining as it is when somebody bursts in during a soap opera wedding at the ‘Does anybody have any reason why these two mugs should not be married?’ moment, I don’t think it would be so funny in real life. So if you’ve got a friend whose pursuit of laughs is likely to outweigh their fear of being punched in the face with a bouquet, maybe leave them off the list.

3) Would your fiancé be better off marrying them?
The groom’s final chance to make a run for it before the ball and chain is attached comes when he’s arrived at the venue and is watching the guests arrive. So be careful not to invite anyone who might make him think he’s made the wrong choice. For example, my other half likes festivals and camping and generally being sociable outdoors. I, on the other hand, don’t even like watching festival coverage on TV because all the mud makes me angry. So I won’t be inviting any women with a penchant for portaloos lest he realises at the last minute what he’s missing. Best to opt for your most offensive acquaintances to make sure you stand out as the best option.

4) Will they notice if the registrar’s eyes don’t match the centre pieces?
As a couple for whom it took more than 12 months to change the light bulb in our bedroom, I think it’s unlikely that we will be organised enough to ensure every detail of our wedding is perfect. And that’s fine as long as nobody mentions how much of a shame it is that the wedding vows are not written in the same font as the invitations, or that the sausages on the barbecue are not the exact pink of the flowers. So I recommend crossing off any perfectionists you know and prioritising your less observant friends and relatives – they won’t notice if the wedding car banner actually says ‘Just Barried’.

5) Can they dance?
The best thing about wedding receptions is that everyone lets their hair down and dances like idiots until their feet can take no more. And just as good singers are not welcome at karaoke, good dancers have no place at weddings. I want air punching and hip thrusting and the occasional robot. So if you’re as dangerous as I am on the dance floor, leave anybody with rhythm or co-ordination at home, they’ll just make you look bad.

So there you have it. It’s a cut throat approach but at least it’ll prevent you having to spend your big day in a marquee the size of Wales.

Or if you choose to opt out then just make sure you buy some honey. Card can be ever so tasteless on its own.

How to sober up in 10 seconds

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IMG_1799If you venture out of a Friday night, consume a cocktail or four and not much dinner, you may well feel a little dizzy on your arrival home. What one is looking for in this situation is a piece of toast, a sit down, and perhaps a calming bath. Upon my return last night this was exactly the trio I had in mind, and yet what I found when I opened the door was a very worried looking boyfriend (mine, to clarify) and a fair level of blood scattered around the flat.

A number of questions popped to mind at this sight, and it was only when he put his two bandaged fingers in front of me that I was at least able to confirm that there was a rational explanation. The expression on his face was similar to that of a child showing a grazed knee – unsure as to how he’d done so much damage, scared by the blood, and just starting to realise that it really really hurt. Of course the main difference is that there were no tears and no bike involved. No, this little injury occurred due to the accidental close proximity of a razor to the house keys in his bag. An eagerness to get in the front door and a lack of light led to what I understand was a very quick and sharp shredding of the tops of two digits. Let this be a lesson to us all.

If there is to be anything good to come of this unexpectedly bloody start to the weekend, let it be this: I am the most squeamish of people and really no use to anyone in the face of a physical crisis; something happens to my knees and my arms start to flap and I generally try to keep my eyes and ears closed ’til it’s all over. But I was pleased to find that when asked by my injured dear this morning if I would take a look at the damage to assess whether stitches would be required, I stepped up. I can only take this as a sign of true love because I can assure you it was not pretty. The other good thing is that the distraction of last night’s events managed to make my brain forget that consumption of cocktails usually means that it must make the room start spinning every time I close my eyes.

It’s nice to find the silver lining.