So, today I have narrowly escaped assault, been chased out of the local woodland by a crazed teenager carrying a big stick,and am now waiting to be interviewed by the police. Hi, how is your Sunday going?
It was partly my fault. I mean, I was out walking Rubin, and I know the ghetto estate behind our own green and leafy suburb is a no-go area on the weekends and out of school hours (well, anytime really, but particularly when there are likely to be gangs of restless teenagers wandering around with their tracksuits and their Buckfast), but on this pleasant and sunny Sunday afternoon I was all “how bad can it possibly be?”
People, it can be BAD.
Most of the walk was pretty uneventful. As we entered the home stretch though, and begun our approach to the Ghetto Superstore (situated next to the Ghetto Post Office, Ghetto Chinese Takeaway and Ghetto Chip Shop) I saw a whole gang of spotty adolescents hanging around outside (because standing outside the Ghetto Superstore is, like, SO the coolest thing you could ever hope to do with your life. GOD, I can’t wait until I’m cool enough to do that!), most of them dressed up as footballers and with lots of cheap gold jewellery rattling against their cans of lager. Yup, it’s Stereotypes-R-Us down the ghetto, I’ll tell you!
Seeing this blot on humanity appear on the horizon I stopped in my tracks. Given that my red hair and fluffy white Bichon Frise make me the natural target of the under-educated, I knew it would be sheer folly to try and walk past them, especially when they’d had all morning (when they should have been at church!) to get hyped up on Buckfast. So I turned right and plunged into the narrow strip of woods that buffers our estate from The Ghetto instead. This was not quite as crazy as it might sound: the woodland is actually quite pleasant – lots of squirrels have made their homes in the manky old sofas and burnt out prams – and it was created for the very purpose I was using it: giving the dog walkers and ramblers of the world somewhere far (well, actually quite close, but you know what I mean) from the smell of the Ghetto Chip shop to pass the time.
Today? Today it was not quite so pleasant. No, today, almost as soon as I got under the shade of the trees, I found myself accosted by a teenager with a BIG STICK. Seriously, it was huge – I actually think it was the branch of a large tree, and he was brandishing it like a baseball bat. “GIT OOTY MA WOOD!” (Translation: “Would you be so kind as to remove yourself from this woodland, please?”) he shouted, coming towards me menacingly. “IT’S MA WOOD! GIT OOT! OOOOT!” This, needless to say, was accompanied by much waving of the branch, threateningly. It was really quite thrilling.
What did I do? The wrong thing, obviously. Well look, I may have been being threatened in the middle of a wood, with no one around to hear me if I screamed (thus answering the age old “If an Amber screams in a wood and there’s only a mad Chav around to hear, does she make a noise?” question. Yes, she does make a noise, but then the chav kills her, the end.), but I was still me. I weighed up the options: me, 5’3″, scared, got a dog with me but it’s the Rubinman, who, to be honest, isn’t much use in a fight. My Opponent: about the same height, not scared, carrying a branch the size of my entire body, crazy, possibly drunk… It was no contest, really. I decided to run away, but first I decided to be characteristically stupid and yell at him to LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE OR I WILL CALL THE POLICE AND THEY WILL TOTALLY RESCUE ME, OK? Then I looked around to see if Superman was on his way to save me, but Superman must’ve been busy, so I turned and ran home like a girl.
Of course, my ill-advised bit of bravado had served only to enrage my assailant further. “GNNAAAARRRRR!” he roared, raising his branch above his head and running towards me full pelt. But I had started running away by then and, I dunno, maybe he realised he would never catch me or something? (I mean, I don’t like to boast, but I was on my primary school’s running team, you know, and this one time the gym teacher told me I had “an athlete’s action”. I was 10 and have never been praised for my “action” since, but I have never forgotten that brief moment of glory). Anyway, he stopped following me and walked back to his friend (YES! THERE WERE TWO OF THEM! But the friend didn’t actually do anything, so he doesn’t really count), but not before shouting to me that I was “LUCKY”. Yes, lucky.
Anyway, I made my trembling way back to the house and told my tale of woe to Terry, who told me to phone the police, because seriously, what has the world come to when a woman can’t walk her dog behind her house without being threatened by hooligans with branches, WHAT HAS IT COME TO PEOPLE? I wasn’t sure whether phoning the police would be an over-reaction, but because there’s been a lot of trouble in the ghetto lately, and because I am all about the drama, I did it anyway. “Why, an elderly person or small child could walk through those woods and be killed, just like I almost was!” I thought. “And also: how very dare they threaten me and my dog?”
So, I called the police, who, despite sounding not at all interested in what I was saying, told me they’d “send someone round”. Well, I’ve been waiting all afternoon, but no police. Maybe they’re too busy out chasing real criminals, or maybe they just don’t care that I could have died. Either way, no more ghetto walks for me, I think. Sorry, Rubin…
Remember when I told you I was frightened of flying? Well, I’m even more frightened now, folks, and you know who’s to blame? Scary-ass airplanes are to blame, that’s who. And, more specifically, their pilots, who sometimes choose to drop you out of the sky like a BRICK, and next thing you know, you’re screaming along the runway sideways, your life flashing before your eyes as you adopt the crash position and wait for the “Brace! Brace!” command, only it doesn’t come and you’re wondering if you’re dead already, and you’re thinking “I KNEW we shouldn’t have got on this plane, why did we get on this plane?” and… But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to the beginning, methinks.
Well, our flight to Lanzarote started off badly. Not so much because it was a bad flight, you understand – just because I? Am a bad passenger. Seriously, never fly with me, you will regret it SO much. Having almost welded Terry’s shiny new wedding ring onto his finger during takeoff, I plugged myself into my iPod, opened my book and grimly settled in for the journey, breaking off every ten minutes or so to throw my hands in the air (like I just didn’t care, folks!) and shriek, “OH MY GOD I THINK WE’RE GOING DOWN!” God, but I would hate to have to sit next to me on a flight… Terry, meanwhile, nursed his sore hand, made friends with the Australian guy in the seat next to him and proceeded to ignore me. So far, so totally par for the course when it comes to me and flying.
What wasn’t quite so normal, however, was the way we landed. Now, as frightened as I am of flying, I have always quite liked landings. My logic, flawed though it is, is that every minute that takes us closer to the ground is a minute to be welcomed, so I generally try to grit my teeth, grind Terry’s hand to a pulp and let the pilot get on with it. This pilot, though? This pilot wasn’t so much for getting on with it. In fact, so totally un-fussed about the whole “landing the plane” thing was this pilot that I’m pretty sure he FORGOT TO DO IT until the last possible second. When that second arrived, and presumably thinking something along the lines of “Oooops! If I don’t land now, I’ll have to fly to Africa,” our pilot dropped the plane like a rock onto the runway. Cue the above “We’re all going to die,” scenario.
As you read this, of course, you’re probably thinking, “Well, Amber is an idiot frightened of flying anyway, she would think the landing was scary.” Let me just tell you, though, that it wasn’t just me. Or just me and the other scardey-cat passengers. Because the thing about this landing was that, as well as landing so heavily that everyone screamed and the plane almost blew apart (no, really), we also kind of landed sideways. And continued moving sideways down the runway. At about a million miles an hour, with everyone bracing themselves against the seat in front and the brakes screaming and the body of the plane shaking, and… Well, you get the picture. When we finally stopped (and for a moment there we didn’t think that we were going to stop), everyone burst into a spontaneous round of applause, and it wasn’t that kind of “Whee! We’re on our holidays!” kind of applause you sometimes get on flights, it was more of a “Thanks for not sending us all to a fiery death, you b*****d!” kind of applause. Yeah.
Once we got off the plane (me pushing small children and elderly ladies out of the way in my desperation to GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE), things got better – especially for Terry, who was really pretty sick of me by now, and we’d only been married for a day at this point. Oops. There was one more challenge in store for us, however, as we collected our hire car (a Renault Clio) and prepared to find our villa in the dark, travelling down unlit roads. We were staying in Tias, which is about ten minutes away from the airport, so naturally the journey took a good 35 minutes and involved us driving to a completely different village. D’oh! Finally, though, we arrived…
The villa was lovely, and much bigger and nicer than we’d been expecting. And I totally forgot to take any pictures of the inside, so I can only show you a totally random shos of the outside. From the balcony, we could see right down to the sea, and over to Fuerteventura. You don’t get to see that either, though, because I didn’t bother to take a picture of it.
The next morning we headed down into Puerto del Carmen for breakfast, which we had at a little cafe next to the sea, where we finally started to relax for the first time in… oooh, about three years – especially given that they gave us two complimentary shots of some kind of strong liqueur after we paid. By the time we got into the car to come back to the villa, though, it was clear that something was not right, and by that I mean “something was not right WITH ME”. And no, I wasn’t drunk. This time.
You see, I was freezing. Absolutely freezing. And while the weather wasn’t blisteringly hot, it wasn’t exactly cold, either. I, however, was. Cold, that is. And also sniffly, sneezy, achingy of limb, and with a throat that felt like I’d swallowed razorblades. Sharp ones. Yes, it was the cold, but on the plus side, I’m pretty sure this cold had intended to arrive on our wedding day, and just got its dates wrong, arriving on the honeymoon instead, so ha! Take that, The Cold!
The cold was to last for all of the first week, keeping both me and Terry awake at night with the constant coughing, and finally being passed onto Terry on about day five. Unfortunately he got it worse than me, and had to remain in bed for almost an entire day. So that sucked. Luckily, the cold almost always got a bit better during the day, so it didn’t stop us enjoying the holiday, or taking lots more pictures – bet you’re glad! Anyway, that concludes part one of my honeymoon report. Expect many more “parts” in the coming days, and try not to hate me too much for it. Meanwhile, I leave you with two of my favourite pictures from the honeymoon:
1. The Bimbo sandwich bread in the Hyper Dino supermarket – because everyone loves a Bimbo Sandwich, no?
2. The little fake lamb and goat in the garden of the villa next door. WHY?
 (No, it’s not another entry about the wedding. Yes, there will be more entries about the wedding, though. Sorry.)
As amazed as I am to report it, the Blogosphere (yes, I hate that word too. Why am I using it, then? Who knows!) did not grind to a halt while I was off getting married and buying up half of Zara honeymooning. In fact, not only did the blogosphere continue to exist, but it did GROW! Yes, the lovely people at Shiny Media grew another blog. It’s called Dollymix and it’s the blog written for and by intelligent women, and also: me.
I’m currently down to write two columns a week for Dollymix, on Tuesdays and Thursdays (note to self: oh crap, that means there’s one due tomorrow, doesn’t it?) and will be doing odd (probably very odd, knowing me) bits and pieces here and there too. So far you can read my mutterings on being childfree, getting married (did I mention I got married recently? Would you like to see some photos?) being a redhead (yes, that old chestnut. I mean, ginger) and also: what I would do if I was Queen. (I should SO be Queen…). If you’re sick of me (and I certainly am), there’s also lots of lovely columns from the likes of Linda Jones and my other Shiny friends, so go and read them and that’s an order.
Other things I’ve done since coming back from honeymoon:
- Looked obsessively at the wedding pictures
- Bought a whopping great garden shed and garden furniture, because now that we’re an old married couple, we’re all about the garden. Ahem.
- Played with the Nintendo Wii three of our guests very generously bought us as a wedding present. (And let me tell you, I love the Wii. Love it. When I go to sleep at night? I can still hear the theme tune from Wii Sports playing in my head, I really can.)
- Slept. Quite a lot, actually.
- Looked at the wedding pictures again.
- Filled in a credit card application (no, mum, I am not getting more debt, I’m just getting a better interest rate) and gave my marital status as "married"
- Ummm…. I was sure I’d done other things, but actually? I haven’t.
Things I have not done:
- Anything to do with the garden because GOD, I hate gardening
- Sorted out the thank you cards – it is next on the ‘To Do’ list, honestly
- Any kind of work other than blogging
So, yes. Better do some actual work then…
Just in case you haven’t seen enough of them, and you’re secretly thinking, “God, I wish I could see EVEN MORE of Amber’s wedding photos!” I’ve finally finished putting them onto Flickr, and you can see them here. Don’t say I’m not good to you…
I am back! And also: married! Woo hoo!
Since I got back I’ve been trying to think of some nice, neat little way to sum up the wedding, but actually? I can’t. It’s just not possible to put it all into words without repeating that old cliche about it being the best day of your life, so because I’ve never been one to shy away from a cliche when it’s required, I’m just going to trot it out anyway: dudes, it was the best day of our lives. So far, anyway. I mean, I hope we will have many more “bests” to come, but this one will take some beating, mostly because it involved all (or most, at least) of the people we love being there with us and enjoying themselves, and that’s a pretty cool thing to happen. Oh, and because I got to wear a Vera Wang gown, obviously.
Because I’m quite old now and tend to forget things, I’m going to write down all of my memories of the day now so that I can read it back in my old age and remember it all. This will probably be quite boring for most of you, so because I’m all about keeping you entertained I’ve sprinkled some of the photos through this report too. These are the official photos, courtesy of the wonderful Michael Bennet, who went above and beyond the call of duty and even hung around until after the wedding breakfast (he’d only been booked until before the meal started) to take some more pictures because we were running late (not my fault!) and he didn’t get the chance to take all of the shots he wanted. So, needless to say, if you ever find yourself in need of a photographer, he’s your man. On with the show…
I’d been staying at my parents’ house the night before the wedding and, predictably, hadn’t managed to get much sleep, so I was up bright and early. Amazingly, given that we live in Scotland and last seen the sun in 1987, it was the most glorious spring day we could have wished for, and it stayed that way all day. Crazy.
We had a quick coffee and then began the strangely stressful process of loading up the car with all of the flowers and other bits of Stuff that we’d need. At this point my mum freaked out slightly, pointing out that my ripped jeans and comfy cardi would look a bit, well, crap, really in the “bride getting ready” pictures. “Ah, but we won’t have any pictures taken until I’m in my dress,” I pointed out, wise old owl that I am. Nevertheless, my mum gave me a white shirt of hers to wear. I think the look she was probably going for here was the “crisp white shirt and jeans” look, but actually, the shirt was too big so I ended up looking more “frumpy schoolgirl who is SO getting detention for wearing scruffy jeans with her baggy shirt”. I went along with this quite happily, secure in the knowledge that no pictures would be taken of me in this outfit, and that’s why I am now the proud owner of a whole set of pictures of me in my mum’s shirt, looking disheveled and also: pregnant. AND my hair is unbrushed – go me!
Anyway, we finally made it into the car and were only five minutes late picking up Maria, my flower girl, before heading to Orocco Pier. My parents had checked into their room the night before and had taken my dress, shoes etc there, so they were already waiting for me. Quick picture of me, Maria and That White Shirt:
At this point I called my best friend, Stephanie and her husband Nick, who had also checked into the hotel the night before, and they popped round to see us. It was the first time I’d seen them in a couple of years (they live in the south of England, by the way, I’m not just a really crap friend. Well, I mean, I am a really crap friend, but not that crap…) and she’s now 12 weeks pregnant, so needless to say it was really great to catch up with them (Maria: “Auntie Amber? You talk a LOT.”) and at this point I started getting really excited thinking of all of the other people we’d be seeing that day, some of whom we hadn’t seen for years. (Yeah, I am a really crap friend, come to think of it…)
  
Anyway, Stephanie and Nick left to let us get ready and my mum and dad started ferrying all of the bits and pieces they’d brought to decorate the reception room with downstairs. I, meanwhile, started putting my makeup on, but disaster struck! The weals? The ugly-ass red weals, that had been the very bane of my life for the entire week before the wedding? Well, they’d cleared up in time for the day itself, but they had not left without a fight, and they’d left the skin underneath my eyes drier than a camel’s behind. This made the process of putting on my makeup pretty damn stressful: because I hadn’t slept well the night before I’d also been blessed with eye bags bigger than my honeymoon suitcase, and also: wrinkles. Could I cover them up? No, I could not. So I concentrated on freaking the hell out, instead.
By the time my mum, dad and Maria returned, we discovered that we’d somehow been caught in some weird kind of time warp, and it was now time for the photographer to arrive and take his “bride getting ready” pictures. This was a problem because the bride? Was totally not ready. No one takes pictures of me without my makeup, so he took some pictures of my shoes and tiara instead, and also, those buttons on the back of my dress that the mad seamstress had cut off and my poor mum had had to laboriously sew back on:
See! Pretty buttons! Nice buttons! And yah booh sucks to the seamstress who didn’t want them!
Meanwhile, my mum, now working like a whirling dervish, did Maria’s hair, did her own hair, did my hair and also made up my bouquet. GOD, I was bad to my mum, wasn’t I? Sorry, mum.
 
Finally, she dressed Maria, dressed me, dressed herself (my dad managed to dress himself), and we were good to go.
All the time we’d been getting ready, my parents had been quite stressed (well, you can see why, really, especially in my mum’s case), and I’d been totally calm. “I’m the calmest one of us all!” I said smugly, before almost instantly becoming totally NOT CALM. In fact, by the time these pictures were taken? I was totally freaking  the hell out.
For some reason the whole “getting ready” thing had been weirdly rushed – both my mum and I commented later that we’d both spent more time doing our makeup for work than we did for the wedding – and by the time I was dressed I was starting to feel so emotional I was convinced I was going to cry through the whole thing. This was not helped AT ALL, of course, by the absolutely MASSIVE SPOT I found on my shoulder minutes after I finished getting ready. My dad did his best with Rimmel Hide the Blemish, but that spot has a staring role in many of the wedding photos. I named him “Jim”.
So, we were all ready to go, but the venue? Was not. Some of the guests, you see, had had trouble parking, so we were running late. We ran 25 minutes late, to be exact, during which I worked myself up into an absolute frenzy of emotion, and Terry, who was by this time waiting at the altar, so to speak, thought I wasn’t going to show.
Eventually it was time to go downstairs and meet the registrar, who was really lovely and got me to sign some paperwork saying that Terry wasn’t my brother, and we weren’t both the same gender and stuff. Oh, and we collected Jonathan, my little page boy (and nephew) at this point, too:
He is so cute you just want to eat him. Individually, Jonathan and Maria are both super-cute, but together, they are almost criminally cute:
Hee!
By now we really were ready to go and I was constantly choking back tears, as was my poor mum, who left us at this point to go and join the guests, looking like she was about to start bawling her eyes out. My dad, meanwhile, was left to strong-arm me off downstairs to get married:
While we were planning the wedding we’d decided that immediately before the ceremony we’d blast out The Proclaimers’ Let’s Get Married, to get everyone in the mood. As we stood waiting outside the door of the room I could hear it start up, but because I was so freakishly emotional by this point, I couldn’t listen to it, so I concentrated instead on holding my bouquet according to my mum’s careful instructions, which involved making sure the ribbon was pointing in a certain direction and stuff. I obviously concentrated on this really hard, because when I finally did walk in, for reasons totally unknown to me, I was carrying said bouquet AT SHOULDER LEVEL, and grinning like a loon. At least I didn’t cry, though.
This, as it turned out, was more than could be said for Terry. While I became weirdly calm as soon as I walked in, when I got to the end of the aisle it soon became clear (mostly because he wouldn’t look at me) that Terry was as emotional as I have ever seen him. In fact, while he was saying his vows, he actually had to reach out and turn my head away so I wasn’t looking at him. Or actually, now I come to think of it, maybe that was because of my totally rubbish attempt at concealing the red weals? Hmmm….
Anyway, the ceremony passed in a bit of a blur. My mum read the lyrics to The Beatles’ In My Life, which was also our first dance , and Stephanie read a poem called Love, and these readings almost made Terry and I start sobbing at the top of the aisle. The day was saved, however, when Terry, asked to “solemnly and sincerely declare”, decided to “sinsolemly swear” instead, and all of the “I’m totally going to cry RIGHT NOW” emotion was replaced with that slightly-hysterical “I’m going to laugh manically for about three hours, even although it wasn’t even that funny” feeling, which made it pretty difficult for me to sinsolemly declare anything when the time came…
Anyway, finally the vows were said, we were declared woman and husband, and it was time to sign the register, which we did with a large entourage:
I hope you’re all still reading this, by the way. I will ask questions at the end, you know… So, we walked out to Queen’s Teo Torriate (which is also what I walked in to, although I walked into an orchestral version), and headed back upstairs for more photos and also: champagne:
Barely had the champagne touched my lips, but Terry and I were being hustled outside for even more photos. I bet y’all are sick of the photos now, huh? I bet you’re all feeling REALLY sorry you even ASKED to see photos of this damn wedding. Well tough, because there’s PLENTY more where these came from…
So, remember that glorious, spring weather we were having? Well, we were still having it. While it was very, very sunny, though, it was also just a tad windy, and it was at this point that my hairdo decided that its work here was done, thanks very much, this wasn’t what it had signed up for, and it wasn’t going to put up with it for ONE SECOND LONGER. So in the rest of the photos I look like I’ve just newly escaped from the madhouse, and I retained this look throughout the cutting of the cake AND the wedding breakfast. GO me! Terry, meanwhile, managed to develop really painful blisters on both heels:
At least the Forth Bridge looked nice, though:
OK, so even I’m getting bored with this now, so I won’t say much about the rest of the day other than that the speeches made me cry (other than the best man’s which had us all in tears of laughter – John did a “This is Your Life” style slide show of funny pictures of Terry, and it was fantastic), Terry made everyone cry (seriously, even the staff at the venue) and the food was absolutely fab. The evening reception passed in an absolute blur of trying to make sure I spent some time with each of the guests, dancing and, yes, drinking too much wine, which meant that I spent ‘Auld Lang Syne’ terrified that I was about to throw up on each and every single one of our guests. Now THAT would have been a dramatic end to the proceedings, no? Instead, I managed to remain a little (but not much) more dignity. Worry not, though: I’ll be back tomorrow to bore you with the honeymoon pictures, and they’re not even remotely dignified… Oh, and if you want to see even MORE wedding pictures, you’ll find them over at Flickr soon…
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