Procrastination

So, it’s Sunday and I have some work to do. That’s bad news, I know. It’s not bothering me too much, though – because I’m not actually doing the work. I made an executive decision not to go into the office (being at work on a Sunday? A bridge too far) and that I would write my briefing paper in my pyjamas at the dining room table.

Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t yet happened. My capacity for procrastination has expanded and refined since university. I now have tools at my disposal so spectacularly distracting that had they been in my life ten years ago, I would not have a degree today. Actually, it’s not that remarkable: so I’m watching TV on my laptop while surfing various interesting websites, no big deal, nothing out of the ordinary. Still, my paper is really not getting written.

Today I have spent way too much time trying to work out how to correctly pronounce the word ‘hadron’ so that I can talk about this at dinner tonight.

(It’s really nice of my friends to continue to be friends with me).

I’ve also been reading about the history of the Proms. DJ Ill and I went to a Prom last night, first time for both of us. It’s a long and well-loved tradition and has long been on my must-do list of quintessentially London activities.

They’re held at the Royal Albert Hall, another place I’d not yet visited. It’s big and round and beautifully ornate and it was all very exciting. The concert was lovely – the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing Roussel, Thea Musgrave, Debussy, and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor featuring this guy as a soloist.

The overall experience was just what I hoped for – excellent music in a beautiful setting, a crowd of prommers standing en masse in the middle of the floor and up in the gallery, soaking it up. No clapping between movements, strange chants at particular moments, everyone in high spirits, it was fabulous. That last link? Read it, seriously, it’s brilliant. Englishness at its absolute best:

"What you must never do is push in," says Trueman, a voluble twentysomething in thick glasses. "That's the sin against the Holy Spirit. That will not be forgiven. We queue.

Oh, yes you do. That whole article delights me more than I can say.

DJ Ill and I were a bit pathetic – unsure of how the whole Prom thing worked, I actually booked us seats a couple of weeks ago. While I was very happy to be able to sit in comfort and enjoy the music, I think I’m going to have to go back and try it the other way next year, to have a properly authentic Proms experience - taking my chances in the queue and frolicking with the hardcore.

Going to things like this is part of what I love most about living here. I’m reading this hilarious book at the moment, called - get this - London: The Novel and enjoying it immensely. It’s blockbusteriffic – certainly not the most literary of masterpieces, but a cracking read nonetheless. The historical content is woven into a saga-style story of several families - from Roman times to the present and all the eras in between. It’s helping to fuel the sense of delight that shivers through me as I walk through the streets of the city – knowing that this is where all kinds of fascinating things have been happening for centuries.

A friend and I went to the Tower the weekend before last – she hadn’t been for twenty years, I hadn’t been for ten. It’s been standing there for the better part of a thousand years, which is hard to wrap your head around. In the Jewel House, there are lots of sparkly shiny things that Kings and Queens have worn for centuries. I’m a Republican, for crying out loud. I don’t even believe in the monarchy. And yet, when I’m looking at the coronation spoon and hearing a helpful aide explain how it dates from the 12th century and is used to anoint each monarch with oil (which is concocted according to a special secret recipe known only to the Royal Chemist) after they’ve taken their oath, I can’t help but feel a little giddy.

There’s so much more that I haven’t even seen yet. I can’t wait to find out more. And who can think of writing a briefing paper when there are so many interesting things to read about?

Summer

Everyone goes on holiday in August. It's a phenomenon, the whole city effectively shuts down.

I was told that as a result, August is a great time to get things done. It's quiet and you get a chance to catch up and get things ready for the autumn. I know now that everyone who told me that is a lying liar who lies all the time. It's been busy. I've been working a lot. I'm luckier than most in that I actually really like my job, but still - it's tiring to be there all the time. Also, there's a bar in the building which is really not very good for my liver.

(Incidentally, the event that I wrote about in my last post? Went very, very well).

So, it's boring, but that's mostly what I've been up to since last we spoke. There has been plenty of fun too, you will be pleased to know. In roughly chronological order, the highlights of July and August have included:

- Travelling to Reims for Madam Fox's birthday, where we explored the lovely town and the magnificent cathedral, ate excellent food and – most importantly – tasted lots of very delicious champagne.

- Eating dinner in pitch darkness at Dans le Noir. It was quite a remarkable experience: imagine sitting in pitch darkness, having no idea who else is around you, identifying your friends by voice, hooking your finger over the edge of your wine glass as you pour so that you can tell when to stop. It was oppressive and freeing all at the same time.

- Enjoying visits from the lovely Marie and Mitchell and my brothers.

- Going to the Big Chill festival in Hereford, which was utterly fabulous and where I discovered that if Leonard Cohen was the leader of a cult, I would join it. Our new good friend Miles wrote a very good review of the weekend here.

- Singing my heart out at karaoke, seeing a student production of an absorbing and gruesome Greek tragedy; going to the Churchill Museum (again) and the Tower of London, celebrating the engagement of another good friend (is there something in the air at the moment?), and soaking up as much sunshine as possible.

Apparently I haven’t been spending all my time at work. That’s good to know.

Shiny New Suit

So, for the last couple of months at work I’ve been busily planning a major event. It’s something fairly ambitious that the organisation has never done before, and rather alarmingly, has been mostly left up to me to arrange. It’s been an interesting process – difficult and frustrating most of the time, but I have learned a great deal and now the day is here. The champagne is ordered, the production company is briefed, a few hundred people have said they’ll attend. Everything is ready. I’m nervous, but it’s now mostly out of my control.

When I was in NYC last month I did a lot of shopping. One of my purchases was a swanky new suit. I've never owned anything quite like it, and I am very pleased with it. I haven't worn it yet - for one thing, my workplace is fairly business casual and so if I'd worn it on any old day people would have assumed I had a job interview. For another, it is so pretty I felt like it needed a suitably grand occasion. When I got it home I hung it in my wardrobe, thinking, “I know. I’ll save it for the reception. That can be its debut.” On the weekend I took a peek at it to make sure it didn’t need pressing. All was in order.

Or so I thought.

Last evening, I took it out of its bag and hung it on the outside of the wardrobe door, ready to try it on with different tops, to see which worked best. As I reached for the jacket, a fold of fabric fell open and my heart sank.

The security tag was still attached.

Oh, fuck. A giant chunk of plastic, affixed under the armpit of the jacket, hanging there like I’d shoplifted the damn thing. I sent some very uncharitable thoughts in the direction of that hapless shop assistant in New York, and then at myself for not checking earlier. Why didn’t I check? AARRRRGGGHHH!

What the hell was I going to do? Try and get another shop to take the tag off? They'll assume I stole it. Where is my receipt? I can go to a shop where they don't sell this designer. No, they'll just assume I stole it from somewhere else. Bugger! My first meeting was at 8:30am today, there wasn’t going to be time – which also meant I wasn’t going to be able to duck into anywhere to pick up something new.

[It’s probably important to note at this point that I threw out my old suit last month after a different event – tired of stapling the hems together and pretending that the jacket wasn’t almost worn through. Oh, how I longed for that old shabby suit at that moment. I would have given anything to see its friendly grey face. ]

When I caught myself wondering if I could get away with pretending I hadn't noticed it was there ("maybe if I just keep my arm jammed against my side like this..."), it was clear there was nothing else for it. I had to get the tag off. Here are the steps I took to address the situation:

1. Panic and swear. (done!)

2. Run for the toolkit. (I am a woman of the modern world, I own my own tool kit). I pulled out a screwdriver and tried to break the stupid thing by brute force. No luck.

3. I turned to Google. A quick search revealed a million stories just like my own. Responses to the plaintive cries for help included “don’t lie, you filthy shoplifter”; ‘be careful! Some of these tags have dye in them!”, “smash it with a hammer” and “try a magnet”.

The last option seemed the sanest. I then went to step 4.

4. Ask my flatmate for help.

Knock knock. “Frankie?” (Frankie had retired for the evening some time ago).

“Yes?”

“Um. Do you have a magnet?”

He came to his door. “What?”

I explained the situation.

Bless him, his first response was to ask if I had searched on the Internet (we are children of our age). When I explained the magnet suggestion, he informed me sadly that he did not have a magnet. Then his face brightened and he got excited.

“We could always try running a current through an insulated wire and…”

“Um, Frankie? That doesn’t really sound like a good idea.”

“No, I guess not. Well, let’s have a go at this then.”

Frankie assessed the situation thoughtfully. He carefully slid his library card under the tag, to protect the fabric, then took the screwdriver and started to prise around the edges of the tag. For a while, nothing happened. The tension grew. I started to panic all over again.

Then, there was some movement. As I held the jacket and braced my hand against the long part of the tag, he gently levered the pieces apart.

“What’s that cracking sound?”

“Maybe that’s the plastic giving way?”

“Actually, I think that’s my library card.”

He was right. I hope the Borough of Hackney doesn’t fine him for a new one.

He did it, you know. Frankie totally saved the day. The pin holding the two pieces together gradually became visible and he was able to reach for the pliers and pull the tag off. You couldn’t see so much as a pinhole in the fabric where the tag had been. He was brilliant. I'm going to start a criminal syndicate so that he can be the CEO.

Everyone needs a flatmate like Frankie. Now if that’s the only thing that goes wrong with this event, I’m going to be a VERY happy person this time tomorrow.

Things I Have Learned Recently

New York, New York is a wonderful town.

There are few things more entertaining than sweeping dramatically into a room full of your friends and uttering the following words: "I have taken a lover."

When summer actually arrives in London, the days are so delightful that you don’t even mind the hayfever.

No matter how fascinating you are finding that Feynman biography, it is possible to bore people to actual tears if you talk about it too much.

Buying AstroTurf on eBay is really fun. Receiving said AstroTurf and laying it out in sheets all over your living room is even more fun, though it does make sitting on the couch a more itchy experience than usual.

Drinking with colleagues is fraught with the danger of extreme mortification; unless you get lucky and the person in question remembers even less of the evening than you do.

Sometimes wonderful things happen to truly deserving, lovely people.

It is possible to be so tired when you come home from work that you give serious consideration to having a big spoonful of cream cheese for dinner.

Freak

(Or: 'Why Yes, I'm Still Single. Why Do You Ask?')

I’m a lurker. I derive many hours of enjoyment from the toil of others on the interweb without offering them anything in return. No thanks, no responses, no input – I simply read their words, nod to myself, and move along. I get so excited whenever anyone is kind enough to leave a comment on this blog and, I confess, a wee bit despondent when there are none, but I know I’ve no-one to blame but myself. If I was out there, putting in my two cents’ worth on other people’s pages, karma would reward me with feedback of my own.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I broke my lurkdom tonight for a meme. Madam Fox was chiding me gently earlier this evening about updating my blog, but I couldn’t think of anything to write about that would be sufficiently interesting. “Hi everyone, I’m happy and well but am really insanely busy at work at the moment and too brain-dead the rest of the time to string a sentence together.” “Great entry, jLo! Please, can we have some more of your amazing insight and hilarious perspective on this crazy, beautiful, mixed-up world of ours?” I think not.

Then I flicked through my blog feeds (85 at last count, I’m telling you, I’m a PROLIFIC lurker), and came across this entry by an Australian writer who goes by the name Ova Girl. I won’t go into how I found her blog in the first place (it’s a long and not particularly interesting story) but she’s a great writer and so I’ve been reading her site for a couple of years now. I’ve enjoyed her writing immensely but have never told her so.

What prompted me to respond this evening was the ‘TAKE PITY ON ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD’ message to lurkers at the end of the piece. I thought, well, I need a blog entry, and she’s pretty much talking directly to me there. It’s like it was a SIGN. No excuses!

So I left a comment, and now I’m answering the meme.

Six Quirky Things About Me

The first thing I’ll say about this topic is that the word ‘quirky’ makes me feel self-conscious, like by describing some of my idiosyncracies I’m secretly telling you about how awesome I think I am. Oh my god, I’m so QUIRKY! Aren’t I ADORABLE?*

So, instead, I’m going to offer six signature jLo traits that are really just those things that appal, bewilder and/or annoy the crap out of everyone I meet.

* Please note, I think OG’s entry manages to avoid this entirely, I’m referring purely to my own reaction to the word.

Six Signature jLo Traits That Are Really Not At All Original Nor Unique but Definitely Appal, Bewilder And/Or Annoy the Crap Out Of Everyone I Meet.

1. Talking Between The Lines

(I have J,The to thank for this one, I had never noticed it myself until she helpfully pointed it out. I should add that she has had to do so on more than one occasion.)

I love roadtrips, and my favourite thing about roadtrips is the singing. A carefully constructed mix-CD of cheesy classics, the open highway, and a water bottle for a microphone and I’m as happy as it is possible to be. I sing very loudly and with great fervour.

I am also an enthusiastic conversationalist on occasion, as you may or may not have noticed. Road trips are an ideal opportunity for long-ranging discussions of topics both meaningful and shallow, and I enjoy both types and all those along the spectrum in between. You would think that this love for the chatter would interfere with the singalong. You would be wrong.

I was unaware until J,The brought it to my attention that I apparently undertake both activities at the same time without realising that this is what I am doing. I will carry on a conversation while the song is playing – but I will only offer my contribution in between the lyrics of the song. An illustration:

jLo and J,The On A Road Trip

J,The: The thing is, jLo, is that you overestimate the ability of conservative fiscal policy to significantly impact upon the well-being of truly endangered species such as the four-horned muskrat.”

[NB: It should be noted here that J,The would never utter such a sentence. For one thing, she would not have split that infinitive there].

jLo: Oh, the flaaaame treeeees will bliiiind a weeeeary driiiiver. “Well, since you mention it, I really do think that honeycomb and polka dots are the answer”. And theeeere’s nothing eeelse could set fiiire to this tooooown.

J,The: You’re doing it again.

2. Hypocritical Consumerism

A lot of my clothes are falling apart, I wear shoes of indifferent quality on a regular basis. I am not a great shopper, and the urge to visit Oxford Street visits me very, very rarely (given that it is the Mouth of Hell, this is actually a bonus). Most advertising bewilders me until I remember that I am (usually) not their target audience and therefore it makes sense that I don’t understand the message. I am mostly an indifferent consumer and (aside from the essentials of life, like a good computer and lots of books) don’t tend to buy a lot of things.

EXCEPT. I have an alarmingly extensive collection of the most horrifically cheesy, tacky and pointless decorative objects and souvenirs. I cannot resist the crap, I am helpless before its powers.

From where I’m sitting here on my bed, I can see on the top shelf of my bookcase a colourful seashell-mounted saint figurine that was the God of the Boat on our sailing trip in Croatia last year. There is a small gold pillbox in my handbag with a wee enamel inset on the lid depicting a cheery seaside scene and the words ‘Westward Ho!”. I keep my mints in it and enjoy watching people recoil at the ugliness when I offer them one. We have a unicorn hobby-horse in our lounge room that makes gallopy noises when you press its ear. Our dining table at the Pickle is less than a metre wide and yet I bought a cheap Ikea lazy susan for it which kept me entertained for many months (Frankie, would you like the salt? Here it comes!) until it fell apart and I am ashamed to confess that I shed actual tears as I threw it away.

Some of you have been kind enough to present me with gifts that fit into the ‘craptastic’ category, all of which bring me great joy but leave me no choice but to call you ENABLERS. You’re my friends, you’re supposed to make sure I have good taste and that I stop wasting my money on crap instead of feeding my obsession. Thanks a lot, you guys.

3. Freakish Memory

I have quite a good memory. It’s often a good thing: what academic success I managed to attain at school can be attributed directly to an ability to memorise vast quantities of information for exams. Recalling random facts is very helpful at quiz nights. I also like being able to remember people’s names and faces when meeting them for a second time.

What is less useful is the fact that I tend to hold onto random details about people - the things they say and the stories they tell me - much longer than I need to. In my experience, people find it somewhat unnerving when you meet them at a party and greet them with something like, ‘Oh, hi, Fred! Great to see you again! Wow, was it really a year ago that we met? That’s right, it was at Susie’s party, out on the balcony. You stole my beer and then we discussed utilitarianism and whether or not there is such a thing as Jewish porn. How’s your dad, by the way? I seem to remember he’d just had an operation when last we spoke.” Freak.

Thankfully, this particular trait is fading with age, it’s not quite such a problem as it once was. For one thing, I don’t retain as much of the minute detail as I used to. For another, when I do, I’m much better at keeping the knowledge of this to myself. However, my tendency to freak people out in this manner does rear its head at highly inconvenient moments.

An example: there’s this guy at my work who is really quite devastatingly attractive. I have harboured a helpless girly crush on him for six months now, and (as is the nature of such things) find new and improved ways to humiliate myself in his presence with each passing week. Just yesterday, I met him outside in the place we both go to smoke, and he complimented my shoes. Instead of thanking him and moving on with great composure and elegance to a suitably sophisticated topic of conversation, (all the better to showcase my blinding intellect and biting wit) I said the following:

‘Oh, you’ve seen these before! Remember when you were sitting out on that bench last year and I came to join you and my heels sank all the way into the grass and I got stuck and kind of fell over and you laughed at me?’

That there is a verbatim transcript, my friends. The stricken, fearful look on his (really very beautiful) face will haunt my dreams.

Moving right along…

4. Cold Leftovers

I know everyone agrees that cold leftover pizza is one of life’s greatest joys. I , however, enjoy ALL of my leftovers cold.

We don’t have a microwave at the Pickle, nor is there one at my place of work. Even if there was one in either place, however, I would very rarely use it and never to reheat leftovers. Pasta dishes, stirfries, mashed potato, rice – all of it is just as good, if not better, the next day. In fact, I usually cook more than I need to for each meal so that I can make sure there will be plenty of leftover goodness.

My workmates are frequently heard to say such things as ‘SOUP? You can’t possibly be eating cold soup for lunch?!’ To which I inevitably reply, ‘Not only am I doing just that, but it is very good. Would you like some?’ And then they slink away in fear. Especially if I add, ‘Come on, try some! You told me once that you loved spinach and garlic! Remember? That day I twisted my ankle and you were wearing your red scarf for the first time? Are you sure you don’t want some? What? Why are you looking at me like that?’ And so on.

5. The Perfect Bite

Whatever I’m eating, be it cold soup or an ice-cream cone or frozen peas (quirk #7! It didn’t make the cut!), I always have to save the best for last. I’m sure there is some deep-seated reason for this that relates to impossible expectations and delayed gratification or whatever, but the fact remains that I am absolutely compelled to finish every meal or snack with The Perfect Bite.

The Perfect Bite does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a perfectly calibrated combination of each of the ingredients/components of the dish, to ensure that the memory of the just-finished meal is preserved in that final moment. I will save small portions of each component as I eat for the Perfect Bite, and have had to learn over the years to guard particularly tasty morsels from the wandering forks of scavenging opportunists, also known as brothers.

My greatest Perfect Bite achievement occurred last year at a Wine and Cheese night at the Loft. Every attendee brought a different type of cheese, and given we had some giant water crackers handy it seemed appropriate to load one up with a small piece of each individual cheese. The result resembled one of those comedy sub sandwiches you see in cartoons – a towering pile of cheesy wonder atop a giant flaky biscuit. The photographs of my (really very unladylike) efforts to shove as much of the tower into my gob really have to be seen to be believed. The worst part is that I mostly succeeded.

6. Watching the Credits

I am unable to walk out of a movie until the credits have finished. It annoys the crap out of anyone who has to push past me to get out of the theatre, but I can’t bring myself to abandon this particular practice. The official (and utterly obnoxious) reason is that it’s an homage – I want to pay my respects to all the people who worked so hard to entertain me for two hours by reading their names. Mostly though, I want to (a) look through the names and see if there are any funny ones, (b) listen to the end-credits music, (c) have a few moments to myself to prepare my remarks about the movie so that I sound smart and/or funny and (d) feel secretly superior to all those who walked out because they were DISrespectful to the crew and cast.

I’m really not a very nice person, you know. I’ve got you all fooled but GOOD.

Anyway, so that’s the list for now. What have I forgotten?

(No seriously, tell me some others! What strange things do I do?)

Any of you would like to pick up this wee meme and run with it, please do, and let me know so I can come and read it and feel better ‘cos maybe I’m not as weird as YOU.

(Unlikely!)

The Wedding Story

Once upon a time, a member of my immediate family announced the delightful news that she was engaged to her long-term partner, and they would be married in early March 2008 at a resort on the Sunshine Coast. The timing coincided neatly with my birthday and so my trip home (and the Festival celebrations) was planned so that I would be there for the happy event.

This wedding was special – not just because I was so particularly pleased for the couple in question, though that is certainly true – but because it gave me what will henceforth be known as the Most Dramatic Wedding Story Ever.

The story begins with Giant Hair. I’m not sure what it is about hairdressers, but every time I have my hair professionally blown dry, I end up several inches taller than I was before. The bride, E, had very kindly offered my mother and I the chance to have our hair and makeup done by the team of professional stylists she had engaged to come along to the resort to beautify the wedding party.

Mum and I rocked up to the bridal suite bright and early on the morning of the wedding. I’d been off playing a game of tennis with my brothers and wee nephew beforehand (am so sporty! Check me out!). While I had showered, I was still more than a bit bedraggled and the kindly hairdresser had quite a job on her hands to make me presentable.

Giant Hair was obviously the solution. Mum’s hair was finished before mine, and I swear that I have never laughed so hard at a hairdo in my life. It was positively Dynastyesque. She had a chance to return the favour soon afterwards as my finished ‘do also soared towards the heavens, much to the delight of the assembled crowd. We all bonded nicely over the Biggest Hair of All Time as we lounged about in the suite, chuckling and drinking coffee and having ourselves a lovely time as we watched E's gradual brideification. She was nervous, but happy, and we teased her good-naturedly and offered compliments and encouragement as hundreds of hairpins were pushed directly into her skull. It was about 10:30am, the wedding was scheduled for 3pm. Everything was going perfectly to plan.

All of a sudden, the happy, relaxed vibe was interrupted by a very loud noise coming from the master bedroom of the suite. It sounded like pressurised air, or as if someone had turned the shower on full power: FSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH. Really, REALLY loud.

The dryers went off, the chatter ceased. We looked about at each other in puzzlement. Whatever could it be? One of the bridesmaids got up and trotted over towards the bedroom. She looked inside, and started screaming.

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD

We ran over to join her. I swear to God, I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Black, foul-smelling water gushing everywhere, like a real-life special effect. Spurting fountains of filth, flooding the room at high pressure, streaming all over the bed, the floor, the walls, the suitcases. Everything.

The wedding dress was hanging in the middle of the room.

The bridesmaids ran into the geyser to grab the dress. As we stood in the hall, they carried it out, stinking and black and absolutely, utterly ruined.

Dumbstruck astonishment passed to panic in an instant. The fire alarms had gone off, and a recorded loudspeaker voice told us to evacuate. The bride was hyperventilating with distress, barely conscious from the shock. As we carried her down the fire escape, I remember thinking, ‘well, that’s it. If the hotel is on fire there can’t be a wedding’.

We got her down eight flights of stairs and out into the grounds of the hotel as the fire trucks pulled up. Bedlam descended, and the next half-hour was a blur of shouting and running about and everyone trying to work out what the fuck was going on.

As it turned out, there was no fire. The sprinklers had gone off in that one room only. A freak accident, that’s it. The water had been sitting in those pipes for decades, becoming rotten and foul - and then one single malfunction sent it spraying across the room at high pressure.

We took E. upstairs to our suite, and tried to calm her down. Kloss and the Father of the Bride (FOTB, aka my awesome stepdad) piled into a car and drove the stinking dress to the nearest town to a drycleaner. The cleaner took one look at the dress and told them that if they had 48 hours, maybe they could soak the fabric and revive it. Four hours? Not a chance.

After frenzied phone calls back and forth, the bride and bridesmaids were bundled into another car to go and meet Kloss and FOTB at a bridal shop. Kloss said later that when they swept into the shop, holding aloft the black, dead, dress, all the brides-to-be shopping with their mothers stopped and stared, hushed and shocked. He said you could see their faces fall and whiten as they thought: ‘Oh, god. That can happen?’

The people at the bridal shop were amazing. They cleared the place out, and brought out all the dresses they had in E’s size. As she tried them on, they got their seamstress to come in. She picked a dress, they fitted it and made speedy alterations, pressed and wrapped it and sent her back to the hotel. All in under three hours. The makeup artists made a second call, coming back just as we got E into the new dress, just in time for photographs.

The ceremony was only delayed by 15 minutes.

It was incredible! The most remarkable wedding-day disaster, completely solved and overcome in the space of an afternoon - from panic and mayhem to smiling guests in their finery on a beautiful sunny day. What made it all the more brilliant was that any conceivable nervousness or tension had all completely dissipated and everyone was in the most amazing good mood for the entire night. Once a crisis of that magnitude had been suffered and resolved, everything was guaranteed to be perfect.

And it was! The ceremony was lovely, the party a blast. The bride and groom were in excellent spirits (the half a Valium might have helped, man, it’s so good to have a nurse for a mother!) and the bride was breathtakingly beautiful. A fabulous time was had by all.

And here are some pictures to prove it. Firstly, here’s Mum and FOTB. Please note, the hair remained enormous:

And here are my brothers (again):


And here is the happy couple, making it official:


Craziest wedding day ever. Thankfully, they all lived happily ever after.

Festival Pictures

So, in the interests of recording the Festival for posterity, I thought I'd throw a few ridiculous photographs of myself (and some others, apologies in advance) up here.

The Festival kickoff was at a lovely restaurant across the road from the Pickle. I managed to achieve a life-long dream at this dinner by getting to behave in the manner of a game show winner:

The blurriness really gives you a sense of the excitement!

I flew to Oz the next day, and soon after arriving I Officially Turned 30. Here is what I looked like on my 30th birthday:

That's Kapitan Kloss and TPC with me, they are not yet 30. Their time will come.

Here we are at a delightful family dinner hosted by my grandfather:


You'd never guess we were related. Matching chins!

The Kapitan was kind enough to throw me a birthday party the following evening (thanks, Kloss!). I drank many cocktails with lychee liqueur in them. Mmm, lychee liqueur. Once said cocktails had done their work, I insisted that we sing The Gambler:

It was important that everyone sang standing up.

The rest of my trip was utterly delightful, and included a road trip with J,The. Here is a photo of the road trip IN ACTION:


And here we are at Marulan, the Best Truck Stop In All The World:


It really is the Best Truck Stop In All The World. If you think you have one to beat it, please let me know and I will then explain to you the many ways in which you are very wrong.

While spring has (kinda sorta) arrived in London, it's still a long way from sunny here. So to drive myself crazy with the longing, here is a shot of me at Bondi:

How very pasty I have become.

The time then came to return to London. My sadness at leaving Oz was abated somewhat by a fabulous party at the Pickle the weekend after my return. My most excellent flatmate, Frankie (whoops, RVW), made me a birthday cake in the shape of a pickle:


The face was especially delicious.

And with that, we come to the Grand Finale of the Festival of jLo 2008: Westward Ho! The trip of a lifetime! I was so excited I decided to wear my best dressing gown all the way there:

This was taken in Weston-super-Mare. WHAT A TOWN.

I loved everything about Westward Ho!, but mostly the exclamation mark. It was displayed prominently in a number of places, much to my delight:





If you look closely, you will note that each of us is actually shouting 'HO!' as this picture was taken. Wouldn't you?

Our long weekend was full of rambling around the countryside, eating cream teas and sampling the local ales. We did so much of that last one that DJ Ill and I had trouble doing a simple high five:


Sadly, even the best weekends must come to an end. When we got back to London, there was snow:

What a dressing gown! What a Festival. My computer is slow these days, and this post has taken an entire large glass of wine to finish. I hope you are all having a lovely weekend.