Weddings, reunions and fighting for a fella
The blog got sporadic due to a minor whirl of activity following my return to blighty, and a spell of fighting a massive malaise due to the unfolding drama of my love life. I have now stopped reaching for the chocolate although I am fairly unimpressed at my ability to have gained ten pounds in under two weeks in an effort to comfort eat my way through things. Being a woman working on balance I have naturally taken some fat pills to partially counteract the effects.
I did not chuck away hundreds of dollars on counseling fees to sit on my arse eating chocolate, creating spots from a previously flawless complexion and staring into the creator of despair threatening to swamp me. In the time honored tradition of strong women before me I therefore gave myself a stern talking to this weekend and got a grip of my tummy control knickers.
I am writing again, leaving the house, doing some exercise and skipping meals in an effort to counteract the chocolate calories, which, I am aware, makes that an area still in need of work.
Prior to the the malaise I ventured out for the fabulous nuptials of My Amy Jane Turtle, nee Cooper, now known as Mrs Jupp. A more fitting name for a pragmatic Yorkshire lass could not have been invented in her home town of Dewsbury I suspect.
It was a fabulous wedding, admittedly sharing a bottle and a half of wine with Dame Mavis before heading down for the pre-wedding dinner was not the brightest idea. I nearly missed the train stop but woke just in time to decide that if I didn't carry on drinking I would feel tragic. There's nothing like being half cut to make the infinitely reasonable question 'do you want to do the big day with a hangover?' slip completely off the radar. Despite the hangover and my own irritation at not preempting it, the day went like a dream. Ray, my sisters partner was the best man, the hilarious Mr Chadwick a camp comedian who managed to have tears, laughter and singing in his speech, was chief bridemaid. I did a reading as did Nicki, who you could tell had been home when the tasks were divvied up having 200 words to my hamlet-esque (in length not tone) monologue.
The bride looked fabulous with more sparkly bits on her skirt than you could find in the Batley Frontier on a Saturday night. The groom almost looked brunette rather than ginger, shades of Mr George Michael, in his Oswald Botaeng suit. The speeches were fabulous, the company marvelous. My mother as chief matchmaker who a few years before had instructed my sister and I to get the now happy couple to her house on a mission of love, before preceding to lock them in the kitchen with some subtle hint about phone numbers, upstaged Cilla both in having more weddings under her belt (two or three mum?) and looking thoroughly glamorous. The kayleigh / barn dance / bush dance was more frenetic and more fun than a night at Bingay and they played the scissor Sisters Filthy Gorgeous, which has for almost a year been my top dancing anthem, at the end of a dancefloor packed disco. The chief bridemaid took the concept of creative georgeousness to a whole new strata with his daffs and basil all senses spectacular on the tables. A more ecletic 155 people you couldn't have found at AA, yet everyone just had a ball and the atmosphere screamed up for a great day until well into the next one.
Being a woman prone to extremes, this weekend, I swapped the heady anticipation of a long awaited love fest for the dread of a school reunion. There's nothing like a reunion at one of the the UK's most prestigious Grammar Schools to transform your average successful woman into a walking wound seeping insecurity. Suddenly all the fabulous things I have done and seen were summed up in three words in my head, jobless, childless, worthless. All morning the words to my old school hymn danced round my head reminding me of courage and honour, although the line about England's women striding out and conquering the world got a bit muddled and I kept trying to remember exactly what it was I was supposed to have done. Realising, in the bath preparing to get ready that Sam as a former Deputy Head Girl (just flown in from Sydney), and her two more intimidating sisters were likely to be there didn't help. I am looking forward to seeing Sam but en masse with her family in an environment prone to remind me of my days as an angst ridden teens was I fely maybe not the best way to have our first friendship meet.
Needless to say I had a lovely time, Sam and siblings didn't go, the scariest teachers were now just little old ladies wizened with age, the only girls I played with were friends it was lovely to catch up with and no one asked me what I was doing for a living or whether I had fulfilled the sentiment of the school anthem. The power suited world beating wonderwomen I expected to see all looked remarkably normal, some were even having a bad hair day or dragging badly behaving kids along behind them, and I got to thank my English teachers for sparking my imagination and my politics.
I have seen one too many (read one) bad American films on the subject to realise that nerves before these things are a right of passage and finding others felt exactly the same helped a great deal. With hindsight I am gald I went, and strangely feel more grown up for the experience even if I was very adolescent in my insistence on having a fag in the bog for old times sake cos 'they can hardly give me a detention now can they?'.
It's all over with Ngurah, nearly. He has said that being held responsible by his entire family if his mother has another stroke because she is stressed he is seeing a westerner. Fair enough. He's quite frankly a mess, really gutted about the whole thing but convinced his family won't budge. We are considering whether I should visit Bali and pay his parents a visit to try and allay their fears before totally conceding defeat. I am tempted by this idea on the basis that I would hate to spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have done something more.... Feeling like he's the one who got away. Having said that I need to be 100% sure I would be happy to live in his village if I intend to allay their fears, and work out whether prolonging the agony for him and his family is a wise course of action.
I will talk to him about it again before making a firm decision but at the moment would say I am 90% in favour of flying over just so I know I gave it my best shot.
Yours,
Julie x
I did not chuck away hundreds of dollars on counseling fees to sit on my arse eating chocolate, creating spots from a previously flawless complexion and staring into the creator of despair threatening to swamp me. In the time honored tradition of strong women before me I therefore gave myself a stern talking to this weekend and got a grip of my tummy control knickers.
I am writing again, leaving the house, doing some exercise and skipping meals in an effort to counteract the chocolate calories, which, I am aware, makes that an area still in need of work.
Prior to the the malaise I ventured out for the fabulous nuptials of My Amy Jane Turtle, nee Cooper, now known as Mrs Jupp. A more fitting name for a pragmatic Yorkshire lass could not have been invented in her home town of Dewsbury I suspect.
It was a fabulous wedding, admittedly sharing a bottle and a half of wine with Dame Mavis before heading down for the pre-wedding dinner was not the brightest idea. I nearly missed the train stop but woke just in time to decide that if I didn't carry on drinking I would feel tragic. There's nothing like being half cut to make the infinitely reasonable question 'do you want to do the big day with a hangover?' slip completely off the radar. Despite the hangover and my own irritation at not preempting it, the day went like a dream. Ray, my sisters partner was the best man, the hilarious Mr Chadwick a camp comedian who managed to have tears, laughter and singing in his speech, was chief bridemaid. I did a reading as did Nicki, who you could tell had been home when the tasks were divvied up having 200 words to my hamlet-esque (in length not tone) monologue.
The bride looked fabulous with more sparkly bits on her skirt than you could find in the Batley Frontier on a Saturday night. The groom almost looked brunette rather than ginger, shades of Mr George Michael, in his Oswald Botaeng suit. The speeches were fabulous, the company marvelous. My mother as chief matchmaker who a few years before had instructed my sister and I to get the now happy couple to her house on a mission of love, before preceding to lock them in the kitchen with some subtle hint about phone numbers, upstaged Cilla both in having more weddings under her belt (two or three mum?) and looking thoroughly glamorous. The kayleigh / barn dance / bush dance was more frenetic and more fun than a night at Bingay and they played the scissor Sisters Filthy Gorgeous, which has for almost a year been my top dancing anthem, at the end of a dancefloor packed disco. The chief bridemaid took the concept of creative georgeousness to a whole new strata with his daffs and basil all senses spectacular on the tables. A more ecletic 155 people you couldn't have found at AA, yet everyone just had a ball and the atmosphere screamed up for a great day until well into the next one.
Being a woman prone to extremes, this weekend, I swapped the heady anticipation of a long awaited love fest for the dread of a school reunion. There's nothing like a reunion at one of the the UK's most prestigious Grammar Schools to transform your average successful woman into a walking wound seeping insecurity. Suddenly all the fabulous things I have done and seen were summed up in three words in my head, jobless, childless, worthless. All morning the words to my old school hymn danced round my head reminding me of courage and honour, although the line about England's women striding out and conquering the world got a bit muddled and I kept trying to remember exactly what it was I was supposed to have done. Realising, in the bath preparing to get ready that Sam as a former Deputy Head Girl (just flown in from Sydney), and her two more intimidating sisters were likely to be there didn't help. I am looking forward to seeing Sam but en masse with her family in an environment prone to remind me of my days as an angst ridden teens was I fely maybe not the best way to have our first friendship meet.
Needless to say I had a lovely time, Sam and siblings didn't go, the scariest teachers were now just little old ladies wizened with age, the only girls I played with were friends it was lovely to catch up with and no one asked me what I was doing for a living or whether I had fulfilled the sentiment of the school anthem. The power suited world beating wonderwomen I expected to see all looked remarkably normal, some were even having a bad hair day or dragging badly behaving kids along behind them, and I got to thank my English teachers for sparking my imagination and my politics.
I have seen one too many (read one) bad American films on the subject to realise that nerves before these things are a right of passage and finding others felt exactly the same helped a great deal. With hindsight I am gald I went, and strangely feel more grown up for the experience even if I was very adolescent in my insistence on having a fag in the bog for old times sake cos 'they can hardly give me a detention now can they?'.
It's all over with Ngurah, nearly. He has said that being held responsible by his entire family if his mother has another stroke because she is stressed he is seeing a westerner. Fair enough. He's quite frankly a mess, really gutted about the whole thing but convinced his family won't budge. We are considering whether I should visit Bali and pay his parents a visit to try and allay their fears before totally conceding defeat. I am tempted by this idea on the basis that I would hate to spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have done something more.... Feeling like he's the one who got away. Having said that I need to be 100% sure I would be happy to live in his village if I intend to allay their fears, and work out whether prolonging the agony for him and his family is a wise course of action.
I will talk to him about it again before making a firm decision but at the moment would say I am 90% in favour of flying over just so I know I gave it my best shot.
Yours,
Julie x
posted by The Gypsy @ 4:08 AM
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