What's driving Miss Daisy?

I now know what the government are spending my tax money on.

After a seminar today I received a mug, a bottle of water and a highlighter all emblazoned with a government logo on them. The water pissed me off the most as I have now drunk it and thrown it in the bin.

Am I better teacher for drinking the water and owning the mug? No I am not.

In one month exactly I will have a new surname.

Tonight the boy is going to give me lot's of pretty jewels. This makes me very happy. Clearly I am a magpie.

We have finally finished booking our honeymoon and it is clearly going to be both wonderful and epic!

Now, finally, I have been trying to find the perfect reading for the wedding and here it is:

The Pursuit of Love
Nancy Mitford

But she was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. In her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can’t imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. She was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening. She tried to remember how she had felt when she had first thought that she had loved. There must have been strong and impelling emotion; she had disrupted her own life, upset her parents and friends remorselessly, in order to be with them, but she could not recall it. Only she knew that never before, not even in dreams, and she was a great dreamer of love, had she felt anything remotely like this. She told herself, over and over again, that tomorrow she must go back to her old life, but she had no intention of going back, and she knew it.

The classroom was quiet.

28 little girls all sat serenely, writing a pretend diary entry for Elizabeth Pepys. The sunlight was creating a yellow sunshiny glow at the window as Miss sat at the front of the classroom pretending to be important.

Occasionally one of the little girls would sign or run her fingers through her hair, or look out of the window for inspiration and Miss reflected that her job was like working in a government recruitment advert.

One of the little girls dropped her pen on the floor and bent down to pick it up.... she looked at the floor, looked again and then sat bolt upright on her chair and said.

"SPIDER"

I saw a news report the other week about how nobody knows their neighbours - not in my street!!

Next to me, in house 38 is a Persian Princess - a real one (I know because I have received her mail a few times - addressed to 'Princess ...'). Interestingly she is also a high class hooker. After five years of neighbourliness I am now on friendly speaking terms with five of her middle aged clients - all lovely men. Sometimes when I am on my bedroom balcony late at night watching the sky (or occasionally indulging in a cigarette) she comes out and we talk and listen to music together.

Next to the princess in 36 is a charming couple who have 14 individual locks on their front door! Once - ages ago, someone stole the guy at the end of streets brand new Aston Martin by breaking into his house and nicking the keys. The guy had left his door on the latch and the car was recovered a couple of miles away but this couple have been in paranoia mode ever since. They arrange police talks that we all have to attend and send well meaning emails to me about getting bullet proof glass. They are worried about the estate opposite,even though all the kids from the estate have been sweet to me and I don't mind their summer water fights (poor bastards don't have a garden!).

In 34 is my new best friend. Rich, young, handsome, successful - he bought me champagne on the day he moved in(!) and has invited me to BBQs and parties - some of which I attend (sometimes even when not invited). We are even facebook friends, but then I found out that he was a very serious Christian - really proper and he sometimes is a bit godly and sometimes doesn't drink!

In the other direction at 42 is man who is already a friend of a friend and his wife. They fight quite often (loudly) but mostly they are lovely - I have been to a few parties at their house and his cousin borrowed a tampon - so we are quite close!

Next to them in 44 is the lady who looks after my cat when we are away who lives with her child and husband. They are lovely! I had them round for dinner and we all got annihilated. She is more paranoid than the paranoid people in 36 though and comes round to mark my possessions with a UV pen and to ask me if I have seen people 'watching the house'. (No).

At the end of the road is a local pub where the landlord knows our names and often chats to us on the street (this is a damning indictment of my drinking habits, clearly). There are also the corner shop people who know me well, having provided my hangover cures for years, and lately the guys from the Indian have also stopped to chat.

The mechanic who fixes our car also stops and chats most days - he is rather obsessed with my diet habits since we saw Paul McKenna walking down the road while we were chatting and I mentioned the magic diet. Now whenever I pass him he shouts "how's the diet going?" which is rather like someone shouting 'alright there fatso?" and makes me sad.

Anyway, in number 40 there is me, my boy, my bestest friend and my cat. 

I had my first Bridezilla tantrum this weekend...

We had had a lovely day on Sunday meeting a new and tiny person (who is now going to be my youngest bridesmaid at 2 months old!!! Bless!)

On the way back we were talking about wedding music and the boy was so unbothered and so 'whatever' (and not for the first time) that I threw a massive wobbly about his lack of enthusiasm.

The thing is that normally I like his steadiness and manliness but sometimes I want him to seem excited.

I'm quite relieved now in the cold light if day... I behaved so sanely and rationally the whole time that I was thinking that there was clearly something wrong with me.

So far I have sailed through my mother telling me that it wasn't really my special day, my bridesmaid announcing her preganancy, my accidental hiring of the wrong photographer, a groomsman not telling us for a year whether he could come (he couldn't), the boys friend refusing to make the cake I actually want because he doesn't like it and my sister telling the band that I didn't want them to play for very long.

And I finally lost it. For about 30 minutes, In a traffic jam. On the M1. Like a mentalist!!

Whe we got home the boy bought me a beautiful white gold and aquamarine ring to wear as my something 'new' and 'blue' and I told him that I was going to have lot's of tantrums in future so that I could get the matching bracelet.

Then all was well.

Ish.

is on this page...

http://www.bbride.com/acatalog/berketex-wedding-dresses-49-56.html

Do you know me well enough to guess which one it is?

Oooohhh....

Work have unblocked my blog! Hello *waves*

Have I missed anything?

Heaps has happened to me. My bestest friend has had a baby called Ruby (bless), I have written a Mills and Boon book, my boys have taken their exams and it all seems to have gone well!

I have to finish my essay for college and then I 'only' have my dissertation left...

And then there is my wedding... which is drifting along while I decide which sparkly flip flops to buy and whether two dresses are excessive...

I have just had my hair done and so am feeling rather surreal having emerged from subterranean world under the Dorchester where people talk only of holidays and highlights while sipping champagne and guzzling chocolate brownies.

I flung myself back to the real world by a trip to Primark, horrible but oh so worth the entire holiday wardrobe for only £35. I am pleased that I look good in mini skirts and boobtubes at 31. Pleased and rather surprised. This is at least in part to me having lost the half stone I gained over the winter to emerge at a decent 10 stone. Also, as I get older my much loathed B cup boobs are becoming quite the blessing. I just need the tan now:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?world=0198 - looks good!

I am really looking forward to the next week. Hot sun, cheap booze and 7 of my favourite girlies in the world and my beloved uncle.

So tomorrow, we are going to be here:

Benalmadena

Lovely Spain. Where I have been in love, been heart broken and where I got engaged.

How I love it.

*Raises glass of Rioja*

We had a dinner party last night with some friends and family for which the boy did most of the cooking and I mainly drank a bucket of the cheap red wine that we bought in France. I think I may have been slurring before the guests arrived. Still, despite the fat old lush in the corner, the dinner was a triumph and I made James Martins brie, leek and potato soup which was lovely (although ever so slightly fattening).

I am very very obsessed with Molton Brown products in a rather unhealthy way. At the moment my hair, face and body are liberally coated in the stuff. This shampoo is especially wonderful:  http://www.moltonbrown.co.uk/hair/hairwash/moisture-drench-rosella-hairwash.html

I also love my cat. He is aces:

HM

I'm having a nail trauma.... it's my hen do in Spain all next week (23 degrees and big round suns on the weather channel!!! Woo woo woo) and at the moment my (acrylic) nails look great but they were done 10 days ago and should be done every couple of weeks... so do I leave them and risk them being shit on the actual hen do night next Saturday, or do I have them done this weekend even though they don't need doing? Hmmm??

http://www.clos-de-la-rose.com/index_EN.html?gclid=CM__jf6n35ICFRcS1Aod73UH-Q

Glorious!

I have eaten cheese and guzzled champagne for the last few days. Loved it!

The trip was..... WONDERFUL!

The stuff legends are made of.

Was my favourite moment when the boys did a dance routine on the ferry (a real, proper routine), when we had a race to the Menin gate or when one of the kids fell up to his neck in a giant shellhole filled with mud?

How we laughed.

But such was the greatness of the trip, when we needed to pay respect the boys could and did. So we visited graves with poppies, found lost grandfathers on memorials and remembered them.

But, as we were on the ferry home, I felt incredibly sad because, while the boys don't realise that they had had a never to be repeated moment, I knew.