27 Dresses

No, this isn't a film review. That's roughly how many I tried on yesterday.

It was the beginning of the search for my wedding dress, and I was hoping to have chosen 'the one' by the end of the day. But as it turned out, I ended up finding 'the ones' - the more I tried on, the less keen I was on the idea of discounting them because I couldn't remember how they compared to some of the dresses I'd tried on earlier in the day. I went to three shops, and there was a clear favourite in each of the first two, but I came away with a list of 3 definites and 2 more possibles from the third shop, making a total of 7.

I was surprised to find out that bridal shops don't let you take photographs of the dresses - ostensibly to protect the designers' copyright on the patterns and to prevent cheap knock-offs, but as one shop assistant said, they have printed brochures and there are photos of all the dresses online, so whether it's the bride-to-be in the photo or just a model, if you are that set on stealing a design, you can do it easily enough. The first two shops were kind enough to let Jen sneak a photo of me in the favourite dress, but by the time we got to the last shop, to be honest I was getting a bit fed up by then, and my feet were killing me from standing up all day (there was nowhere to sit in the changing rooms), so each time we put a dress on the shortlist, Jen flicked through the catalogue and took a photo of the model in the dress, so at least we had a reminder of what it looked like.

Yesterday evening we looked at the photos we'd taken and the websites of the three shops and managed to whittle the shortlist down from 7 to 3; 2 in one shop and 1 in another. Mum and Dad came down today so I'm hoping to get appointments to try those three on again tomorrow, get Mum's opinions, then make a decision on the one I want.

Oh What a Night

Clare called me on Sunday to say that her sister, who works at the theatre in London where Jersey Boys is currently playing, had got two free tickets for top-price seats at yesterday's performance of the show, which has just been nominated for three Olivier awards. So the two of us went up to London after work yesterday - as you do - to see it. This is one of the things I love about living in Southampton: it only takes 2 hours to get from my front door to the door of any West End theatre.

I hadn't heard of the show before a couple of months ago - the production would certainly benefit from better marketing, as everyone should know about this show, and should then go and see it. It's the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and each of the four main members of the band - first Tommy then Bob in the first half, then Nick and finally Frankie in the second half - takes a turn in telling the band's story.

The staging was quite sparse - just a balcony above the stage along the back with a set of stairs at either end, a couple of big screens that were lowered into position and portable staging like tables, chairs etc - but they made really good use of it. There was too much swearing for my liking, but it certainly wouldn't put me off seeing the show again.

I had a quick look at the song list before I went and realised that beyond the couple of songs I knew were performed by the Four Seasons - December 1963 (Oh What a Night), Big Girls Don't Cry, Working My Way Back to You - there were also loads more songs that I didn't know were originally Four Seasons songs, like Bye Bye Baby, Who Loves You and Can't Take My Eyes Off You, which is probably more famous (at least in the UK) as an Andy Williams song. I was also introduced to a song I hadn't heard before, although it was very successful at the time it was released in the mid-seventies: My Eyes Adored You, which I haven't stopped singing since last night.

I would definitely recommend this show - it deserves to win the awards it's been nominated for. We were all on our feet and singing along by the end of the show!

Post-Olympic Blues

Like many people, I've spent much of the past fortnight watching the Olympics, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Team GB got 47 medals in the end, including 19 golds, which was way more than anyone expected - the team coaches set the medal expectation at 35, roughly 12 of each colour.

I found myself watching sports I'd never watched before - like diving, taekwondo and modern pentathlon. The diving in particular was riveting - I couldn't tear myself away from the men's synchronised diving that I was watching at the gym one morning, and was consequently late getting a shower and then late to work, but it was worth it. I'm quite sad that the Olympics are over - only four years till the next one!

Here are my memorable moments from the Games: -

Happy moments

Rebecca Adlington winning two golds in the pool - the first British woman to win a swimming gold since 1960 and the first British swimmer (male or female) to win 2 golds since 1908;

Chris Hoy winning 3 golds in 3 different track cycling events - and the British cycling team winning more medals than any other sport by far: 8 golds, 4 silvers and 1 bronze;

Ben Ainslie getting his third consecutive Olympic gold medal in the sailing - and the sailing team taking 4 golds, a silver and a bronze altogether;

Matthew Mitcham producing an almost-perfect dive to win gold in the 10m platform.

Not-so-happy moments

Phillips Idowu being pipped to the gold medal in the triple jump;

The same thing happening to the women's quadruple sculls - making it three silvers in three Olympics for Katherine Grainger; I was gutted for her. Still, 2 medals of each colour in the rowing is GB's best result in 100 years;

Kelly Sotherton (who I feel a kind of affinity to, as we were born on the same day) failing to capitalise on a mediocre heptathlon field and only managing a fifth place.

Beyond-belief moments - for all the right reasons

Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt - no other comment needed;

Christine Ohuruogu coming from nowhere to take Britain's only track gold in the 400m;

Yelena Isinbayeva breaking her own world record (for the 24th time) on the way to taking gold in the pole vault.

Beyond-belief moments - for all the wrong reasons

The US and GB men and US women all failing to make the final of the 4x100m relay because they couldn't get the baton round - then the GB and Jamaican women dropping the baton in the final;

Angel Matos being banned from all future World Taekwondo Federation competitions after kicking a referee in the face for disqualifying him from his bronze medal match.

London, with its ridiculous logo (although there are 4 years for it to persuade me to like it) is now officially the Olympic City, and Rob and I are already planning which events we want to go and see...

A Visitor

Got home yesterday evening to find a visitor on the doorstep. Rob gave him some bread and he tucked in, then went on his way.

Jab, Hook, Uppercut

Ben had me doing boxing for the first time ever yesterday morning at the gym. I boxed until I couldn't lift my arms any more, then we moved on to ab crunches, then when my stomach muscles were screaming, I did step-ups onto a step about 18" high while holding weights in my hands. When my legs stopped working, we went back to boxing, and the whole thing started again. Man, it was hard work. I went home for a shower before work and I could barely put on my mascara, my arms were shaking so badly. I was so tired that for the rest of the morning I could quite easily have put my head on the desk and gone to sleep. I haven't been that tired for years. But it was much more enjoyable than spending an hour on the cross-trainer.

It's Official

Our wedding date is 20 June 2009. I'm not going to say which hotel we've chosen for the reception, because this is a public blog and you never know who might turn up and gatecrash. I might be totally overestimating my own importance here, but I don't suppose the people who phoned Radio 1 a few months ago requesting a 'shout out' (incidentally one of my most hated phrases in the world) while they were on their way to an 18th birthday party had any idea that 2,000 people would turn up and cause thousands of pounds' worth of damage, so I'm erring on the side of caution. Anyway, if you'd like to know where the reception's going to be, leave a comment or e-mail me and I'll tell you.

So that's the date and the venue decided. Just the cars, flowers, dresses, suits, band... and everything else to choose now.

Got myself a nice countdown ticker on the side there...

Jen's Birthday Weekend: Part II

Happy 30th, Little Jen! To commemorate the occasion, Mum put together a couple of galleries of photographs of the past 30 years - there was only supposed to be one gallery, but there were too many good pictures...



A couple of my favourites are the top right on the first picture - we were both given nurses' uniforms for Christmas 1980 - and the fourth one along on the bottom row of the second picture - yes, that's me wearing brown dungarees with an owl sewn on the front. That picture is actually my first memory, and probably my only one until around the time I started school.

Dad cooked a barbecue for about 18 people yesterday, and it was delicious. Or so they tell me - being vegetarian, I didn't get to find out. The rain mostly held off all day until about 21:00, and by that time it was starting to get dark so people made their way into the house anyway. Everyone had left by around midnight, then we cleared up for an hour or so, checked out the initial stages of the women's Olympic marathon, then realised there was no way we were going to stay up another 2 hours to see the end so went to bed...

Today Charlie, Matthew and Abi came round - they were here yesterday for the barbecue and were staying just round the corner - to help us eat up the vast amounts of leftovers from yesterday evening. Here's Abi doing her bit to finish off some of the drink. She put her own t-shirt on this morning and Charlie couldn't persuade her to take it off and put it back on the right way round.

We spent all of this afternoon just relaxing in front of the Olympics, which was great as the rest of the weekend had been quite hectic. Mum & Dad left around 18:30 and soon after that Jen took me back to Leeds Bradford airport for my flight back to Southampton. The flight left early and only took 40 of the 65 minutes it was due to take, so I was home by 21:15. Much better than 5 hours of driving!

The birthday doesn't end there, though - for her present I'm taking Jen to see Joseph, Spamalot and Hairspray in London in a few weeks' time.

Jen's Birthday Weekend: Part I

I flew from Southampton to Leeds last night - the idea of driving a total of 11-12 hours for a weekend, having just come back from the Lake District a couple of weeks ago, was not exactly filling me with joy, so I took the shorter, if slightly more expensive, option - and Jen picked me up from the airport. This morning we went to Rainbows Ceramic Cafe in York and had a great time painting pottery. I chose a shallow bowl and Jen picked a jug, but it took me so long to decide what kind of pattern to paint that Jen had time to do a plate as well as her jug, and still be waiting for me to finish ;). Next time I'll give my design a little more thought beforehand. We'd never done anything like that before and I'm not very artistic at all (see the DS pictures for proof) but we really enjoyed ourselves.


After a spot of lunch at Cafe Concerto (where the walls are papered with sheet music) we met Mum & Dad and did a bit of shopping then went back to Jen's to get changed and go out to the theatre. Actually we didn't go to a theatre: we saw a production of The Railway Children by York Theatre Royal, but the 'stage' was a piece of track at the National Railway Museum and the seats were either side of the track facing each other on Platforms 1 and 2.

Everything about the production was fantastic - the cast, crew, staging, props - it even included an appearance by a steam train. It was amazing how versatile the 'stage' could be. The only downside was that the seats we had were regular chairs, the kind you might get in a marquee at a wedding, and they were pushed so close together that the backs were overlapping, which made it quite a cosy experience - particularly as the lady sitting next to me was massive...

Operation Wedding Dress Gets Underway

I went for my first personal trainer session this morning with Ben, who did my 3 free PT sessions last year. This time I have to pay for them - or, more correctly, Rob has to pay for them. He offered to buy them for me as a push to help me lose the weight I want before the wedding.

Ben put me through my paces this morning, knowing it would be tough, but just to see how I did - and the answer was not very well. I feel like I need a bit of accountability so I'm going to post my times here - I warn you, they're not good. I did a warm-up of 12 minutes on the cross-trainer, then 4k at quite a high cadence on the bike (8:58), then 1k on the treadmill (7:21, quite disappointed as I had to walk for a while but my foot still isn't totally happy with the motion of running) and 1k on the rowing machine (just under 6:00), then as many crunches with legs crossed off the ground as I could manage in one go (60, quite pleased with that), then 3/4 press-ups (10, very poor, but never done them before), squats (30) and clean & press (19 - thought I had reached 20 but mis-counted!).

Ben recently trained a girl called Jo, who wanted to get in shape for her wedding, and not only did she drop 2 dress sizes, she also got a lot fitter, which is what I want to do, so he's going to do a programme for me that's similar to hers. She only did three sessions a week - one circuits, one boxing and one cardio - but she got her nutrition right and was able to reach her goal without exercise taking over her life. Sign me up!

BTW If you were expecting a post about looking for a wedding dress, sorry about that. But Jen and I will be starting the search in a couple of weeks so I'll post about how it goes.

How to get the edge - Bribery

For the past few weeks I've been looking through endless websites and brochures for potential venues for our wedding reception. We originally decided to get married in the Lake District but for various reasons (not least of which was that it's 300 miles away and would be difficult to organise) we changed our minds and will be getting married in Winchester.

The church only needs 3 weeks' notice of the wedding date. However, the same cannot be said of the hotels in the area... I've looked at loads of websites, requested 10 or so brochures and visited half a dozen venues and now have a shortlist of three. But the one that's currently slightly in front is the one that left this on the bed of one of the rooms I was shown: -


This one will probably turn out to be more expensive, though, so we'll have to do a quick calculation of roughly how much we think each one will cost, then this weekend, once Rob has been to see the two he hasn't seen yet, we can decide which one to choose. We have provisional dates booked at all three, so depending on the one we go for, the wedding date will be 13 June, 20 June or 25 July 2009. Watch this space...

Second Expedition

Actually, I don't think yesterday's walk qualifies as an expedition if it's only 8 miles and you don't need a sherpa to carry your bags, but it felt like a long way to me...

This time we drove just up the road from our hotel and walked round Great Langdale and Little Langdale, taking in Blea Tarn and Little Langdale Tarn on the way. We realised that we'd forgotten to bring the camera but decided not to go back and get it - which was a mistake as there were some beautiful shots to be had of the Langdale Pikes and Blea Tarn. It was raining, though, so no pictures we could have taken would have been as good as these ones: there's a great shot of the Langdale Pikes here and a 360 degree panoramic view of Blea Tarn here.

We took the walk more slowly than Rob would have liked, but we still finished in the time the guide book said it would take (4 hours, plus a stop for a lunch of Grasmere gingerbread). Most of the way round it was drizzling a little bit, but around miles 6 and 7 it really poured down, to the extent that our waterproof shorts were not living up to their name and were buckling under the pressure to stay dry. Fortunately the rain stopped and the sun came out for the last mile so we were able to dry off a bit before getting back to the car. Again, my foot started aching towards the end and I was glad to finish, but we still enjoyed ourselves. We went back to our hotel in time for a muscle-easing wrap (him) and a facial (me), then packed up ready to leave early this morning to go back home.

The journey back wasn't too bad at all, bearing in mind it had taken us 5 hours to get to Manchester last week and the Lakes are another hour or so further north. It took us just over 5 hours to get home including a half-hour stop, and we arrived back at exactly 15:00 - so plenty of time for me to do three loads of washing before bedtime ;). Because I took a week's holiday in May to go to Turkey, Rob has more holiday left to take this year than I do, so he's taking this next week off as well while I go back to work.