Food for Thought

        My Mum always knows how to salvage something gone wrong. Whether it was turning a ripped pair of jeans into fashionable shorts, turning a collapsed sponge cake into the base of a delicious trifle or soothing hurt feelings into laughter, she does a pretty good trade in fixing up. If life is a rubbish dump, Mum would be Steptoe.

        Sometimes, there are things she can’t fix right away: broken teenage hearts, smashed ornaments, tiny chain filaments that require Dad’s pliers and steady eye. Yesterday, it was my almond macaroons. I’d gone over to Mums to make use of her company and her eye-level oven, and after following a difficult online recipe the end result was a bowl of pink yop that looked like I’d melted down Mr Blobby. I consulted with the elder of the tribe to see what went wrong. Mum and I took the bowl out into the kitchen for surveillance.

        She hovered over the bowl as if it were the Pensieve from Harry Potter. “Did you put eggs in?” She asked, spooning the mixture out and watching it plop runnily into the bowl again.

        “It’s gotta be about eighty percent egg,” I reasoned. “The recipe said so.”

        “Caster sugar or icing?” Mum hovered over the pink bowl like Mystic Meg.

        “Er…both? Icing for the almond paste, caster for the sugar syrup.” I was beginning to sweat. This was like a final exam: if I’d made a rudimentary mistake, I would shame myself as - gasp! - a rubbish cook. I started running through the process in my head; first I’d done this, then this, then that. Then I’d whisked it. Had I whisked it enough? I was sure I’d whisked it enough.

        “I whisked it enough,” I said pathetically.

        “Maybe a little more couldn’t help,” said Mum brightly, grabbing the electric whisk and shoving it into the quivering pink mass. “After all, it’s about eighty percent egg.”

        As I watched her at work (noticing she had the same stern expression of concentration as my Dad), I had a thought about wisdom and skills. When it came to cooking in the ‘W’ family, Mum was unanimously crowned Queen. In my own home, I reigned supreme. While I’m cooking, Brawny will often hover around, asking questions that usually follow the “Are you supposed to do that?” mould. Once I’ve given him a few logical answers, he leaves the kitchen, vowing to never again question my cooking ability ‘because I’m always right’.

        I mentioned earlier that while Mum can salvage most things, Dad can make light work of a broken necklace. Similarly, Brawny can recover failed hard drives, unblock sinks, re-wire faulty consoles and manage our finances.

        I know what you’re thinking. I know that it takes different kinds to make a world, and not everyone’s the same, and you must have compromise in a relationship blah blah blah. But what if there’s something you can’t salvage?

        In the past two years, Brawny and I have gone through a fair amount. Just like Mum’s whisk couldn’t save my macaroons, even our joint efforts couldn’t always help our situation. And then there’s the doubt: Why couldn’t we fix it? What did we do wrong? Why didn’t the mixture peak like bloody meringues are bloody supposed to?

        After ten minutes of fruitless whisking, fifty grams of icing sugar and a rather dirty worktop, Mum and I were about to write off Project Macaroon as a big fat failure. I was feeling as sick as my mixture looked: I’d toiled for three hours, making a mess and several mistakes as I went, and now I had nothing to show for it. As Mum shut off the whisk, shaking her head like a doctor calling the time of death, Dad came in and eyed the gloop on the table.

        “What is that?” he snorted. “Did someone's brain melt?”

        And I laughed. I kept laughing as Mum spooned the goop up again for Dad to see, and as he picked up the crystallised lump that had been my first attempt at sugar syrup and described it as “mutant poo” I kept hooting and hollering with mirth.

        As I went home, I reflected on my achievements. I could have been miserable; three hours’ work had been poured down the kitchen drain, and I had nothing to show for my efforts. I didn't even know why it went wrong and how I could have saved it. But all it had taken to cheer me up was Dad pointing out that my cooking looked like effluence.

        “So what did you do today with your Mum?” asked Brawny while I was cooking dinner (curry - something I’ve cooked from scratch a zillion times). I thought about how rotten I’d felt about my situation until Dad had encouraged me to laugh at it. I then thought about all the times Brawny had made me chuckle through my tears when we couldn't find a solution to a problem. As long as we could see the funny side, it gave us the will to try another day.

        “I learnt that I can’t make macaroons,” I said, before adding with a wink, “Yet.”

Dress to Impress

       Sometimes, a dress makes all the difference.

       Even if a girl lives in blue jeans all her life, the famous allure of the wedding dress is not always the hardest thing to push aside.

I met my best friend and MOH Lizzie at College nearly seven years ago during our first English Language lecture. She was wearing jeans, a red jacket and a nifty-looking hat, and I sensed in her a sort of kindred spirit. I sat down next to her, and as Bogie once said, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Since then I’ve seen her in jeans, comfy slacks, pyjama bottoms, miniskirts and going-out dresses. But the first time she came out of the changing room at the bridal shop, a little tear escaped my eye. Wedding dresses are just...different.

I don’t know if you’ve been following the car-crash viewing that is My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings on Channel 4 but the dresses that the young Gypsy wives insist on wearing look like Barbie and the Disney Princesses fighting inside an Eton mess. The cakes are thirty tiers high – some are merely decoys covered in icing – and the decorations look like Christmas in Bel Air. But then, the day after the wedding, the wives start a whole new life: cooking and cleaning for their husbands, not being allowed out without permission, bearing children and doing little else. It’s a very surreal experience – you go from chuckling at seven-foot-wide wedding gowns to wondering how this sort of oppression is still acceptable. It’s as if their day in the spotlight is their wedding day, and they spend the rest of their lives paying it off.

My New Years’ Resolution was to try on a dress, so I took Liz and my darling Mum to the bridal boutique down the road.

If you’ve ever been dress shopping (either for yourself or with a lady), you probably know that there are lots of rules. Here’s the abridged version: not every dress suits every girl. So my plan of action was to try on a range of different styles. I’m not going into details here, mainly because my future husband reads this Blog, and the little devil's itching to know details that I don't wish to pass on.

I’ve worn quite a few dresses in my time, but nothing quite prepares you for the sight of yourself in a wedding dress. I’ve seen other people in them, I’ve seen plenty at the wedding fayres I’ve been to, but it’s nothing like actually wearing one. Unlike any other dress, they’re designed to fit you like an extra layer of skin; they’ve got more layers than an onion and more often than not you need an extra pair or so of hands to help you get into them. It’s all very princess-like.

Luckily I’m not a Gypsy, and Brawny doesn’t expect me to give up my individuality in exchange for a lavish wedding ceremony, but the dress is still symbolic of my transition from single girl to wife. Aside from your wedding, you never wear a dress quite like this ever again (unless Miss Havisham).

And so begins my quest for the perfect wedding gown. Like every other bride, I want to find the one that defines me best; the one that makes everyone’s eyes widen in that silent “Wow!” gesture as I walk down the aisle. But I’m a fussy creature: I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want. Sort of. Wedding dresses have been used many a time as metaphors for finding the perfect mate; you desire something that complements you, fits you in all the right places, emphasises the best parts and skims over any unflattering bits. But Brawny was a lucky find in an unlikely place: the retail equivalent of finding an unworn Vivienne Westwood original at a car boot. Once you’ve found such a rarity, you won’t ever need to look anywhere else.

And that’s essentially what I want for my dress. Wish me luck!

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Everyone, to some extent, is vain.

I'm not saying we're all drowning in our reflections like mini Narcissi. There's a scale of vanity, much like there is a scale for the Piri-Piri sauce at Nando's. Some people are low down on the scale: perhaps they take a little while in the bathroom before a night out, or they will happily take a compliment. That's your kind of everyday, Lemon-and-Herb self-appreciation (we're sticking with the Nando's analogy.) Other people can't pass any shiny surface without gravitating towards it and making sex faces at themselves. Obviously that's the kind of Piri-self-love that causes hot flashes, swelling of the mouth and the runs.

I should begin my story by stressing that it's OK to be happy with yourself: there's nothing wrong with a little pride, in moderation.

I've never much liked my body, especially during the days of unflattering school uniforms. Just when I'd become used to it, puberty hit me like a truck. All my favourite outfits betrayed me as my figure changed, and they had to be exchanged. On top of that, I had a few health issues that required physio and medication. Coupled with good old-fashioned playground bullying, I began to dislike a great deal of my body. My only constant was my hair.

It was thick, long and a treacly brown. Over the years, I'd dyed it pink, purple, blue, green, red and a horrible straw blonde when I'd accidentally fallen asleep with lightener in it. Although I'd used and abused it, it faithfully grew back.

I don’t know about you, but I like follow a daily routine: I get up, wash my hair, have breakfast and plan my day. Except one recent morning, when I went to dry my hair, something odd happened. My hairdryer malfunctioned, and set fire to my head.

I fled to the bathroom, flinging the nearest thing (a cardigan) over my head. I crouched on the bathroom floor until I heard the sizzling stop. As I stood up to look in the mirror, little black flakes that were once my fringe fluttered down like dreadful snow.

Ever heard the phrase "...And then I lost it"? That's exactly what I did. I panicked. I tried phoning my Dad and getting a colleague instead, then I tried Brawny (who was at work) in desperation, before finally speaking to my brother, and probably not making much sense.

Afterwards, I decided I'd better check myself over just in case adrenaline was hiding any pain. My head seemed fine, but the fringe and entire right side had matted together. I tried to brush it through but to my horror the hair just crumbled into nothing. I grabbed the scissors and began hacking off any dead, blackened bits.

It turned out that my answerphone message had made so little sense that Brawny had come home early from work. As he checked me over, Mum rang – Xel had filled her in. Together, the three of us took an emergency trip to my hairdresser’s.

While the hairdresser did her very best to turn my mangled mane into a fashionable crop-cut, I avoided the mirror. Along with my hair, my sense of self had been badly damaged. Though it’d been all the colours of the rainbow, I’d never had hair this short. Admittedly, I had considered hacking it all off in the name of charity (instead I opted to mangle my name so it now resembles an explosion at Webster’s printing press). Would it have felt so bad if I’d decided to cut it? Maybe not, but there’s a difference between “Hmm, shall I cut my hair?” and “Holy shitcaskets, my head is ON FIRE.”

Snap forward a few weeks and I’m in a wig boutique, trying on a bevy of different styles with my glossy posse: Mum, my second mum Joy and Rachel, who I’ve known for years (and have had a secret hair envy of ever since Brownies). I find a gorgeous auburn wig which looks just like a longer version of my old hair, and I’m waltzing out of the shop with the spring back in my step.

You can pretend to be as self-assured and non-superficial as you like, but when something changes so suddenly and so out of your control, you can’t predict how you’ll react. I know I’d still love Brawny if it’d been his hair that caught fire, but it would’ve taken a few days to get used to the new look. Thankfully it was just hair, which grows back over time - I’ve been in relationships where someone’s personality has gradually changed, and the end result was much more shocking than any kind of change in appearance.

Maybe losing a chunk of hair was actually a blessing in disguise. Though I’m now used to my crop, I’ve been trying on wedding dresses* with my wig on, but that’s simply because having temporarily longer hair has made me reconsider my style options – I’d previously wanted to keep my short bob right up until W-Day and I’ve now decided to opt for a versatile longer ‘do. I’d never have thought of that if I hadn’t suddenly found the need to wear a wig.

It has been said that “character is what you are in the dark”. Nobody can help making judgements based on appearance – I’d been afraid that having less hair would make me less feminine, yet I still like flowers, baking, and wearing dresses. I’m the same person I was before I started drying my hair that day; I just come in slightly different packaging now. Why should I have worried about being treated differently?

I wouldn’t recommend burning something off to learn the value of this lesson, but maybe it’s a good idea to survey the spicy scale of vanity now and again just to find out where you are. I will be doing so every time I look in the mirror, and figuring out if I need to adjust my palate accordingly.

Oh, and just for kicks, here’s a little chart of how my looks changed.

A Marriage, not just a Wedding

Hello there, readers of LADYBRIDE - it's Brawny (the groom-to-be) here once again. Sorry for the lack of contributions - I've had quite a lot on recently, both good and bad.

As you may remember from my earlier post, one of my main responsibilities with the wedding is the budget, as maths is one of my strong points. (I can add two numbers together and get the correct result almost every time!) However, Neety and I have recently encountered some financial issues, which has led to our savings being depleted, leaving us with less in place for the wedding than we had hoped we would have at this point.

For a little while, therefore, I've been worrying about the financial implications of the day, and consequentially I've been focusing a little less on the details of the ceremony than I would have liked. But do you know what? Today, after arriving back from a week's holiday, Neety said something that really made me smile, and made me realise that we'll be fine, whatever happens. It happened while a very whiny girl was on a Don't tell the Bride: Greatest Moments, (Don't tell the Bride is a BBC production which has been a common fixture in our "So Bad it's Good" TV selection since before we got engaged), and Neety happened to state quite simply; "She wants a wedding. Not a marriage." I looked over to her, smiling, and she continued. "Whereas I want a marriage. No matter what else happens, I want a marriage." 

And so do I. And I know it may sound corny, but in a way, that lifted the burden from my shoulders a little. I don't mean for a second that I won't keep trying to save as much money as possible to make our day as special as we can. But it's not the be-all and end-all. Certain aspects of the day have been dealt with and paid for, and there's lots more to go. But you know what? We'll do what we can, and what we can't, we'll do without. Because at the end of the day, it's just one day. One very special day, I grant you, but it's the special day that starts the rest of our lives together. And that's the most special part of all.

Don't get me wrong, if any of you have any wonderful budget-saving or money-raising ideas, then please do let us know. And it will be the greatest day of my life. But I need to worry about the money slightly less, and help arrange the details slightly more.

I don't know if any of you readers are planning your own weddings. But if you are? Take my advice. Whatever your budget is, then work with it - don't let it work against you. Because as long as you have the partner that you want to spend the rest of your life with, everything else is optional. (Even clothes, although I personally wouldn't recommend a naked wedding!)

Next time .... I don't know, because I'm not the regular writer of this blog. So I'm going to take a shot in the dark and suggest that the next post will be a witty, funny and from-the-heart piece by my beautiful Bride-to-Be.