So after a miserable few months of endless rain and arctic temperatures summer has arrived without any warning, like the very worst kind of visitor, and has caught me with no wearable shoes or white bras. (I can’t actually think of any visitors who’ve ever caught out in that exact way, but you get what I mean...) It’s just as well we ventured forth to brother #3's wedding at the weekend, because that means at least I have legs that have seen a razor within living memory, and have had the edge taken off their fluorescent Celtic Whiteness with a bit of St Tropez tan, so I’m not as unprepared as I would otherwise be.
Anyway, came back from a long weekend of family gorgeousness to discover that I’ve been tagged by lovely
Trish Wylie (who's currently up for a cool as anything Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award) for 6 Random Facts about me. It’s not too long since I did this
last, so this time I'm moving away from 'random' and going specialised, and with weddings very much uppermost in my mind at the moment, I’m doing 6 wedding related thoughts.
(Photo of brother #3 and his beautiful bride pinched from the website of their fabulous and uber-cool photographer, Crash Taylor)
After spending the budget of a developing nation on half a Wedgewood dinner service, new shoes, waterproof mascara, 3 tonnes of confetti and a night in a hotel, it would be a good idea if someone in your convoy of 4 cars were to spend an extra £2.99 on an up to date Road Map. The 2004 version is useless for negotiating the new layout of Nottingham town centre and although the bit in Four Weddings and a Funeral when they run down the street swearing is totally hilarious, in real life it’s undignified, stressful and grim....
The bit in the service about ‘with my body I thee worship’ is the part that makes all the women in the congregation well up with emotion. And all the men smirk.
Weddings make you realise that, although your brothers are handsome, grown men with expensive cars, underneath you still see them as boys in superman pyjamas who take their dinner money to school in a purse around their necks. And you’re glad because they’ve found women who understand that too.
Weddings do for love what Wimbledon fortnight does for tennis. They big it up. Suddenly you’re aware of how much you love everyone—your stepmother for being glamorous, sweet and funny, your children for not showing you up too badly and being patient in the face of being asked 427 times how old they are now, your sister-in-law for surreptitiously passing you tissues under the table when you start weeping copiously during the speeches. And your husband, for dancing all evening with every little girl under the age of ten and none of the ones over 18.
So now it's back to reality and back to work. I have just over two weeks to go until my deadline, and unless I get a move on there's absolutely no chance of my poor heroine getting a big white dress and a trip down the aisle towards her brooding Argentinean hero...
He's the hero of the book I'm currently racing to finish, an Argentine polo player called Alejandro. (Well, I guess he'd call himself Nacho Figueras. Whatever. I hope that in real life he's more accommodating than his fictional twin) He's actually been quite a joy to work with, but I wish that he'd just accept now that he's beaten and give in gracefully, since the book is currently about ten thousand words too long. He's that kind of guy.
