Broken fridge and drunken boy
06.10.14, 2:52 pm

Our fridge has broken and it's a bloody pain in the arse. This is the first weekend in about a million years when we haven't been ambushed by bridesmaid duties/visits from random members of James's family/Amanda nonsense, and you think you're finally going to get chance to paint the back bedroom, because you've been in the new house for over a year now and still only gotten around to decorating one room, and then boom! The fridge gives up the ghost, and you're sticking your face into it and huffing, 'There's definitely no cold air coming out. Nope, that - look, that - is room temperature. Where does this stupid thing even plug in, anyway?' The milk is currently living in a saucepan of cold water on the back doorstep and already looks lethal.

So Mel's wedding finally happened two weekends ago and it was a doozy. Initially it began poorly, as the bra that I bought for the dress suddenly didn't fit, because I've lost a load of weight, and there was a load of idiotic panicked bra buying before the dress woman eventually decided that I should just not wear one at all. I have never, ever not worn a bra before, and found the idea totally alarming, but it was actually fine in the end. I mean, I think there might be one of two photos where my left breast is clearly escaping ever so slightly out the top of the dress, but who'll really notice except dedicated perverts? Me and Mel then had to endure 12 hours of Mel's mum's INCESSANT WITTERING ABOUT NONSENSE before everyone cleared off to their hotels and we could get some sleep. Mel had the traditional last-minute wedding panic and I held her hand for a bit, and told her everything was fine, and then we were all good.

Wedding day itself was all going fine, with hair and makeup looking excellent, until Mel noticed, with half an hour until kick off, that one of her sisters had spilled foundation down the front of her wedding dress. Big panic ensued, but the amazing shop just hand-stitched a new piece of lace over the top and everything was grand. We had a billion photos taken outside the church, and then the bridesmaids started parading in. I told Mel I loved her (mush alert! Total utter mush alert!) and paraded in myself, but then I somehow forgot how to walk in a straight line, and did a stupid swinging step with my leg, and then looked up to see my friend Emily bursting out laughing at me. So that was all a bit embarrassing. The rest of the day was brilliant, especially as I got to hang out with my old uni housemates, some of whom I hadn't seen for forever. Ended up drinking too much wine, started my hangover even before going to bed (never good), and had to look after James, who was similarly pretty plastered and kept singing If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands to me on the bus to the hotel, then saying, 'Look, look! Hol, look! That's a stop sign, and when there's a stop sign it means you have to stop!', followed by 'I love youuuu' with a dopey look on his face when I rolled my eyes. Anyway, Mel's now married and the whole thing is one joyful love-fest. She's just the greatest.

James's parents were down last weekend, just for a change, helping us paint the shed and sort the garden. It was lovely to see them but James's mum has gone totally insane re. the wedding and is driving me up the wall. She kept starting dreary wedding conversations like, 'I've been thinking about table decorations...' or 'I'm afraid you're going to have to invite Pam's friend, Deborah' or 'Do you know if you actually can hire kilts in Sheffield?' and making me want to bolt out of the room. Honestly, all I want to do is just relax, buy a dress in January sometime, and then organise everything from there. All this wedding chat just makes me twitchy and irritable. And they keep telling us we need to invite more and more of their friends, which is doubley narking.

We think we might have a humanist come along and do the ceremony bit of our wedding, seeing as we both don't believe in God, but I'm worried it's going to entail lots of poetry and tying mad bits of ribbon around our hands.James's mum wants us to have a bagpipe player. That's not going to happen in a million, gazillion years. Pipers are the devil's musicians.

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