Nothing much happening

So here's a photo of where we got engaged

Day 195

Progress today when we found an email address for the local vicar and wrote asking them to marry us. They responded fairly quickly to point out that our particular circumstances could prove problematic. Given the possible option of "Burn in Hell, you foul beings", I consider that a result.

We might also have found a photographer, thanks to a good friend. Heck, I even spoke to a firm that supplies DJs. Four months to go from tomorrow...

Days 188-194

Clearly the best way to pick up wedding tips is to go to a wedding and watch other people get it wrong. It was therefore a bit unhelpful of the friends who got married this weekend to go and get everything so horribly, horribly right.

The first disappointment was when the groom failed to spontaneously combust when he set foot on sacred ground. I had good money on an unholy trinity of him doing that, promising to obey his wife during the vows and then falling down the church steps on the way out. He managed none of them and I'll be telling him what a failure he is when he gets back from his honeymoon.

There were things about the wedding that Goth Girl and I will do differently. We might skip the bottle throwing locals, for example, although with my family there anything could happen. But in terms of food, drink and dancing we now have something to live up to.

FAQ: The 'Roll On Friday' Question

I've now been asked so often why this site doesn't mention that Goth Girl and I met on an internet site for lawyers called Roll On Friday that it's become boring. This site was originally set up so that we didn't have to keep answering questions about how we got engaged, how the wedding plans were coming along and so on, but we never anticipated that people would start questioning the truth of what we were saying.

In which case, let's get one thing entirely straight. Everything you read on here is the truth. If you think about it, it more than defeats the object of the site if it is any different. The engagement happened as we say it did, the wedding plans are at the stage we say they are and, where people have p*ssed me off, then I've mentioned that too.

Quite why anyone would think either of us would want to lie about how we met is, frankly, beyond me. It would mean keeping up that lie for the rest of our lives together, which will, d.v., be a very long time indeed. I'm not that good an actor.

It is true that Goth Girl and I first came across one another on the Roll On Friday website. We had both been using the discussion board there for some time, me for over three years, GG for a little under that time. We knew each other's online personalities and we also knew each other's real names (a result of a comedy incident that I might reveal details of another time - I've worked up a good head of steam on this rant and I'm not going to get distracted now). But we had never actually met.

More importantly, we were never likely to meet. If it had not been for chance and the persistance of a mutual friend (and fellow Roll On Friday user), none of this would have happened. And the important fact was that the mutual friend had met both of us. They knew what we didn't, which is that we would get on in a way that we could never have anticipated from a mere internet messageboard.

In short, therefore, Roll On Friday was a part of our shared past, but left to our own devices we would never have seen one another face to face. In fact, neither of us even knew that the other one was single, because those facts had never been revealed by either of us.

It follows, therefore, that our meeting had very little to do with Roll On Friday and an awful lot to do with two good friends and the capricious nature of fate.

But none of this is anything that has ever been denied by either of us. This site links to Roll On Friday. So do both of my other sites. I have introduced Goth Girl to people as '...my internet bride.' And it really is f*cking annoying to have to waste half an hour of my life explaining to people why something as utterly trivial as this is a total non-issue.

Days 185-188

Goth Girl and I had a rare free weekend and so we spent it doing, well, no wedding planning at all. We gave ourselves a weekend off and did as little as humanely possible.

Saturday afternoon was spent in a pub with some friends. Goth Girl somehow found one which was an oasis of really good food in among the council flat expanse of Acton and we just whiled the afternoon away, drinking, eating and of course talking.

Our friends have been together much longer than Goth Girl and I, but they are also a fair bit younger than us. They curled up together on a bench in the pub, she with her back resting against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. It was wonderful to watch two people so totally into one another. I wonder how Goth Girl and I come across to other people?

Days 181-184

I mentioned earlier this week that we'd told 5 friends that we needed them to be at the wedding because we had jobs for them. Three of them decided to be very cool about it and await their fate. Two others jumped up and down like infants on a bouncy castle and insisted upon being told.

We were both really, really touched by their reactions. They both seemed really thrilled to be asked to be part of the event. I hope they still feel the same come the wedding day. In the meantime, we are feeling good ourselves as we know we have chosen well.

Days 176-180

The past fews days have just flown by. Good stuff happened (mostly to Goth Girl), bad stuff happened (to both of us) and my cricket team got thumped the first time Goth Girl came to watch us.

We've not really made any progress with the wedding either, although today we told five lucky people that we needed thme to be there as we have things for them to do on the day. I guess that is one of the nice things about a wedding - you can get your friends running around doing things for you and none of you feel bad about it.

We also booked to go over to the States and visit Goth Girl's parents. I believe they want me to meet about half of her home town. Haven't they realised yet that I have no memory for people or faces? (If truth be told, I am really excited about the trip, although I reserve the right to change my mind once the nerves kick in)

Sat-Nav

I guess I should've pointed this out earlier. I think I've saved myself £300. I don't need a sat-nav for my car. I've got Goth Girl.

Seriously. She's amazing. Last weekend, she navigated us to somewhere in Norfolk that was so far out in the sticks, it wasn't even in the back of beyond, it was beyond the back yard of the back of beyond. If we ever made a wrong turn, it was because I was driving too fast and missed it.

Then, today, we went to Oxfordshire so that she could watch me play cricket for the first time (poor girl, probably scarred for life). We went to a ground I have been to at least 4 times before. She found a new, much quicker, route.

God, I love her.

Day 175

Chatting to a friend today, they mentioned that they occasionally read this blog, but only when they were bored. Given that I am amazed that anyone reads it at all, I'm counting that as an endorsement.

They then accused me of becoming something of a mitherer about the wedding. I don't think I'm becoming that. I'm not actually worried about anything yet, I'm just trying to remember everything that needs to be done. I guess that I ought to start writing things down somewhere other than here.

Then again, the whole conversation started because something they said reminded me I had not booked a photographer. Perhaps they have a point after all...

Days 170-174

Well, the colds still haven't gone, although we at least avoided the stomach bug that two of our friends went down with. Projectile vomiting in your sleep is SO 1980*, don't you think?

No matter. Nothing was going to stop Goth Girl and I disappearing on our weekend away in Norfolk. Not colds, not the weather, not me almost failing to tax the car and certainly not signal failures east of Shenfield. After only one or two very slight detours we arrived at our cottage in the dead of night. We had a wonderfully relaxing time, did lots of walking, lots of talking, lots of swearing at my new mobile phone and, importantly, lots of wedding planning.

We have decided various aspects of the day, have allocated specific roles to five of our friends (not that they know this yet) and basically organised everything bar the music and the church. We really ought to sort the latter of those out.





*note for younger readers: John Bonham of Led Zeppelin and Bon Scott of AC/DC both died as a result of vomiting in their sleep. In 1980