Tap!
At long flipping last, I’m allowed to talk about the boy’s new job. He’s launching a new magazine for iOS devices, and it’s going to be rockingly awesome. I’m very proud of him. Look out for the first issue of Tap! Then insist that all of your iPod/iPhone/iPad-owning friends buy it by the armful. They’ll thank you for it.

Friday night Fry
We both had fun saying hello to Stephen Fry at his book event here in Bath. We asked him to sign our book to ‘The Phins’ and he said, in a delightfully Fryesque way, ‘Well, I hope the Phins enjoy it, every one of them.’



The book is excellent, by the way, but do make sure you read this one first. I think it’s even better.

Divine
As far as I’m concerned, Saturday nights are for staying in, wearing pyjamas and drinking sparkling alcoholic drinks. Now and then, however, I can be lured out by something exciting like the Neil Hannon gig in Bristol yesterday.

As a rule, I hate gigs. Especially standing ones. They’re hot and you get jostled and, when you’re 5’3, you can see almost nothing. But this was fantastic; witty and indulgent and up-close. Go and see The Divine Comedy if you get the chance, you won’t regret it.

This is the only photo the boy took; the empty stage from the back of the room. Atmospheric!



Tales from my Twenties
My lack of interesting things to talk about recently has been a bit depressing, so in the run up to my birthday I’ve decided to fill the rest of November with some Tales from my Twenties. I can’t promise they’ll be interesting, but at least they’ll be here for posterity when I’m old and forgetful.

Let’s go! This one’s a bit namedrop-tastic, but we’ve already had a Stephen Fry encounter, so let’s just make that the theme of this post:

Tales from my Twenties: HMV
When I first moved to London, I applied for a postgraduate teaching course that started in September, but needed a job to pay the rent in the meantime. Despite my wobbly grasp of classical music, I secured a full-time job in the classics department of HMV Oxford Circus, which turned out to be one of the best and maddest jobs I have ever held.

The classics staff were mostly graduates from elite music schools who could play entire Bach sonatas from memory and formed string quartets in their spare time. One of the till girls used to double her weekly salary by busking with her cello on Bankside each Sunday.

Both better and more frightening than the staff were the customers, who divided into Celebrity and Quite Mad (never both, surprisingly). Due to the store’s proximity to Broadcasting House, I had to learn to act casual when faced with BBC legends and other niche telly people, and I was TERRIBLE at it. I just stared blushingly at the till as I served John Peel, Paul Merton, John Suchet, Ben Miller and lots of other people I’d grown up watching and listening to. If I had to interact with them I went to pieces – my brain’s survival mechanism has now blocked out the most humiliating episodes, but I still have flashbacks of having to perform a random credit card check on Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. At one point, Madonna came in to do an in-store gig. I stood within spitting distance of her, she a millionaire rapping badly about lattes, me a minimum wage earner wearing a polyester polo shirt, and pondered idly the events that had brought us to the same place.

The Quite Mad customers were (and possibly still are) famous in their own right within the store. There was a lady who came in almost daily with a cat perched on her shoulders. A well-spoken gent who always wanted the earliest music he could find; having exhausted our range of medieval music groups, he asked if we had any prehistoric recordings – not contemporary imaginings of prehistoric music, you understand, but recordings of music made in prehistoric times. Quite mad.

My favourite customer was a very elderly gentleman who dearly wanted to buy a very specific 1940s recording of a particular classical piece. A few of us turned the store upside down looking for it, grumbling all the while about all the work the fussy old duffer was causing us. Of course, when the CD turned up, the cover showed a black and white still from the recording showing the man himself conducting the orchestra. He was the JR Hartley of the classical world! I wish I could remember his name.

Here ends my tale of working in HMV. There is no moral other than this: if you want to work in a shop, work in HMV. Everyone is clever, crazy or famed, and you get a good staff discount too.

Lots of things! You don’t have to read them, though. Why not take this opportunity to catch up on your knitting, or take the rubbish out? I won’t hold it against you.

Tedious weekend rundown

Last weekend was a little bit bonkers, in that I was shocked at how much you can cram into two days if you really try.

On Saturday we went with aunties Sheila and Isla to celebrate my cousin Alis’ 14th birthday. We all went to Crockadoodledo and painted bowls and mugs and teapots and a dish for Alis’ new puppy. The gentle people of Crockadoodledo were very friendly when faced with a party of whooping Scottish ladies (and Chris) and had no problem with us eating cakes, blowing out candles and stealing paint pots from other tables.

That evening, we went to The Coachmakers in London, where Jamie had turned 30, put on a waistcoat and ordered a number of beverages. We gave him a large model of a Rancor fighting Luke Skywalker, which seemed insane when we were on the Tube but made perfect sense when every bloke in the pub went ‘OOOH’.

As we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, we left Jim’s party at a scandalously-early 10pm and went in search of food. WITH EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE OF LONDON. Ed’s Diner was jumpin’ but we managed to get a seat and ordered burgers and fries and onion rings and massive Cokes. This is the manic face of a woman who’s been up for 16 hours and just walked several miles in heels.



I really wanted one of those boozy milkshakes, but feared it would tip me over the edge.

Thanks to the Last Minute Secret Hotels thingy, we ended up staying at the Park Lane Hotel for cheap. The room was teensy and quite basic, but the hotel itself is in an ace location on Piccadilly, and has the lovely Palm Court, a proper 1920s Art Deco bar. Sunday was our 5th wedding anniversary, so we went down early-afternoon and ordered cocktails; the shakey-shakey and buzzy-blending of which may have destroyed the tranquil afternoon teas of many American tourists. SORRY TOURISTS. Here’s the boy, looking like a man who’s just spent ten years living with a woman who can’t operate her own television. Happy anniversary!



After that we walked for miles and went to see the BP Portrait Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which is excellent. And free! Go and see it, I promise you’ll come away inspired.

Accepting being the crazy lady

Cope’s recent post is a good illustration of my current renown among friends and colleagues for being something of a feminist killjoy. Poor Cope has been accused several times of sexism-by-blogpost and Chris’ editor Graham delights in goading me from time to time with talk of pink iPods and the like.

It’s difficult; I was raised to be polite and try my best to be respectful of different views, even if I don’t agree with them. When I was a teacher, though, my headmaster knocked an interesting message into my skull: ‘By ignoring it, you’re condoning it.’ He was actually talking about violations of the uniform rules at the time, but it really stuck with me.

Until about a year ago, the only thing I’d stick my neck out for, conversationally, was racism. On any other disagreeable matter I’d sit tight-lipped and seething until the moment passed.

Then I met a guy who was casually homophobic in everyday conversation. The first few times, I just coughed and turned away when he made outrageously sweeping generalisations or jokes about our gay acquaintances, but then my old headmaster’s words started to haunt me. By ignoring it, I was condoning it. This guy thought that I agreed with him. He thought his point of view was acceptable. The next time it happened, I told him to shut the fuck up. I may even have mused aloud on why exactly he was so obsessed with gay men. It’s possible that my voice was slightly raised to embarrass him in public. Either way, he never raised the issue of sexual preference with me again and it felt pretty good.

After that, I decided to speak up every time I heard a friend say anything socially antiquated and unacceptable. Thankfully, in my tiny Bath world, racism and homophobia only very rarely rear their heads, but frustratingly, sexism and misogyny are absolutely rife. And I just can’t let it pass.

I don’t hate men. I just want some men to stop talking about women as something other. I don’t hate women either. I just want some women to stop claiming pole dancing is empowering. Look here’s David Mitchell to lighten the tone!

Male or female, if you know you’re about to say something sexist, just don’t say it. You’re a relic.

More Holmes!

Okay, since Sherlock ended I’ve had to read a bunch of my old Conan Doyle books, and I’ve decided I want two things for the next series: more disguises and Irene Adler. Let’s make it happen, internet.

That’s it. Next weekend we are headed to beautiful Dorset for the Wedding of the Year! Expect photos. And cake.

May your next 30 years be full of:



Friendly dogs



Sophisticated dinner conversation



Dazzling technological experiments



Windy beachy fun



And really cool shoes.

Hip hip hooray!

xxx

Shockingly, it’s the boy’s 30th birthday this weekend. We are heading to London to celebrate. Brace yourselves, Londoners; we’ve been going slowly, properly, real ale, full moon, West Country bonkers over the last few months. I’m not sure we can integrate back into civilian life at this point.

In other news, here is a picture of a breakfast Chris made for me in recent weeks. I believe my instructions were ‘don’t put too much cereal in the bowl’.

The boy gave me a new camera gizmo to try out, and I inadvertently captured a perfect 40 second snapshot of our married life. I make pointless requests, the boy follows them without question, we talk to the car and I piss myself laughing for no good reason.

Lots of things have happened, and yet I have not told you lovely people about any of them. Unless you are on Twitter, in which case I’ve told you about all of them, in real time, in excruciating detail. Anyway. In order:

Everyone’s favourite Welsh-speaking American came to Bath and we played mini-golf. It was pretty great. Cope won, mainly due to his hardcore mini-golfing technique. There is a picture of me too, but it is not nearly as inspiring.

The boy turned 29 and bankrolled a madcap London visit to celebrate. We stayed at the beautiful Athenaeum hotel and were treated to the sight of our dinky Carlos being valet-parked by a doorman in a bowler hat. Hilarious. Adorably, all the boy wanted for his birthday was a rack of ribs at the Texas Embassy and an ice cream for afters. Done.

Happy birthday, you lovely man!

The boy and I are huge fans of Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan, and have taken to repeating Bob's words of wisdom* in lilting nasal tones at appropriate moments in life. To amuse each other, we've extended our Bob-repetoire to include dramatic readings of recipes, celebrity gossip and gas bills; if you have to read something depressing, you may as well read it out-loud in the style of a legendary electro-folk singer/songwriter. Imagine my delight, then, upon reading this article. A rich new seam of talking like Bob! How exciting.

In other news, the boy has gone to Cornwall for an overnight sojourn. He has kindly packed the fridge with sensible Marks and Spencer delicacies so that I don't spend 24 hours eating toast and Craisins. Thanks!

*Recent favourite 'Go to the dawg park. Everyone's happier in the presence of a dawg.'

This time three years ago, the boy and were hanging out in a hotel in Scotland waiting to get married by the world's most nervous registrar. I was wearing a hundred-quid frock that had been picked by the shop assistant at Jigsaw. Chris was wearing a shirt apparently designed for an adult elk. We had spent the morning watching telly and eating a large cooked breakfast.

We had been living together for five years, through degrees and graduations, unemployment, failed interviews, successful interviews, my PGCE and a move to London that aged us both by decades. When people asked why we were so calm on our wedding day it was simply because it was the easiest thing we'd done together in ages.

I had a lovely romantic photograph of our wedding to post at this juncture, but when I showed it to the boy he mimed retching and suggested this one instead:

It is our most viewed photograph on Flickr. I don't know what that means, but I do know that I'm infinitely glad we became family.

Cheers!

I don't really talk about The Doctor very much, but essentially my week revolves around that point on a Saturday night when I hang my disbelief up in the cupboard with the ironing board and watch some massively good time-travel. The boy is not such a big Doctor Who fan, but watches it with me anyway. I always get the impression he watches as part of an elaborate social study, as he often comments on the action and how much it may or may not frighten the average impressionable child. He also picks holes in the plot, but nods sagely when a genuine piece of historical fact comes up.

Anyway, a few weeks ago we were watching Doctor Who after the boy had consumed a couple of glasses of red wine. He said nothing for the entire episode, but at the end announced, 'Normally, this is just a high-camp kid's show, but after a glass of wine it becomes ... the full panoply of human emotion played out against the backdrop of all space and time.' Amen, brother.

And now here are some pictures of Nelly, the laziest greyhound in Bath.

The boy got my dreadful wheezy illness approximately seventeen minutes after I posted the other night. His was worse, though, because his eyes swelled up like a coupla pink grapefruit. The horror! Although I guess it was more his eyelids than his actual eyeballs, it was pretty gadzooks all the same.

In other news, when I felt better and had started working again, my iBook started kernel panicking every five seconds. Turns out there is some kind of problem with the AirPort module, meaning I can't be online without sitting on the floor and jacking in with an Ethernet cable. WHAT IS THIS, 1998? I'm tethered to the wall like an animal! O woe, alas and alack, etc.

Suckiest 'holiday' ever Y/Y?

One of the good things about shacking up with a life-partner at a relatively young age is that before you grow old together, you grow up together.

I think we smashed that middle barrier sometime this evening, when the boy turned to me clutching a sheet of brown paper with tiny black text all over it. 'THIS IS UNREADABLE!' he exclaimed, all but shoving the offending article up my nostril in disbelief. Nope, you're just gettin' blinder.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Christopher David, noted techno-journalist, husband extraordinaire, speaker of sexy schoolboy French and red wine drinker. The boy turns a surprisingly-young 28 years old today, and has celebrated so far by buying a new book and eating Tic Tacs noisily. Rock on.

Everyone send him some birthday love and advice on What To Do When You're 28 Other Than Wait To Be 30. Because frankly I couldn't find that one in Waterstones.

Everyone send some love to the boy's Nana, who turns 80 tomorrow. Happy birthday Nana! I know that all of you who have been lucky enough to sample Kiddie Crack Tablet™ will want to mark this occasion.

The boy has gone to Scotland for Nana's birthday party tomorrow, so I am all alone making crazy-but-delicious dinner concoctions. Today's theme was 'Freezer Delights', which constituted a bowl of roasted parsnips and a margarita pizza. Why not try it yourself?

Now I am watching The Hits' Top 50 Massive Million Sellers, featuring Dexy's Midnight Runners. Why was it a surprise to anyone that Kevin Rowland went a bit odd?

And now it's Celine Dion, in the days before she had her face botoxed into a rictus of feigned empathy.

Next someone called Anton du Beke is talking. I wish we had proper MTV.

Oh look, it's Friday. As weeks-off go, this one has been something of a stressy non-event. To make up for the endless parade of workmen and tedious chores that have hampered my holiday so far, the boy bought me a mountain of delicious M&S snacks and left them in the fridge for me to enjoy today. Then he set the telly to record lots of my favourite trashy television overnight. Then he got up early and tidied the flat so that I had literally nothing to do other than slob around in my pyjamas. Then he went uncomplainingly off to work. THANKS! Attention all other husbands: The new standards for husbandiness have been set! Get with the program!

In other news, I have just bought a EuroMillions lottery ticket. Come on lucky seven!

Me: He is singing with a woman out of the Gossip.
The Boy: What is 'the Gossip'?

I glimpsed over the boy's shoulder just now as he was submitting a product review by email and caught this gem:

Alex, I nominate you as the cake buyer for the week I'm away. Remember that everyone goes nuts for those soft buns – 99p for 5!

Obviously I laughed so hard that my lungs almost fell out, and the boy felt compelled to elaborate on the cakes in question. 'They're just those Marks and Spencer iced bun things,' he explained, a look of rapture in his eyes. 'Only a pound, but they're ... disproportionately delicious. Maybe that should be their new slogan.'

Ah, simple pleasures.

Understanding of the Bath Look is dripping slowly into my consciousness. After a decade of kitschy, woollen granny coats, I've now gone out and bought a parka of modern space age fibres. The Bath Look has no truck with whimsical coats. The parka features a sensible hood and multiple zips and is ludicrously warm. The only downside to it is that I've spent most of the afternoon stomping around the flat shouting 'look deep into the parka!' at no one in particular.

In other news, I bought the boy a vintage fedora similar to the one featured in the corner of his website header. Unfortunately, it's far too small, but this has done nothing to dissuade him from wearing it. The tiny fedora has been perched on his head, wobbling and ridiculous, for all household chores, meals and administrative tasks since yesterday. I'll try to take a photograph so you can share in the hilarity.

#473: Ten Bird Roast
The subject of a turkey stuffed with a goose and eight other birds comes up frequently in our flat. I often propose it as main course when people come for dinner. The boy insists that if we do serve it, we must put a chicken's egg in the very middle, so that when it is carved "a bird flies out". I say the bird would die in the oven, but the boy insists that the bird would be comfortably incubated throughout.

The concept is extrapolated to other foodstuffs when the need arises; if I require a packed lunch for work, I may request a ham sandwich inside a ciabatta inside a pitta bread inside a baguette, for example. And for my birthday in December, I fully expect a cupcake inside a muffin inside a battenburg inside a victoria sponge.

I don't know who taught us about Ten Bird Roasts, but I'd like to find that person and PUT THEM INSIDE A GOOSE for a while.

Sometimes my copy of Empire magazine has very frightening or gory film stills in it, the sort of images that cause me to switch on all the lights at 3am and demand water and Radio 4. Imagine my relief then, when I opened this month's issue to find that the boy had gone through with a black marker and blocked out all the zombies, corpses and severed limbs he could find. He also put a heart around anything he thought I might especially like; Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and a dog, mainly. Thanks! You are hilarious.

In other news, New Job is not bad, flat is crawling with wiggins and my hair is gigantic.

How are you? Here is another unordered, unedited list of braindribble:

Non-mental holiday shocker
This is the first summer holiday I have ever properly switched off. No anxious pacing. No panicky midnight lesson planning. No physical nausea at those Woolworths 'back to school' ads. I've downgraded my herbal remedies from brandy-laced Rescue Remedy to harmless Badger Balm*, which smells much nicer than the title suggests. I always thought it was the epic 'alone-time' of August that brought the crazy to the yard, but apparently not.

*Notice the inaccurate packaging on the front of Badger Balm. Aren't badgers nocturnal? How is this badger going to forage undetected during daylight hours? Or cross busy daytime roads? What if he becomes a social outcast? Get it together, Badger Balm.

Rockumentary
The boy has given me a dinky DV camera to try out. I now have many hours of shaky, Mike Leigh style docu-footage of life in our flat. I can't BELIEVE how often and how elaborately I swear. Sorry guys. I will get the boy to edit down some of my searing social commentary so you can share the love tedium orange carpet.

Two years and sixty seven months
Yesterday marked two years since the boy and I stopped being groovy bohemian sinners and became family. I can't honestly claim to have had many good ideas, but I reckon that one was a humdinger. Here is my annual puke-making anniversary photograph:

What do you mean, 'blow chunks'? Yes, okay, you can go now.

Lifting, carrying, driving, walking, signing, walking, lifting, carrying, driving. What a weekend. We finally closed the deal on our new Bath flat, just in the nick of time for the boy starting his new job tomorrow. The new flat is very different from our current one, the main difference being the lack of screaming traffic and frightening criminals outside. This is our new living room view:


Pretty nice. Apparently there is a gardener, how civilised.

I'm hoping that West Country folk will start endearing themselves to me a bit more once I actually move there. So far everyone we've met is either a) crazy, b) humourless or c) very angry at us outsiders lurking around. The poor boy got a particularly harsh lecture from a taxi driver today. Come on, West Countrymen, I know some of you must be lovely. Let's hug!

I'm back in Londres now, where I'll be until the end of July. We're in the middle of exams and my contract is watertight, baby. It's pretty sad to think of the boy rattling around in that big empty flat on his own, though. Here he is at his desk, connecting to the hive mind:

Everyone send him lots of emails!

Night then x

Hey I haven't seen you in ages! Here are some things that I am too lazy to link together in prose format:

Happy Birthday!
The boy turned 27 last week, happy birthday to him! I gave him a boxed set of Pocket Penguins. These are books, sadly, not small flightless birds, but I think he still likes them. No one at my work can believe the boy is only 27, although everyone is too embarrassed to tell me their guesstimated age. 35? 47? 82? We'll never know.

Sicky sickness
I've been ill twice this month. This MONTH! Perhaps it is one long illness with a few days of rude health as one of its symptoms. Stoically, I've continued to work through this lurgy because of exam prep. Here's to spreading germs around!

Art
I have started a new painting, the first proper, on-canvas painting I've done in years. It's hilarious.

The other day, I drew a few pictures of the mushrooms I had saved from the mushroom soup. I was inanely proud of these retarded etchings and presented them to the boy with great ceremony. The boy, because he knows I am 'special', heaped praise on the mushroom drawings, dubbing the page 'Aspects of Mushroom'. Approximately 5 seconds later, I had composed a short song entitled 'Aspects of Mushroom' which ended with the inspired lines 'aspects of mushroom, aspects of mushroom/if you like mushrooms, this is for you.'

Such ludicrous domestic scenes are happening with increasing frequency in our relationship. I used to think that it took decades of co-habitation to become so complicit in eccentricity that the outside world stopped having any real meaning, but now I know the bitter truth.

Two days ago, as we made our way back from Sainsbury's laden with groceries, the boy stopped and pointed at the ground. 'Look,' he said, pointing at a small rock on the pavement, 'some flint.' We both looked at the flint for a moment, chewing the buttermilk pancakes that the boy had liberated from his carrier bag moments earlier. I'm afraid that I rather lost my head, making a right-turn down the alleyway of squaredom, man. 'I am twenty six years old! And I am eating buttermilk pancakes in the street! While my husband points out interesting rocks! THIS IS NOT HOW MY LIFE WAS SUPPOSED TO PAN OUT,' I shrieked, somewhat hysterically. The boy was nonplussed. He thinks buttermilk pancakes are a snack for any time, any place.

We have a lovely new student teacher who is very hard working and earnest and makes me feel ASHAMED of myself. Sorry, student teacher, do not judge me too harshly until you have walked a mile in my teacher-slacks. Which are from The Gap, if you're wondering, and are the best forty quid I ever spent.

The boy made it back from the New World in one piece, bearing Fritos and Hershey and a Californian head cold. It's pretty great to have him back, not least because I can stop worrying about falling asleep in the bath. He also brought me a small jar of Grey Poupon room service mustard, which we both find inexplicably hilarious.

In mushroom news, I have a yellow oyster mushroom in the fridge which I might do a drawing of later. Or I might not.

All Americans take the piss! Ah, you guys.

The boy is, as we speak, flying over the Atlantic. Or possibly bobbing in it, given the horrific weather we are currently enduring. As a 'hilarious' joke, my boss hid my keys and made me think that I would be locked out of my flat for a week. Thanks! Your tax dollars at work!

No other news other than my tempting the fates by leaving our Christmas tree up past Saturday. Doom! Also, is it wrong to find crying while eating quite as funny as I do?

The boy is obsessed with Unique Selling Points (USPs). I'm not sure if this is because he worked for a time as a graphic designer or because he is some sort of as-yet undiagnosed autistic savant.

He bought me some 'Soft Cakes' in Germany, which are like Jaffa Cakes but more orangey, and wouldn't let me have any until I could quote their oddly-translated USPs from memory. In the end I quite enjoyed shouting 'TASTE! PRICE! VERY NICE!' every time I fancied a biscuit, but still, quite dysfunctional. I'm so glad we don't have children, although possibly if we trained dogs we could be millionaires.

Sometimes he assigns USPs to mad, non-purchasable things like people and cities and ways of falling asleep. A few days ago I was struggling with a subject for my 'User column when the boy tried to help:
'Just remember your USP: you're young and optimistic! Write young.'
'What's Tony's USP?'
'He's old and curmudgeonly.'
'What about Banks?'
[pause]
'He's funky and tech-savvy.'*
'Oh.'

In the boy's world, everything is just one spray-mount away from a global media campaign and promotional giveaway.

In related news, I'd like to take this opportunity to pimp my brother's new blog. Gra's unique selling point is that he is the only member of our family to live in Japan and be a computer scientist, yo.

*Telephone conversation while writing this post
'What's Banksy's USP again?
'He's savvy and he looks like Iain Banks'
'That's not a very catchy USP!'
'It's a good USP for everyone except Iain Banks.'
' ... '
'Iain Banks's USP is just 'IS IAIN BANKS''
'You are insane.'

Woe is me! Alas and alack! When the boy went to Germany he bought me a Marks and Spencer Scrummy Lemon Cheesecake to eat in his absence. What's that you say? Confusing food with love? Cheesecake acting as bizarre husband substitute? Yes, yes, but listen, I haven't got to the most shocking part yet:

I FORGOT TO EAT IT.

Oh how I used to long for the day when I would be willowy and beautiful and people would say to me 'oh, how do you manage it?' and I would chuckle merrily and exclaim 'why I simply forget to eat, darling!' and I would be interesting and bohemian, but now I know the sordid truth. The only thing worse than eating Scrummy Lemon Cheesecake for four days in a row with no other discernible source of vitamins or minerals is FORGETTING to eat Scrummy Lemon Cheesecake for four days in a row then finding it all mouldy-but-still delicious-looking at the back of the fridge and thinking of all the wasted, wasted Scrumminess.

Because I am rude and absent minded, I have not yet said thank you to everyone who has wished us a happy anniversary. Thank you! I was very surprised by the number of cards we got from people who were nice enough to travel to the arse-end of nowhere for our wedding in the first place, and then lots of other people left lovely comments on the boy's Flickr photos and on this very site. Touched! The only thing that weirded me out slightly was that we got cards from relatives saying things like 'congratulations on your first year together' as if the five years before that were just a crazy medical experiment or something. But! Lovely cards and comments, thank you thank you everyone, you rock!

As we were in Devon on our anniversary itself, we spent a breezy evening at the beach eating spectacular fish 'n' chips with an expensive bottle of wine. I wore my wedding dress and a denim jacket, the boy wore a cufflinked shirt with Birkenstocks, it was all class, baby.