The Dreaded Christmas Newsletter

Posted in Family life, Marriage by carolcooper

The Christmas cards are fluttering in through the letter box, and so are the round robin letters, lovingly composed to bring you up to date with all the people you no longer remember. This may be my favourite so far.

My, doesn’t time fly! I supposed that’s what happens when you’re our age. 2015 has been a very special year for us although, as John likes to points out, it hasn’t quite ended yet.

Our exciting year kicked off with damp-proof treatment to our lounge. The builders got plaster dust literally everywhere, including in my beloved knitting basket. After the re-plastering, we re-decorated. We spent many an evening debating the relative merits of Magnolia versus Almond White. John got the Almond White he wanted. Well, he is the Man of the House.

Here is where I usually include some of the best photos of our year. Our 2014 Christmas letter featured an xray of my new hip, so this one, taken in our garden, is rather different.

Not, alas, the much anticipated bumper crop of berries on our pyracanthus, because John had a bit of a go with the pruning shears right after his latest parking ticket. At least this time he didn’t punch the traffic warden, which you will agree is a good thing if you recall our Christmas letter 2013.

Since John and I have long retired, the most interesting career developments are the children’s. I am excited to tell you that daughter Tabitha has finally decided what she wants to do, and is now a tattoo artist’s model.

Our son Graham, who takes more after me, has found his knitting business has really taken off. To complement his range of egg-cosies, he now offers knitted ties, and he has sold three of them in just four months!

In March I had another bout of shingles, and John had an attack of gout. However this did not stop us from enjoying foreign travel. John and I went to Scotland in April. The weather was not as sunny as we had hoped, but we got to play a lot of gin rummy.

Six months ago, I joined a book club which seems quite fun. We do not yet have a Book of the Month. There are however a number of wine labels that are required reading.

The rest of our year was taken up with the replacement of my hip replacement. Here I must thank all our medical friends who got in touch just after receiving our 2014 Christmas letter and pointed out that the stem of the prosthesis was incorrectly positioned.

Wishing you and yours all the blessings of the Christmas season, and a wonderful new year to come with peace and prosperity to all (with the exception of ISIL, as John wants me to point out).

Love from

12Aug2015

An Englishman in New Jersey: Part Two

Posted in Family life, Marriage, Places by carolcooper

New Yorkers think of New Jersey as their outside toilet, especially if, like the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, they came from there originally.

Actually, New Jersey is my favourite state, but it takes a bit of getting used to. How did my thoroughly English husband manage his week-long venture into the unknown?

He couldn’t get what the natives were saying. We had just passed through the toll on the turnpike where I was relieved of about three bucks. “What’s that she said?” he wanted to know.

“She asked me how I was today, and whether we were from England.”

He rested his head back and closed his eyes. It was too puzzling. A little lady who sits sweating all day in a tiny metal booth gives enough of a shit to ask you how you are and whether you’re from England?

“Welcome to New Jersey,” I said.

We’d packed way too much stuff. All we needed for the week was Bermuda shorts and flip flops. And swimsuits, obviously, because between the beach and the pool, we practically lived in them.

One afternoon, two guys were splashing about in the motel pool, alternately hugging and trying to drown each other. I was worried. “He trying to kill you?” I called out.

He surfaced to reply, “Nah. He ain’t gonna hurt me. We’re brothers.”

If you’ve ever heard of Cain and Abel, that’s no consolation.

My husband remarked later, “They didn’t look much like brothers.”

“Perhaps one of them’s adopted,” I suggested.

Just when you think you’ve got the hang of the language, someone breaks into Spanish.

Yep, Spanish is an American language too. However, a sign saying PISO MOJADO is neither an instruction to empty your bladder, nor an explanation of how the floor got wet.

It’s obligatory to visit the legend that is Conte’s Pizza.

It has the longest bar in Princeton and ranks as one of the top 33 pizzerias in the nation. I always have everything on my pizza. Saves a lot of hassle trying to decide.

Also I stop by the drug store on the way there. Saves a lot of hassle later.

Jet lag gets worse with age. Even the modest time difference of five hours left us dazed, drowsy, disorientated, and puffy from fluid retention.

Luckily you can buy melatonin pills at CVS or Rite-Aid at the same time as Tums. Do they work? I have no idea. Some people swear that drinking urine is just as good. Tell you the truth, I had no idea we were that confused.

You may see flashing lights in front of your eyes.

I swear they weren’t there in Norfolk. That’s because they’re fireflies.

You need a permit like this to go onto the beach.

And then you have to show it when asked.

The same goes for your driver’s license. None of this English namby-pamby seven days to produce your documents. Which makes it just like the beach badge, only you can’t get out of trouble by paying five dollars to the Highway Patrolman.

NJ is a highly dangerous place.

We took our lives into our hands and set out for a walk by the Delaware and Raritan canal, though not its whole length as I couldn’t manage 70 miles. We certainly needed the big stick my husband had brought along to protect us. There were nettles galore, even the odd dandelion. Couple of people cycled past and said Hi. A bit further on, a family of turtles sunned themselves on a log. It was bloody terrifying.

Restaurants are family joints. Although it’s probably best not to ask on arrival, as my son once did, “Is this the restaurant owned by the Mafia?”

Here’s what we found parked outside one of them. We had to wait for our table, so we hung around watching people leave.

The trashy trophies on the sugar daddies’ arms. The Mercs and the Stingrays. The guy putting the hood up on his convertible before driving off, so the wind doesn’t blow his toupee off. The scene could have come straight out of The Sopranos.

Yep, all the stereotypes about NJ are true, and then some. But I would say that. You won’t hear a thing from me about the art, culture, or history because I don’t want the world discovering how good it is.

4Aug2015

An Englishman in New Jersey

Posted in Family life, Marriage, Places by carolcooper

It always irks me to hear Newark’s Liberty Airport described as being one of New York’s airports. New Jersey, as any fule kno, is not New York. True, it’s only a short train ride to Penn Station. But it’s equally just a short ride to the heart of the most underrated state of them all.

The chemical stench that hits you on the New Jersey Turnpike is enough to put most people off, but I know different. It’s my favourite state.

Admittedly the favourite bit doesn’t begin till some hours after landing. It also relies on my taking the right route onto the NJ Turnpike first time, not ending up in Elizabeth, NJ, where I always have to do a U-turn at the Gulf station. The petrol pump attendant – there’s no self-service gas in the state – is used to me now. “You again, eh? Have a nice day.” But after that you need to step on it. If you hang around in Elizabeth, you get offered crack.

A Christmas pudding can delay all this, as it did when I last brought one in my carry-on. Americans don’t have Christmas puddings, so I was bringing one over for a friend. On arrival, the screening contraption did not like it one bit. Two Homeland Security officers approached. “Ma’am, is this your bag?” They gave me a stern look. Actually I don’t know if they do other kinds of look.

“Yes, it is. And I know what the problem is,” I said, reaching towards the bag to extract the pudding.

“Step away from the bag!” one of them bellowed.

“But it’s only a Christmas pudding.” Idiotically I added, “Here, I’ll show you.”

“Ma’am! Step away from the bag! I’m not sayin’ it again.” Her partner reached for his holster.

I got the message. They didn’t want me to blow up the pudding. And I didn’t want a bullet through my chest.

As carefully if it were a landmine, the two officers extracted it from my carry-on.

I finally got a chance to explain.

They were sceptical. “You mean you all eat this in England?”

I confirmed that we did, every Christmas day, though we generally got it out of the plastic first.

They said it was mighty heavy, ma’am. Yes, I agreed. Indigestion was usual, especially when you’ve already stuffed yourself on the main course.

They let both pudding and me through, all the while shaking their heads and averring that you learn something new every day, ma’am. Ain’t that the truth?

This year I brought no pudding, but I did take my husband. It was high summer, and the flight was full of Camp America kids, except for the seat the other side of us, where there was a walrus, snoring and taking up two arm rests.

Welcome to the United States of America, they say at Liberty Airport. We had ample time to savour the warmth of the welcome during an hour and a half waiting in line to exhibit our passports, in a hall without air con.

What did my very English husband find most disorientating in New Jersey?

1 The language. As half my family is American, conversations with them were a challenge. Americans do use many of the same words as the English. But then they do and pronounce them all wrong and use them to mean different things. ‘Chips,’ for instance, are not fries. They are crisps. And ‘being sick’ only means you’re ill.

Most puzzling of all, ‘breaking up’ has nothing to do with the end of term. This may explain why, when OH asked if they’d broken up, my 15-year old niece flushed bright red, and said Mommy didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.

2 Then there was the food.

He’d never had grits before. They tasted, he discovered, a bit like semolina.

You can use Smuckers preserve or maple syrup to make ‘em sweet.

Or you can smother them in Old Barney’s Hot Sauce if you like your tongue on fire.

A short stack is just two pancakes. But they make them pretty big at Mustache Bill’s Diner.

Either you take them back in a box if you don’t eat them all. Or, if you do, you go back in a box.

So taken were we with Mustache Bill’s that we queued up (translation: waited in line) for up to an hour to get in. And the OH was desperate to emulate him.

3 The beaches, contrary to popular belief, are not covered in medical waste.

Though there may be sharks. Nobody’s been killed by a shark here for nearly 100 years, but they’re around, or rather one in particular is.

Mary Lee is a thoroughly modern shark with her own Twitter account @MaryLeeShark and over 87k followers. We think she’s pregnant. Hard to tell as she’s a tubby lady, weighing in at over 4 tons, hence, people say, a real Jersey girl. She’s been tagged by OCEARCH so we know she gets around. The East Coast is Mary Lee’s usual hunting ground, though she has been as far afield as Bermuda. Well, a gal needs a decent holiday now and again.

Did we encounter any sharks? Did The Mob get us by the canal? And was my husband brave enough to uncork the hot sauce? Find out in my next post.

Easy tweet: NJ is underrated, as @DrCarolCooper‘s partner discovers http://wp.me/p3uiuG-131 An Englishman in New Jersey

4Apr2015

Is Researching a Book Better than Sex?

Posted in Marriage, Places, Writing by carolcooper

Some authors say that research is the best bit about writing. I’ve never believed that. What’s so great about spending long hours in the stacks at the library, or ages trawling the internet to find out what people had for dinner in 17^th century Crete?

But now that I write fiction, research has taken on a whole new hue. I wouldn’t say it’s better than sex, even if in some cases it IS sex. Here’s a rundown of some recent endeavours.

1 Intel gathering for a steamy bathroom scene.

Is it possible for the earth to move while scrubbing lime-scale off the taps? Everything had to be just so: a non-slip bathmat, a filthy dirty bathtub (this takes months), and of course the right bathroom cleaner.

2 The front seat of the Mini scene. If a couple feel inclined to bonk in their Mini near a lighthouse in Norfolk, can they do so without tearing an Armani suit or a ligament? We may never know for sure. Thanks, man who rapped on the window to say, “Ere, lost me mobile. Can I borrow yours?”

3 The Gents at the hospital. There’s a scene in my work-in-progress where a character has to rinse his tackle in the loo at Watford General Hospital. I couldn’t do this one on my own, but the great thing about being married is all those vows. My other half is an honest guy, so he takes such things seriously.

However, it proved not to be so simple. The water was either freezing cold or boiling hot, and the hand dryers were at the wrong height. Besides, who’d actually dip his bits into a Dyson Airblade?

4 Undercover underwear work. Hopefully this quiet day would keep me on the right side of the law. St Michael may be the patron saint of underwear. They’ve even made briefs with the word Gentleman woven into the elastic, just like the Diesel ones say Diesel. But John Lewis has the range of men’s kecks I needed for my research. So there I was, checking out the feel and, more important, the scent of the fabrics used in boxers, briefs, budgie-smugglers, front-loaders, posing pouches and thongs.

As I crumpled the waistbands and studied the gussets, I managed to side-step six shop assistants, or, as John Lewis calls them, partners. Unfortunately I didn’t spot one of my patients who was shopping for Y-fronts. He caught me with my nose up a pair of Calvin Klein trunks (low-rise, if you want to know). It’s funny, but he hasn’t made an appointment to see me since.

5 Bridge over troubled water. It used to be so easy to climb in and out of King’s College, Cambridge after the back gate was locked.

But what about now, after they’ve added extra ironwork as a deterrent? As I found out, there’s a very real risk of losing your footing and falling into a deep and murky ditch, especially if you’re 40 years older than the last time you did this.

I tried to think calming thoughts.

This is hard when a couple of tourists are standing over you, offering to ring an ambulance. A passing medical student thought an air ambulance would be more appropriate. Perhaps he hoped Prince William might pitch up. What got me out of the ditch in the end was a snooty college porter, incensed that I was doing my research on his patch.

6 An overnight stay in a bookshop.

Luckily I didn’t have to do this myself, or enlist any of my family, as an American tourist did exactly that in late 2014.

Right. That’s it. From now on, I’m doing all my research on Twitter. Though I will miss my husband.

***

I’ll be at the Indie Author Fair at Foyles, Charing Cross Road on April 17, and so will lots of other authors. Why not come in, see their books, and maybe ask them about their research? The event is free.

14Mar2015

What’s Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander

Posted in Family life, Marriage, Pillow-talk by carolcooper

I’m all in favour of egalitarian relationships, as I’m sure you are. Last week I blogged about how to annoy the hell out of your husband, so this week it’s only fair to cover the ways in which your other half can drive you round the bend.

If you dished it out, you’ve got to take it – right? So woman up and let your husband (partner, boyfriend, lover, whoever) do his worst. Here are some of his methods.

1 Battles in the bathroom. And no, leaving the toilet seat up doesn’t count. It’s just too predictable. Blokes can do far more infuriating things in bathrooms. Like locking the door and singing along to the radio at full volume, so he doesn’t hear you bashing with all your might, pleading to be let in before your bladder bursts.

Like leaving the bath-tap in the ‘shower’ position, so you get an impromptu soaking when you next try to run a bath.

Like using up the last of your megabucks-a-bottle sodium-free shampoo on his own barnet – and later refilling the bottle with the ordinary stuff. The kind that works like paint-stripper on your expensively Brazilian-straightened hair.

2 Reveal that he’s much younger than you. There’s no going back with this one, because it’s the kind of thing people remember. Then, even if he’s barely a year or so younger, he’s forever known as your toy boy. For added impact, he may even tell people you’re older when it isn’t true.

3 Playing dumb. Poor lamb, he does get confused between your hairbrush and the cat’s.

As you can see, they look nothing like each other. Not to begin with, anyway.

He may also fail to distinguish between coasters and your favourite books. This one’s really challenging, since both are vaguely rectangular and can be found on tables.

coasters

not coasters

Then he makes it tough to get angry because he wears an innocent face that plainly says, “I’m only a man. What do I know?”

4 Cooking fabulous meals. Which means using every single pan in the house, and leaving it in the sink. “I’ll do it later.” Course he will. Three days later.

5 Doing the laundry. This includes washing your cashmere socks in the machine. In case this hasn’t happened to you yet, I’ll tell you that this shrinks them to the size of baby socks and makes them as soft as a kitchen scourer. There’s no option but to buy another pair. Which your other half will also put in the washing machine. “Just being helpful, darling.”

6 Being a duvet bandit. Like marriage, it all starts off equal, but come morning you’re hypothermic and sleep-deprived. Your side of the bed ends up like this.

I tried to photograph the other side, but I tripped over in two acres of duvet and sprained my ankle before I got a decent shot.

7 The final one, the ne plus ultra, without which no programme of annoyance would be complete, and frankly you may as well stick a couple of fingers down your throat.

He does this: totally amazes all your friends. Maybe he cooks them all a fabulous dinner (AND clears up afterwards). Then he sings YOUR praises to the skies, declaring that you’re prettier than Claudia Schiffer, smarter than Stephen Hawking, and funnier than Omid Djalili.

It’s totally sick-making, of course. But it reminds you that, despite the fact that he’s driven you round the twist, he’s a keeper.

7Mar2015

How to Annoy the Hell out of Your Husband

Posted in Animals, Family life, Marriage by carolcooper

Your own husband, obviously. It’s not nearly as much sport baiting your BFF’s bloke. I should mention that smug marrieds don’t have a monopoly on annoying, so all of the following apply equally to partners, live-in boyfriends, same-sex couples, etc.

It was comedian Rita Rudner who first said “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”

with thanks to Ben Earwicker

Rudner may have said it in the 1990s, but driving each other nuts has been part of the pact since time immemorial. I’m surprised it doesn’t feature more often in marriage vows. Bottom line is, if you’re not annoying your OH, you’re doing it all wrong.

Here are 7 ways to do it right.

1 When he’s ill, tell him it’s psychosomatic. You can use this in multiple situations, eg something is bleeding or about to drop off, or it’s the dreaded Man Flu. Just make sure he’s unaware of research showing that high testosterone levels weaken the immune system (in other words, flu may really be more severe in men).

2 There’s something far worse than man flu. Baldness. It’s a fear that goes back to Samson. All you have to do is glance at his bonce and say, “Don’t worry, dear. You can always wear a hat.” Careful, though. This one is irreversible. Even if he has a full mane of hair, you’ve planted a seed of doubt. After that, every time someone mentions hair or heads, a nervous hand will creep up to his scalp to check.

3 Be insufferably pedantic. “It’s not my fourth glass of wine. It’s exactly the same one I started out with.” Note that it’s more effective if you can say it without slurring your speech. Or falling over.

4 Move his stuff, like keys, the remote control or his favourite shoes. You’re not going to put them where they don’t belong. They’ll be in the right places for you. Just the wrong ones for him. When he eventually finds whatever he’s looking for, he’ll give a sigh of relief and say “It’s always in the last place you look.” Well, of course it is, you tut with a superior look (see 3).

5 Let the cat into his side of the wardrobe. For best effect, it should be a long-haired breed, but any cat will do. Even a kitten can totally customize clothes within minutes. When he pulls out the trousers and announces that they’re ruined, completely ruined, FFS, you can, for additional impact, say you had no idea they still fitted him.

6 No list of strategies for annoying would be complete without bringing a mother-in-law into it. So tell him your mother is coming to stay. For extra shock value, try “My mother’s coming to live with us.” Caution: about 30% of people with heart attacks die before they reach hospital.

7 Here’s the coup de grace, the ultimate weapon: blog about him. That’ll do it.

11Sep2014

‘Cockanese’ – A Guide To Cockney Rhyming Slang, For Beginners Or Americans

Posted in London, Marriage by carolcooper

With thanks to Don Charisma who allowed me to take over his blog so I could teach the world to speak Cockney, the dialect of my home town.

Don Charisma

Dr Carol Cooper’s been a friend since fairly much the beginning of the Don Charisma blog.

Carol is an author, blogger and a lady who gets my sense of humour. I believe she’s also quite well known in the UK, Google would tell you more, I’m sure, otherwise this will start to look like a Dr Carol Cooper resume or groupies club, which it’s not …

She’s also in my experience very humble and personable, which counts to me personally more than any other accolades … charm is magic they say … so …

Quite a few moons ago I, a little tongue-in-cheekily, proposed a title for a guest post, and Carol being the good soul she is, took the bait, hook, line and sinker … A break from the norm, something a little different, here’s Carol’s version of how to speak like a Cockney …

Disclaimer – no Americans were harmed in the…

View original post 643 more words

25Oct2013

Marital Battle in the Bathroom

Posted in Marriage by carolcooper

As writers know, the bathroom is a great place for ideas. Inspiration is more likely to strike when you’re reclining in a warm bath than when sitting facing a blank screen.

While soaking today, I vaguely contemplate the Poppy Appeal, and how achingly suitable the poppy is as a symbol of conflicts from Flanders to Afghanistan, but the brain cells aren’t exactly working overtime.

What’s this I see? A little green ceramic dish on the edge of the basin. I mentioned it to my other half two weeks ago, and it’s still there, where anyone could easily elbow it off when reaching for a toothbrush, sending it crashing down onto the floor tiles. Or, God forbid, the hurtling ramekin dish (for that is what it is) could concuss the cat as she crouches in her litter tray.

But does he listen? Does he heck! Still, only to be expected when we’ve been married this long (nearly three months, since you ask). I don’t listen to him either, allegedly. That is why I keep putting the toilet roll the wrong way round, and always leave my undies near the laundry basket. Not in it, obviously. Just next to it (allegedly). Plus I drape my bra from the taps, which looks like a skinned rabbit and is beyond annoying to someone wanting a bath. I fire right back. He always has the radio on, full blast. Does he not realise that some of us like peace and quiet? I neither need nor want aural wallpaper. And another thing. Why do we have to have all six bathroom lights on? OK, a guy might need decent lighting to avoid amputating his Adam’s apple while shaving, but it seems a bit over the top to require 360 watts just to brush teeth.

Then it dawns. Here we are approaching the annual Poppy Appeal, and, instead of battles like Passchendaele, El Alamein and Goose Green coming to mind, we’re having a ding-dong in the bathroom. The postscript is that peace has broken out in the flat. We’re not arguing about the toothpaste tube, or the toilet paper that’s the wrong way round (by which he means the right way round, obviously). The skirmish over the laundry is over, and even the ramekin dish has been moved before the cat had a head injury.

If you’ve read this far, please visit www.britishlegion.org.uk

While you’re there, you might also be interested in the RBL Centre for Blast Injury Studies (CBIS) at Imperial College, London, where academics and military experts work together to better understand and reduce the effects of injury on the human body. Here’s AnUBIS, one of their research tools. http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/news-events/new-initiatives/centre-for-blast-injury-studies#

Thank you.

4Oct2013

Seven Lessons from a Honeymoon

Posted in Marriage, Pillow-talk by carolcooper

Honeymoon Mark II got off to a promising start. For one thing, my mother didn’t come along this time.

The years since my first marriage had rolled forward like breakers on the shore, too many to count, so there were other changes too. I learnt a lot in just one sunny week in the Med.

1. It’s a good plan to tell the hotel it’s your viaggio di nozze, not least for the complimentary fruit and fizz in the room, plus free entry to the spa.

2. Italian is a language that comes back easily, even if you never studied it before. New Husband went native. By day two, he could say ‘Bon Jovi’ and pinch my bottom at the same time.

3. Russian is a must if you want to chat to fellow hotel guests. It had been a few years since I’d stayed in a resort hotel. Nobody told me the oligarchs had bought Italy.

4. Champagne can be sold out even when it costs 5,000 Euro a bottle. Yep, conspicuous consumption is the name of the game, and they don’t just drink vodka.

5. Someone’s changed the print on every single map, menu and guide book. We should have brought a magnifying glass. It would also have been useful after a rash encounter with a prickly pear, especially if we’d packed tweezers as well.

6. It was low season for humans, though not for insects. Without repellent, female mosquitoes zoomed in on New Husband’s legs and feasted on a lavish buffet.* More gorged themselves next day. Had the mozzies given him a rave review on TripAdvisor?

7. It’s not such a good idea to hot-brush your hair when your other half is feeling romantic. Your hair wand could singe his, er, wand.

Although my mother wasn’t with us, we managed to entertain ourselves. Every morning, a date palm burst into activity as parakeets squabbled until they evicted one or more. But you know what large families and overcrowded flats are like. The respite was temporary.

People-watching came into its own at dinner. When not admiring Russian molls in their pink patent platform heels and the worst of Cartier’s excesses, we were amused by Monsieur Langouste. Moustachioed, combed-over, and looking for all the world like a TinTin character in his black vest, he began every meal with five lobsters, which he’d repeat for the main course.

Most people took advantage of the extensive menu, piling their plates high with rack of lamb, aubergine parmigiana, sea-bass, Brussels sprouts, tuna carpaccio, pizza, plus a side salad.

Oh, wait. That was us. Which may explain the souvenir we brought home. Excess baggage.

* Link to Are You a Mosquito Magnet? http://www.webmd.com/allergies/features/are-you-mosquito-magnet

I’d love to hear from you.

3Jul2013

Do you know who you’re marrying?

Posted in Marriage by carolcooper

Here comes the bride in a meringue of a dress, adjusting the tiara and veil across her newly-coiffed head. She’s weighed down with hairspray and fake lashes, and stuffed to the gunnels with chicken fillets to shore up her assets.

By the time she trips down the aisle as daintily as is possible in white satin shoes that cut off the circulation to the toes, the bride may have spent hundreds of pounds on hair and makeup.

The dress code spreads to the bridesmaids. They too must spend the day in shiny creations that only stay up thanks to a furlong or so of boob tape. But it’s hair and make-up that really push the boat out. When it comes to wedding get-ups, the motto is clearly ‘Less is Less’.

Why?

It’s one thing to make the most of your looks. It’s quite another to blatantly fake it. I’m currently resisting pressure from friends to have hair extensions that will totally transform my appearance for my wedding.

Plus it’s summer (in Britain we know this because Wimbledon is on TV). This makes a tan essential. I absolutely have to turn the rich shade of mahogany that can only be achieved by repeated sprayings in something like creosote. Another pal adds that I have just enough time to book myself a boob job before the big day. Do I want the name of a brilliant surgeon she knows?

The hell I do.

I would quite like my intended to recognise me on the big day, not think he has walked into the wrong registry office. A wedding day is special, so I’ll forego my favourite Gap jeans and the flip-flops that turn me into Kurt Cobain’s twin sister. All the same, I plan to look and behave like myself, not a fashion victim who’s deployed every single idea out of Brides Incorporated.

Wouldn’t it be a nice idea to save the money or give it to a worthy cause, and spend the best day of your life looking vaguely like the person your other half wanted to marry?

Pills & Pillow-Talk

Carol Cooper – trained to observe, born to write.

Category Archives: Marriage