Beauty & the Beast
The problem we now have of course is that because I can’t access my blog from work, I write these entries and then take a while to post them, so in writing this I am aware that there are other posts that haven’t quite made it on yet either. Still I’ll see if I can change the date and then we can all pretend can’t we?

So – “My Weeks Holiday That Wasn’t” and “My Sister’s Wedding & Other Blood Sports”...

It started off with me and H2B deciding that it would be nice to spend a week on holiday before the wedding to relax and avoid the histrionics; we thought we might get a little self catering place. Then the new brother in law’s family said they were taking a house all together, so my Mum wanted to jump on the bandwagon. This rapidly snowballed and resulted in me finding property that would take me & H2B, my parents, my sister and MoH, my Granddad, and all my aunts, uncles, cousins and cousins kids from both sides. Now don’t get me wrong – I love my family and as they live all over the place, it was lovely to see them. In normal circumstances it would have been delightful – and it was great – but it did kind of miss the point of a romantic retreat from the hullabaloo to take it with us. Never mind.

In my experience there are two kinds of families when taken in the larger context. The kind that argue and shout and laugh and cry and make a lot of fuss and drama, and those that politely hope each other goes away until they do. Mine, particularly my mothers side, is definitely in the former camp. It started with Mum agreeing to the clear instruction to tell everyone they wouldn’t be able to get in to the cottages until an hour after I could pick the keys up to give us time to do so, then completely ignoring me and telling them to be there at the same time, and it went on from there. You don’t need to know the ins and outs of the internal politics, but I think the same number of people are no longer speaking to each other now equals those whop weren’t before they arrived – but they have all changed round.

But there were some lovely bits. H2B & I took my Dad and an Uncle power kiting which was very amusing and thoroughly exhausting but in a good way. I got to meet my cousins new daughter and she is beautiful. We had a lovely barbeque which everyone had fun contributing to. We got to see my Mum and her siblings silly drunk – which hardly ever happens and is desperately entertaining. I’m still speaking to everyone and they are all still speaking to me – hurrah!

We took four adjacent farm cottages on their own in the country with a shared back garden and play area. And they were lovely – well situated and equipped, clean and comfortable. And the weather was glorious – it has been though hasn’t it? You really really wouldn’t have thought it was April. There was lots of outdoorsy things to do – golf, games, walks, kiting, weapons practicing, lots of fun. I only have myself to blame about the trampoline related muscle strain. But I did get time to bake two cakes! I miss having time for that.

The morning of the wedding was marred only by my mother who by that point had snapped with the strain of it all and had started to think it was all about her. I hope we managed to keep the really naughty stuff hidden from the blushing bride who was on top form that day, but I suppose there was no need to have a tantrum, already being the centre of attention. And she did look stunning. In fact all of us scrubbed up well. The flowers were lovely, the cars were fabulous, the church was something else and had such a friendly minister and accomplished organist. The wine was plentiful, the speeches made me cry, the food was unbelievable – especially for the numbers. It was a truly spectacular day.

So now I suppose we had better start planning ours for real eh?