Philippa looked amazing. And I mean AMAZING. I’d seen the outfit before the big day and I was there when she had her make-up done, but she still took my breath away when she walked down the little aisle in the register office.
Unexpectedly, I spent most of the time in tears. It all overwhelmed me and I blubbed and I really didn’t care who saw me, and what they thought.
Would I say that marriage feels different to the way life was a week ago? I don’t know, but it’s been a pretty amazing time, and I do have this wonderful, enlightened way of thinking that says “I never have to go through that again” that is feeling really nice.
I’m sitting here with a wedding ring on my finger and an incredibly happy Philippa beside me and I can’t believe it’s all real. I thought she’d see sense at the last minute and run away, or wake up married and look at me and say ‘What the Hell have I done?’ but she hasn’t. She’s just been looking incredibly content, and spending 99% of her time within arms reach of me, and that suits me just fine.
Have a great new year, everyone.
RC 31-12-15
It was quiet.
It was peaceful.
It was beautiful.
RC 30-12-15
Off to the Hotel soon.
I’ll see you when I’m married……..
RC 23-12-15
That’s it! I’m done! Work is over and I’m home! The next time I go to the garage it’ll be 2016 and I’ll be married!
Feels a bit weird, to be honest. Not as freeing and as exciting as I thought it would be. I’m just a bit relieved and a bit tired and still a bit worried that I might have forgotten something. But so what if I have? There are plenty of people that can step in and sort it out. My work phone is being switched off and will remain that way until after Boxing Day. Then I might turn it on ‘just in case’ but I have no intention of venturing back that way until January 2nd.
RC 22-12-15
Christmas really kicks in when you get into the days numbered 20+!
Trouble is I’ve got absolutely skiploads of stuff to get done at work before I finish tomorrow. Booking 10 days off over the festive period is nice for me, but gives me a fortnights worth of crap to sift through and sort so I can leave everything to everyone else without the whole place falling apart or exploding!
I think I may end up working late tomorrow, but that’s ok. Christmas is done and dusted and in the bag, the wedding is all set fair, and we’re both remarkably relaxed!
Other people are still trying to trip us up and make us panic, but stuff ‘em. It’s our big day and we feel fine about it.
RC 21-12-15
I had another spell of sleeplessness last night. Whoever said insomnia is a hard habit to break knew what they were saying. I had an hour of borderline panic, an hour of wanting to run away somewhere, an hour of uncontrollable excitement. Then I decided to get up and play Wii Sports for a while, just to have something to concentrate on. Then I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling, imagining worst case scenarios to do with the wedding. I turned up late, I forgot my words, I got Philippa’s name wrong, I caught Ebola, Philippa ran away with the cleaner from the register office, etc, etc, etc. Then I finally drifted off to sleep, only to wake up ten minutes later in a cold sweat. And through it all, Philippa lay beside me, sleeping away like a contented baby that was full of it’s mothers milk, and looking as peaceful as a cloud from Heaven.
How can she be so calm??????
I got up at 10am feeling as if I hadn’t slept for a fortnight. I told Philippa what had happened and she kissed me passionately and then dragged me back to bed and kept me there for nearly an hour. And then, typical man that I am, I fell asleep immediately and stayed that way until midday!
Thank you, Dr Philippa.
RC 20-12-15
I’m still buzzing about the fact that we have a British guy on the space station! This sort of thing is so inspirational. Under different circumstances I might have considered dedicating the rest of my life to following in his footsteps. (If I was younger and not so lazy.)
This time next week I’ll be married…….
RC 17-12-15
I never expected this to happen, but this wedding thing is really getting exciting now!
Nine days to go. NINE DAYS!! And then I won’t be plain old Rory Chesworth anymore. Well, I will, but Philippa will no longer be plain old Philippa, she’ll be MRS PHILIPPA CHESWORTH!! I think it makes her sound elegant and important, like a diplomat’s wife or a solicitor. She may not see it that way, but tough. If she wanted to sound exotic she should have married Antonio Banderas.
RC 15-12-15
A clippet of a conversation in our house this evening (some wine had been consumed):
HER: “I think we should be allowed to say ONE thing that really annoys us about each other, and then maybe we can work to lessen that annoyance. Just ONE thing though.”
ME: “Okay. Sounds like fun. As long as we don’t hurt each others feelings.”
HER: “We wouldn’t do that. We love each other.”
ME: “Hmm. You wanna go first?”
HER: “No. Go on. You first”
ME: “Okay. Let me think. Well, sometimes in the evenings you want to get snuggly, sometimes you just want a cuddle, sometimes you just want to talk, and sometimes you want to be left alone completely. And that’s fine, but the annoying part is that I never know which evening is which, because you look exactly the same in each circumstance, and it’s hard for me to tell the difference, and you never give me any clues.”
HER: “Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. I can see how that might be annoying. You still want to marry me though, right?”
ME: “Yeah course I do”
HER: “Great”
ME: “Okay - your turn”
HER: “I hate your moobs”
RC 12-12-15
Well I’m a new man this morning! I think I must have been a bit tired the other night. I needed a good spell of sleep and when I wasn’t getting it, my mind went haywire. And, like I said, I think it was overexcitement that I misread as anxiety. All that crap that was bothering me at 3.15am on Monday doesn’t seem significant or relevant at all now!
Our staff meal out was a triumph. It was only the third time this year that we’ve all been together, as even our monthly meetings are normally missed by one or both of the part-timers. I try to change the day and time each month so it gives everyone a chance to come, but you can’t have everything and I’m not the kind of boss to INSIST that people come in on their day off to hear me witter on for ten minutes just to satisfy an HR requirement.
So it was great to have the team together and all get to know each other a bit better. We didn’t do speeches or Secret Santa or all that old shit, we just ate a lot and had a few drinks, then I came away early and left them to slag me off, or compliment me behind my back, whichever way they were feeling with a bit of Kung Po Chicken and lager inside them.
It was quite nice being there on my own to open up on Thursday. I didn’t realise how busy a garage (excuse me - by order of Head Office I should call it ‘Supermarket-Attached Forecourt and Filling Station) is between 6 and 7a.m. It’s also surprising how nice and friendly and co-operative customers are at that time of the morning. I’m used to seeing them later, when they’re full of Red Bull and rage and barging each other out of the way to reach the KitKats. You seem to get a calmer class of people in the wee small hours. And I was finished and home by 3pm, so there was time for a bike ride before dark.
Marvellous outcomes all round, if I do say so myself.
Two weeks today I’ll be married, by the way….
RC 11-12-15
I feel a lot better today after a good night’s sleep. I chatted to Philippa about what happened the night before and she was equally supportive and concerned. I don’t know if she’s worried about me bailing on the wedding, or about me being seriously ill. Her face did change somewhat when I described my heart racing at about 200 beats a minute. But then she looked up ‘panic attacks’ online and felt a bit better about the whole thing. We chatted about our ‘big day’ nerves and I think we’re both feeling the same way - can’t wait; but hating having to survive a day where we’re the centre of attention. Oh well, it’ll all be over in three weeks and we’ll be enjoying ourselves on honeymoon, then we can get on with our quiet lives in our little haven in Suffolk. And if I have to go through a few more midnight breakdowns to get there, then so be it.
RC 8-12-15
I’ve had a sleepless night and I feel awful. After a couple of weeks of relaxed pre-Christmas, pre-wedding calmness, I exploded into a frenzy of fear last night and lay awake with a pounding chest and a throbbing head.
I can’t even tell you why.
I love this time of year and I’m well ahead with my Xmas plans, and I genuinely cannot wait to get married, so why did I spend a good few hours wanting to jump in my car and disappear to the wilds of Scotland?
The mind is a weird thing.
I remember reading that you can sometimes confuse extremely positive and negative emotions as the physical feelings they produce are so similar, so I’m hoping it was some kind of excitement overload, rather than an onset of an onslaught of anxiety.
Time will tell, one way or another.
RC 7-12-15
I’ve made a change to our staff rota next week, and given my underlings another early pressie. I’m doing the early shift the day after our Christmas meal, so the other guys can feel free to have a drink without worrying about getting up and struggling into work with a hangover.
Did I hear someone say ‘Boss of the Year’???
RC 5-12-15
I may be about to set myself a weird, long-lasting blog-related challenge. So far, since I started all this writing and sharing lark back in the dark days of the late noughties, I have managed to increase my number of postings year-on-year. It had to end at some point, and I think this may be the year it happens. Am I likely to feel like popping online to update you when I have things to do like, for instance, celebrating Christmas and getting married? I don’t think so. So it may well be that I fail to break my record this year and keep my run going. ‘No matter’ I thought today while in a moment of boredom at work, I can consider doing a MIRROR EFFECT challenge instead!
If you write down the number of blog postings I have done each year in a line you get 83-172-180-200-215-226-228. So if I can make it to 226 this year, and then 215 next year, I will be making my way to a lovely palindromic number that will satisfy my weird mental numerical obsessions no end! It will also see me taking on a challenge that will see me committed to keeping this blog going until at least 2021! (in which year I will complete my loop by once again doing 83 posts)
Today’s title, by the way, is a reference to a song by the excellent Paul Simon.
Look him up, kids, he’s good!
RC 3-12-15
My advent indulgence this morning gave me a Snickers bars and a picture of a wreath.
A week today is our staff Christmas meal out (on me!)
Three weeks from today I’ll be saying ‘tomorrow I get married!”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. “DON’T…… PANIC…… !!!!”
RC 2-12-15
I treated myself to a quite pricey luxury advent calendar.
This morning I got a small pack of Maltesers and a picture of a reindeer.
Now I am off to un-box our Christmas tree and add decorations to same!
I love this month.
RC 1-12-15