My goodness but that was an expensive weekend!
Although, I suppose Friday wasn’t ALL that expensive. Unless you count the wine. But I made the ravioli we had for the starter. And the truly magnificent pork loin was from the half pig that Jayne the Pig Lady brought a few weeks ago. And I made the peach melba cheesecake myself. So the food wasn’t all that dear. Although – we did have quite a lot of wine …
And no, we didn’t eat and drink all that lot by ourselves. Roger, Kate, Bea, Steve and Richard all came to dinner. It was something in the way of a farewell to Richard who seems to have decided that he is old enough to retire and is planning to leave at the end of July. Not that young slips of lads ought to be allowed to retire if you ask me. But, as it happens, Richard didn’t ask me. He asked somebody else who decide to allow this extraordinary behaviour! Last Friday was the only Friday in July we were all free. So they all lobbed around, we went for a pleasant stroll around the nature reserve and wetlands. (Where have the cows gone? I’m sure they came back after their winter holiday – I’m certain we saw them. But they weren’t there on Friday. Unless they were hiding.) Then we headed back home across a muddy, muddy field for an evening of eating, drinking and general indulgence.
Richard reports that it was the first time for many, many years that he had played cricket on a Saturday morning with a stonking headache!!!!!!!
And for some reason, The Builder and I overslept on Saturday morning. It was around 8:30 when we woke up!
But we still managed to go shopping. And this is when the expense truly began.
Paul at work has, for some time, been asking whether we had everything prepared for the wedding. I was supposed to be preparing? Well, yes, said he. You’ve got the rings? Erm – no. It appears that I might have wanted to start thinking about that some time ago. Clothes? Erm … No. But I’ve got lots of clothes already. That won’t do, said Paul. You need something nice. But my clothes are already nice. A jacket. I’ll buy a jacket. And The Builder needs a new jacket too. And perhaps a new pair of trousers.
So we dragged ourselves off to Chesterfield and went to a little boutique jewellery shop off The Lanes shopping lanes (well, that’s what they are!) to look at rings. SIX WEEKS it takes, apparently, to adjust the size of rings. SIX! Most fortunately, the rings we liked didn’t need adjusting. Mine is a tiny tad too large, but my finger is unlikely to shrink. If it does – I’ll get the ring adjusted then. So bang. £500+ gone, just like that.
Right. Clothes. Where can you go to buy clothes? I suppose we could try the Chesterfield Department Store. Most department stores sell clothes. And we found, without too much difficulty, a rather nice off-white linen/cotton mix suit for The Builder which had the greater advantage of being at half price. Upstairs to the ladies’ fashion floor. Sigh. Full of clothes. Sigh. Full of horrible clothes. Big Sigh (“Do stop scowling!” said The Builder as I was stomping disconsolately around!!!) Problem is that I don’t usually wear girls’ clothes. Normally I wear boys shirts and trousers. Obviously I wear girls’ skirts – but there was no point buying yet another floatie skirt that I would only wear occasionally. I’ve already got three or four of those. What I really wanted was what The Builder had – but that would have been just silly, both of us wearing exactly the same thing. Suddenly I found a cream linen jacket with matching trousers on a mannequin. Where do I get those? We found them. Sadly – not on special offer so therefore somewhat expensive. I tried them on. The jacket fitted perfectly. Alas, the size 16 trousers were far too big. The size 14 were on the small size. They do up, but only just - and there's no sitting room and certainly not eating room! Hmm. Do I bulk up, or slim down. I elected to slim down. Back on a Lent diet for the next month!! Starting on Monday :-P But that was another mutter mumble cough pounds gone in less than half an hour. So I guess the trousers had better fit by the 7th August!
Enough shopping. Well, clothes shopping at any rate. Let’s go to Chatsworth and do some proper shopping. And have a bite of lunch. We called into the Chatsworth Garden Centre on the way home and while we were pottering around found some lovely sandals. And some lovely thong-style sandals (that’s flipflop thongs, not g-string thongs!). We bought the thong-style thongs which will be lovely with a floatie skirt on the Saturday. But I think I might go back for the other pair too. They would look lovely with the linen trousers on the Friday. Assuming I fit into them by August!
Sunday I spent mostly making jam. We have loads and loads of gooseberries and bucket loads of raspberries. I’ve bought a new, more up to date book of preserve recipes which I wanted to try. The Builder went to the allotment and came back with the first picking of peas and broad beans. We had lunch in the Three Horseshoes (I needed to talk to them about food for the evening of the 7th and it seemed a bit rude not to stay for lunch while we were there). They usually have two or three different roasts on offer on a Sunday, and nearly always a fishy thing. And always a vegetarian thing. I usually go with the traditional roast meat – but the baked trout stuffed with watercress, lemon, parsley and butter was extremely tempting. I had that. And very delicious it was too.
Jam making wasn’t very expensive. I already had the sugar, and the fruit was free. Although I will need to replace the sugar if I’m going to make any more. But I was a tad worried about checking the accounts this morning. Strangely, they were fine. Lots and lots of money left in them. This may, of course, have something to do with none of the weekend purchases having come out of them yet …
Can I stop thinking about wedding preparations now and start thinking about menus? There can't be anything left to organise, can there? Menus very much more exciting! And I have three to play with :-)
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