Wedding madness
I’m engaged! It’s all very exciting and romantic, and the best birthday surprise I could ever imagine. We’ve had some lovely cards and generous gifts and our family and friends are genuinely pleased for us.
We’ve made the decision to enjoy our engagement for a while before getting caught up in the apparent madness that is wedding planning. I’m not one of those girls who secretly buys wedding magazines and chose her dress before she even had a boyfriend. I’m probably as near to the opposite of her as you can get – I’ve just never given it any thought.
I’m not knocking people who want to blow the budget, pay attention to every tiny detail and spend £20,000 (the average cost of a UK wedding) on their wedding day (the first time I read this figure I sat staring at my computer open-mouthed for such a long time my colleagues thought I’d had some bad news!), but I just can’t justify (not to mention afford) spending so much money on one day of our lives. To me, getting married is a life-long commitment and I’d rather spend that kind of money on buying our first house or putting our children (if we have any) through University.
Needless to say, our wedding is most likely to be a small, modest affair. But this doesn’t mean it won’t be lovely, it doesn’t mean we’ll make our guests pay for their own dinner, it doesn’t mean I’ll wear a bin bag instead of a dress… and if one more person looks at me like they think this is what I’m planning I think I’ll scream!
If you’re there, don’t get excited about the colour-coordinated table confetti… because there won’t be any.
Manly shoes
While I’m on the theme of football, we play on astro turf and the surface can get pretty slippery especially in the Winter or when it’s been raining. Therefore, I prefer wearing astro trainers to normal ones so I don’t end up flat on my backside.
I had a bit of a discussion with the salesman in a well-known sports shop a few months ago when I asked if they had any women’s astro trainers and he told me I’d need to go to a specialist hockey shop. “Is that because girls don’t play football?”, I asked.
It turns out that most of the main high street sports shops don’t cater for women who don’t want to wear manly astro trainers. I’m not saying I want pink ones with bows on but if they can make normal trainers for women, why can’t they make astros?
I climbed up on my horse this weekend after another fruitless search in the shops and started to compose an email to the big sports brands asking why they don’t make them.
It’s a good job I decided to do some basic online searches before I got too cross because I came across a really clever little tool on the Nike website where you can design your own shoes.
They’re a bit out of my budget at the moment, but next time I need some I’ll definitely save up and get some of these. Hooray for online shopping!
Fun times
I play football for fun one night a week. Yes, fun. It’s not too competitive and any woman is invited to come along and join us. We represent a range of ages (about 20-50), a range of fitness levels and all abilities, from total beginners to Rooney-alikes (well, almost).
I found the group on Gumtree and wish I could find similar groups for other types of sport. It feels like after you’ve left school/university, it’s really hard to start playing a new sport from scratch. Admittedly, I played football a lot with my brother when I was small and have played on and off since then but any new women joining us on Thursdays don’t need to have any experience at all. Everyone helps dish out little tips and encouragement and won’t laugh/sigh if someone kicks the ball in completely the wrong direction.
I think groups like ours are brilliant for adults. There’s no pressure to come each week, we only pay £4 each for a session and it’s a fun way to get some fresh air and exercise. I can’t find any other websites where you can search for similar groups who play other sports. If anyone out there knows of any please share them…
Things that make me happy…
The Twitter Files (part 1)
I’ve been using Twitter for over a year now. We have a love-hate relationship. I love how you can have a conversation with someone on the opposite side of the world about the most obscure subjects. Or how you can bond with a complete stranger over your love of naff American TV shows. It can help you to find blogs, articles, websites that you’d be really unlikely to find otherwise. I’ve seen evidence of it helping to forge genuine real-life friendships and read a lovely story about people on Twitter helping a lady find her lost dog. However, as with most things in life, it has a darker side.
Lately I’ve seen a few people publicly unfollowing other people with a “I’m unfollowing ***** because…” followed by a snide remark or a string of criticisms. Is there any need for this? If you were at a networking event or a party and got stuck talking to someone you found incredibly boring would you say: “I’m going now, because you are very very dull, we have nothing in common, you don’t stop talking and you are wearing a very ugly dress.” No? Well then, why is it acceptable to be so rude just because you can’t see that person’s face and you’re not physically standing next to them?
