The Three Months To Go Issue
"It's coming around, isn't it?" my mum's oldest friend said on the phone. "Yes," said I. "It's coming around right enough." The conversation warbled on the other end of the line, warble, warble, I warbled back, but I wasn't really listening. I was looking at a speck of ivory paint on my newly white-glossed skirting boards."Sadie?" a sharp tone brought me out of my contemplation. "Sorry, Aunt Pauline, what did you say?"
"I was asking about colour schemes, darling. What shouldn't I wear? And I'm unsure about my hat? Are they terribly passe? Is your mother wearing one? I don't want us to look middle-aged in the pictures, and hats are very middle aged on women of a certain ... well, you see, I just couldn't bear it. We were soooo gorgeous in our youth, turned every head ... "
I stared at this speck. This tiny little innocuous speck was doing my head in. Aunty Pauline's issues of bygone years were nothing compared to the problems this ivory blob was presenting me with.
"Pastels - don't wear red. Thanks for calling, then, see you soon," says I, before hanging up and dashing through to the utility room to find an unused paintbrush and the last bit of white gloss that I knew we had - somewhere.
About half an hour later, David walked in to find our ridiculously wide-ranging collection of paint pots, kettles, various other jars of nuts and screws, four extension leads and three Ikea baskets of dust sheets spilling out of the back of the house into the kitchen and me turned upside down looking under a shelving unit.
"What are you doing?" he asked. I spun round and looked past him down the hall. "Oh, hi there! Em, yes, there's, um, some paint, on the skirting boards. Ivoryitals please paint. I can't believe we didn't see it. It's under the radiator by the table. Looking for white gloss, but I can't, well ... what? Why are you looking at me like that?"
He reached out to a shelf directly in front of me, moved a candle holder and pulled out a tin of white gloss. "This what you've turned everything upside down for is it?"
I looked at it and looked at him, suspecting he was not entirely in the mood to discuss DIY. "Yes. Thankyou." Standing up, unsettling several vessels annoyingly filled with brushes soaking in toxic liquid, I took the pot and held it in my hands. "Oh, there's a brush. Perfect." And I lifted one of said items from its pool of white spirit, stepped over the obstacles and tottered down to the hall to find the speck.
I was just passing the dining room, however, when I stopped. I felt David's eyes burning into the back of my head. Hmmm, there was a pile of things on the table in there, next to them was a list with "Three Months to Go" at the top, and naggingly I knew they had something to do with me ... and ... what was it again?
Oh my GOD! I whizzed round and met my fiance's eyes, only just managing to keep the paint pot in my grasp. I looked at the clock, it was 6pm. I looked at the pile - of unwritten wedding invitations! - the list had no ticks next to any entries. I ran into the bathroom that sparkled through two hours of bleaching, I saw the hoovered floors of my newly-manicured home. Suddenly I realised I'd spent my precious day off in the highly-unlikely pursuits of cleaning and baking brownies and not, as I was meant to, finalising details that we are running out of time to sort out.
I looked at the list David had pulled from his pocket, marked with his name and saw precise little ticks down every line.
"Oh." Was all I could manage. "Yes." He said, leading me by the hand into the dining room, taking the brush out of it and replacing it with a pen.
"Write. Names. You want people to come to the wedding. Remember them?" I smiled wanly and opened our wedding book. The one I bought a year ago and have been studiously filling in all the right things at all the right bits. The pages blurred in front of me - all these things to organise, all these people I staggered back slightly. "What? Who? Why?" I asked, making for the door, but it did no good, it had already closed firmly behind me.
I picked up a hand-made sheer gold and ivory invitation. Had I just completely lost the plot with three months to go? Maybe there's some kind of terrible post-modern irony in the fact that I, a proud feminist 21st Century Girl, have avoided all the cliches of house-wifely domestic behaviour for years, and then a curious hysterical urge to avoid the stressful details of my own wedding sends me running for a Delia Smith cookbook and my rubber gloves.
It's either that or I am becoming a modern-day Lady McBeth, seeing spots where there are none, losing my mind because I fear all my best-laid plans for matrimonial world domination may fail. Out, out damned spots.But I should clean the whole house again just to make sure. Yes. I will do that now. I think I can see one over there ...
posted by Sadie Kenshall @ 9:12 AM
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