One wedding & a birth

Good things and bad things to report this week: We went off to a wedding in Cheshire, in a swanky country house as shown, at the weekend which was really lovely. One of my best friends, Simon Pini, got married to a young lady named Vanessa. Unfortunately I don't know much about her, depite the fact that they've been together for seven years, on and off.

Pini is one of those people who has two very different sets of friends and keeps them separate. Vanessa comes under the category of uni mates from when he was at De Montford, therfore we hardly see her, us being members of the Norfolk massive who were representing in full at the wedding on Saturday. We seemed in the minority compared to the Leicster uni lot who seemed brash and mainstream (but then there goes my judgemental snobbery runing the party again). Us Norfolk kids, despite having the best man among our midst, were rather less central to affairs, as being from Norfolk we do not seek the limelight, unlike others (you know who you are Northeners) from the rest of the country tend to.

It was a rather good time and I smoked and drank more substances than one's body should be allowed in one evening including reefers in the hotel bedroom, Spen's white Russians which seemed to feauture less Kaluha and more Vodka as the night wore on and three bottles of stolen sparkling wine ingested mainly by me, Lydia (Jon & Spen's housemate who I found I really liked - bit of a novelty for me her being a girl and all but she really is great) and Anna (Pini's ex who we know from school, she was wearing a black ball gown style skirt which made her look like a black widow ready to ruin the party with revalations about Pini at any point - she didn't) in the taxi..

I had a massive hangover on Sunday as expected but also to truly make me feel a million times worse I had minor food poisoning from attempting to resurrect the buffet at midnight after it had been sitting there for four hours! Bad judgement prevails when drunk and hungry - see Dan for reference! Needless to say an uncomfortable 5 hours were spent on the train back to Exeter.

Anyway the whole thing was lovely, Vanessa looked like the blond goddess she always is (bitch!), Simon, although faintly reminding me of a shaved ape in a suit, was incredibly happy, Jon's best man speech went down a storm being complely unintentionally deadpan, he started with 'Hello, for those who don't know me my name is Jon...' read entirely from a piece of paper. He was so nervous he downed lots of champagne during the photographs and was quite fearful about falling over. Tom looked very handsome in his new suit, which I shall be insisting he wears all the time from now on and I got on much better with Spen's girlfriend Jen, to my relief.

Other good.things are that Dan, Kate, Chris and Sarah are coming to visit with Cadfael next weekend(huzzah!). My sister is coming the weekend after and our apple tree has started to bear edible fruits I can now use for cooking, I anticipate being quite appled out over the next month or so.

Bad news, not as much as you might have been expecting but still a bugger for me. I have got an irritable bowel thingy which means that at intermittent points after eating random foods I double up in pain and cannot leave the loo to venture to work for love nor money (mainly money as temping I don't get sick pay so I loose 40 quid a day if I don't go in).

Ooh in other good things I have a new nephew, born to my brother Andrew and his girlfriend Maria on 18th August, Finlay Goldsmith (it just don't sound right!) entered the world, weighing in at 8lb 3oz which is good I think. He shares my initials so he gets my vote (for what I don't know).

Sorry no proper pics but I didn't even bring my regular camera let alone a fancy digital one to the wedding, but you all know what they look like so not to worry. However, in case you cannot imagine a shaved ape in a suit, here is a picture of one (a cheap laugh I know - but who could resist!)...