Thursday, October 08, 2009

In which many houses are sold, a book is given up on and someone gets stuck in a wedding dress

The OH and I (and the rest of my family) have just finished a completely mad round of house moves/sales/purchases. My Mum sold her house last week, which was the home I lived in until I was 18 before I left to go to university, and where I temporarily lived again for a while in my mid-20s. This is the last bowl of pears I'll have from the pear tree that was planted in the garden when I was born.


I wasn't there when she moved out, so the last time I saw it was in August, when we were up in Lincoln and got engaged. So it feels slightly odd knowing that it isn't there any more to go back to.

And to add to the chaos/stress/impending feeling of a little bit too much going on, the OH completed on the sale of his flat on the same day as Mum sold her house, and I completed the sale of my house five days after them. So a bit of a manic whirl of solicitors, estate agents and utility companies, not helped by the Royal Mail going on strike and holding half the correspondence up. But all is now finished! We'll be looking round for a house to buy now that we've sold both places and, of course, this means that wedding plans can inch slightly further forward too.

Before anyone gets too excited, wedding plans so far have consisted of me reading various insane books about wedding planning and getting very annoyed with them. Oh, and trying on a dress last week in Monsoon and getting stuck in it.

And speaking of books... I've just been attempting to read "A short walk in the Hindu Kush" by Eric Newby, and I can't get into it at all. I dragged myself through about 100 pages, as it's my next reading group book so I wanted to show willing, but just had to give up when I realised I was actively avoiding picking the thing up. I'm not sure what annoyed me so much. The jolly hockeysticks feeling of the writing? The slightly fuzzy typeface? The blurry maps at the beginning (it's a travel book, surely the idea is you can see where they're going?). Anyway, not the book for me, so it'll be interesting to see what the rest of the group made of it when I see them next week.

6 comments:

SerineKat said...

Bride/wedding books are dumb. There was one that was VERY VERY helpful that went through the emotional process of marriage and why people sometimes go nuts around weddings. It's called The Conscious Bride. Worth every penny or pence in your case.
http://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Bride-Feelings-Getting-Hitched/dp/1572242132/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255036964&sr=1-9

Linda said...

I got stuck in a dress in Monsoon once too!! Its those side zips, they get me every time.

Anonymous said...

I found another book by Eric Newby a bit hard-going too. It was "Something Wholesale" about his life in the family fashion retail business. I had heard it read on the radio and thought it sounded funny, but when I read it for myself, it was singularly dull. Oh well.
Melinda Jackson

Heather said...

Well done for selling all your houses! Good luck with the search for a new one, and with the wedding plans. I'm afraid I found the wedding magazines and books so irritating that I couldn't bring myself to buy one, but then we did have quite a low key and not terribly traditional wedding anyway.

acrylik said...

Congratulations on all the house sales, that's fantastic news.

We didn't bother with any wedding books/magazines, just did things exactly as we wanted, which meant it was uncoventional, but everyone who attended said it was fun not to go through the same motions as every other wedding. So my advice is to do what you both want, not what is expected :)

Mary Anne said...

It's been very hectic for you and I'm glad you have survived the upheaval. It does feel strange when the house you grew up in is not there for you anymore. I wish you good luck in finding a home you both will share.