Brain drain is the order of the day here. It feels like I have been in writing overload these last few weeks: reviewing novels, writing articles, ploughing through the W.I.P, and blogging everywhere, including for the magnificent TRP blog. Today is my twelfth and final post here until the autumn.
For this special occasion I considered writing about the power of books, since I have recently read the torture pentathlon that is Senseless, the emotional twister that is Vanessa and Virginia and I’m currently reading Ways to Live Forever, a young adult novel that has me crying myself to sleep. But in true blog style I am going to end with a personal story. Since I have no tales of croft life or running a small publisher, I’m going to plunge in with a snippet of my weekend.
Today sees me sore of spirit after what can only be described as The Hen Weekend That We Screwed Up. The theme was always going to be a little bit on the dodgy side: “minging bridesmaids and minging bride”. I admit I had my reservations about the theme but not wanting to rock the Special Night boat I went along with it, decking myself out in emerald green and black velvet off-the-shoulder nineties gown with puffball skirt, but I was outdone by a crimson, sequinned two-piece-effect dress with skyscraper shoulder pads. The blue Little Bo Peep outfit with parachute sleeves was just plain weird. The bride’s full length gown, bought for a fiver, and ruffled and bowed to excess was the crowning glory. We presented this to our hen about ten minutes before we left the safety of my house, after daubing her face with war paint and treating her hair to an upside down French plait, rising from the base of her neck and culminating in a daring quiff. Until the unveiling of the dress, the hen’s hopes were still improbably high. She admitted later that she thought we might have been hiding a ladybird outfit for her or even a Smurf costume. How cruel we felt when the monster bridal gown emerged. As one of my fellow bridesmaids pointed out: it went down like a sh*t sandwich. The night wore on and things deteriorated past painfully embarrassing to realms that we five friends had never visited.
Today the remnants of the weekend are still with me, in the wine stains on the cream sofa, in the plastic silver tiara sitting alone on the guest bed and in the fabric bridesmaid posies sitting on my coffee table, which I cannot bear to throw in the bin with the potato peelings and the teabags, as somehow that would make it official: the night was a disaster. People didn’t laugh when they saw us, as we had hoped. They gave us the stink eye.
The lowest point was not the ridicule from the obnoxious DJ who saw fit to broadcast to the club, whilst jabbing his finger at us, that:
wearing a bride’s dress on a hen night is like doing a victory lap before you’ve won the race. Funerals is where women look sexy.
and the lowest point wasn’t even the hen plunging headfirst down a long flight of metal steps as we left the club – she was thankfully only bruised and missing a heel (of her shoe) No, the lowest point was when our kind elderly taxi driver mistook our group for an actual wedding party and enquired as to the groom’s whereabouts.
And to think I had been looking forward to this weekend as a break from the world of books. I’ll take literary torture over real world torture any time. . .
Lisa Glass blogs as part of the Vulpes Libris (Book Fox) collective. Her novel, Prince Rupert’s Teardrop, is out in paperback now.
