Richard Wright

I am unbelievably tired.  Also, exceptionally married.  All has gone to plan.

This strange and marvellous week started Sunday evening, when we picked our friend Jackie up from Glasgow airport.  I’ve known Jackie for eight or nine years, but until now we’ve only met online, initially reading each other’s bloggish ramblings, then through email.  Among her many talents, Jackie is a photographer, and when she found out a wedding was on the cards she volunteered her services.  Perfect excuse to spend time with her in real life, and I’m still stunned and delighted that she came all the way from Seattle to do just that.  Over the past few days, in between bouts of photography, we’ve seen plays while drinking pints and eating pies, wandered the West End of Glasgow chatting, attempted to steal coffee at the Stravaigin, eaten pizza, celebrated her birthday with seafood and wine at Two Fat Ladies, and washed down home cooked rack of lamb with very fine champagne at our house.  Not entirely sure how we managed to fit it all in, with everything else going on, but glad we did.  I count her as a very good friend.  Well, I always did, but it’s lovely that she exceeded my expectations in real life.

The wedding itself was on Thursday, and it also exceeded both my expectations, and those of my gorgeous bride Kirsty.  She looked stunning, and happy, and it was lovely to see everything I was feeling on her face.  Our daughter Eva had a good time too, though she upstaged us somewhat when she decided her wand of flowers would make a good microphone and held it to our faces as we each took our respective vows…

As for the rest, it was exactly as we wanted it – vows, good food, and then everyone kicking back and relaxing.  The food was superb, but for all that the duck terrine, sea bass, and chocolate pudding were great, the evening buffet seemed to be the most popular part of the day.  We had decided against finger food, and instead opted to have white rolls with bacon, lorne sausage, and potato scone available to all.  A popular move.

Overall though, it was the people that made the wedding great.  We know some excellent, excellent specimens, and getting them altogether in one place was fantastic, especially given how far some had come (Australia and Seattle being the furthest, but from all corners of the UK too).  If you were one of them, thank you so much for helping to make the day everything it was.  If you sent best wishes by email, Facebook, etc, thank you too.  It all went into the pot.

I would now like to sleep for a week.  Unfortunately, if I did that, I’d wake up with only a couple of days left to get us all to India, and that wouldn’t work at all.  Damn.

There has now been a wedding.  It has been a strange and wonderful week.  I shall definitely come back and write about it, at some point.

Now I have to do some sitting still and staring at things.

It’s been an insanely productive day. I need to sit down for a bit.

First up, we bought the rings. Palladium for me (on order), platinum for the lady (in the bag). Very nice they look too. When you buy wedding rings at John MacIntyre, who were lovely and helpful, they give you lots of chocolates. An excellent business model.

Straight after that, we sorted the favours for the wedding day, which were something of a chance find, and delighted us both. I popped up the road to get a gift for my best man Mark, who is fortunately extremely easy to buy for, while Kirsty attended to critical make-up purchases. A quick coffee, then she went across to the West End to order the flowers. I now have some heather to shove in my buttonhole, apparently, wrapped in red ribbon to match the soles of Kirsty’s Christian Boutin shoes (I think it’s Christian Boutin – I’m a bloke, so shoes are just shoes to me).

You’d be surprised how much of my wedding is now themed to match the soles of Kirsty’s wedding shoes.

While she was doing that, I went off to organise my wedding outfit, a black kilt with a Bonnie Prince Charlie jacket and five button waistcoat. When I told the chap in menswear that the wedding was on the 17th, he went a peculiar colour and made strange noises. “But… but… it’s wedding season,” he said, looking at me as though I’d asked him to stick pins in his own testicles. “Don’t you know it’s wedding season?”

Apparently, I’m doing everything at the last minute.

Anyway, it’s all ordered, and should be here for a fitting next week. Nor was that the end of achieving things. The flights to Delhi are now paid for, the Indian visas are on their way,the car’s booked to pick us up and take is to the airport, and another is arranged to collect us and take us to our new house in India when we land. I’ve ordered massive amounts of luggage for our unaccompanied air freight, and there’s probably stuff done today that I’ve forgotten about just now.

Productive, as I mentioned. It can’t last, but tonight, there will be congratulatory pizza.

Edited to add: not heather. For the buttonholes. I’m a dope. Thistles.

Okay, tick tock, my last month living in the United Kingdom has begun. My life is a series of countdowns right now. Countdown to the day I finish my current day job (five days, seventeen hours, thirty-five minutes), countdown to the wedding (fifteen days, thirteen hours, four minutes), countdown to getting on that plane (twenty-nine days, thirteen hours, eighteen minutes). It’s exhausting, keeping up.

Mind you, there were a lot more countdowns a month or so ago. They’re vanishing fast.

Today we posted the wedding banns (well, Kirsty did, through insane traffic, on her way to work), which is basically giving the official confirmation to the registrars of the date, time, witnesses, etc. Cutting it a bit fine, to be honest, as tomorrow’s the last day we could legally have done so if we wanted to keep the 17th as the date, but that is how we roll, in da lingo of da yoof. We’re also sorting out the final guest list, as the final yeas and nays come in. Some inevitable disappointments, though all with good reason. I’ll miss my brother and his mob the most, I think, but such is life. Plenty of fine people are still attending though, and I’m starting to really look forward to it.

That said, last night I woke every couple of hours, all night. I think it was anxiety. That almost never happens to me. Natural enough, I suppose. I keep being told that moving house, getting married, and changing your job are the three most stressful things you can put yourself through, and Kirsty and I have timed it all for the same week. Hey ho.

All the more important that I pick up some exercise again, now that Kirsty’s back and our routine is getting back to nearly normal. A four mile run tonight, so that should see me sleep some. Hopefully.

I leave you with the shocking news headline UK teenage girls “worst drunks”, which strikes me as entirely incorrect. Surely, on the available evidence, they’re actually the best drunks?

A productive weekend, if I do say so. First, a meeting at One Devonshire Gardens, where I’ll be getting married in a month and a half. They really are making things about as easy as it’s possible for a wedding to be, helped enormously by the fact that we’re not inviting many people. I’m really starting to look forward to it, especially having now chosen the menu, which I’m expecting to be a highlight of the day (marriage itself aside!). Screw the small talk and bring on the main course. We grabbed a dress for Eva to wear too, and Kirsty already has her wedding dress. I’m hiring a kilt ensemble, having decided that never having worn a skirt for formal occasions, the best time to start will be an already massively stressful day, but I’m booked in for measurements in a couple of weeks. All smooth, so far.

Just as well, as it occurs to me that two months from right now, we’ll be married, and on a plane to India. Our worldly goods will either be packed up in UK storage, or following us by slow coach (we could be without it for three months or so, apparently), depending what it is. We’ll be gone, baby. I still can’t quite believe it. Not too long ago, time was crawling by. Now it seems determined to bolt like a frightened horse.

We’re just about keeping up, I reckon. On Friday, we had the first set of vaccinations, meaning my blood is currently a lethal soup of diptheria, polio, tetanus, typhoid, meningitis, japanese encephalitis, and hepatitis A. It was, as ever with jabs, hardly the horror I had built up in my head. As Kirsty says, the good thing about going to a private travel clinic where the nurse does nothing but give injections all day, is that they’re reallygood at it. Quick and easy, though we couldn’t really raise our arms above our heads for the next twenty-four hours or so. Thankfully, as I mentioned elsewhere, I almost never need to do that. Eva was particularly brave, no histrionics at all (in fact, she was looking forward to it), which makes me suspect she may have been possessed by the wraith of a much older person. She’s only five. She’s supposed to be terrified of needles, not hurrying us along the street to be injected.

Anyway, we have another two visits to finish off the courses, then we’re functionally immortal.

Or something like that.

Finally, you may recall that later this year I have a story called ‘Hermanesha’ in Withersin magazine. To help you figure out whether the magazine might be for you, they’ve released their out of print debut issue Birth as a free PDF download. You can check it out here.