Weddings always make me cry....

The Royal Wedding was fabulous!  I loved every second of it and think that it was the perfect day.  But I spent most of the day thinking about my best friend at home and missing her like crazy.  It all started very innocently with a few comments on facebook.

She was 100% right as well –if I was at home, I would have spent the night watching the wedding on her couch, the two of us either dressed up to pretend that we were there or more likely in our pjs.  We would have cracked a bottle of wine and put the kids to bed and then settled in for the ultimate girly night.  Who doesn’t love seeing a beautiful woman becoming a princess.  Or a young couple declaring their love.  Just that these two did it in front of the whole world.

We would have squealed with delight at the dress and Kate’s excited waving and her grin as she headed to the church.  And the way the Harry turned around and told Wills how beautiful she looked, and how Will told her that she looked beautiful when she finally met him at the alter.  We would have cried a few emotional tears during the vows.  We would have loved the dresses and the build up.  In short we would have been hanging out just like old times.  You see, her and I are like two peas in a pod and we love this kind of shit.  I am soooo looking forward to seeing her at Christmas and can’t wait for us to hang out and forget that I live in a different country for a few weeks.

Instead I spent a day that was both fun and exhausting with my best mate in London.  We watched the wedding in the pub and it was hilarious the way that we whispered as if we were there during it.  And I squealed with delight and clapped when Kate emerged from the hotel, and I cried a few sneaky tears thinking about how Diana would have been so proud of her darling boys.   Oh and those two kisses!   C indulged my wedding and royal craziness and we were both lamenting our lack of sleep seeing as we stayed up late watching American Idol the night before…

And then all hell broke loose.  And I spent the next 9 hours or so helping my friends avoid a small meltdown.  The British public partied in the only way they know how, binge drinking.  I love my friends and there was no way that I could sit down and have a few drinks whilst they barely held their heads above water in what was fast becoming a crazy situation.  So whilst I was planning on heading home for a sleep before the next two days of crazy working, I washed and dried just about every glass they owned.  But you know what?  I would not have had it any other way.  You see I think of these people as my family and I would never have walked away from that.  And I was indulging my inner bar wench (its a secret fantasy of mine to work in a bar, they think that I am nuts but seriously I love).  At the end of the night my feet hurt, I had burnt my finger on a plate, we had run out of vodka (this brought tears to my eyes) and I was exhausted but you know what?  We were in all it together, I had a big smile on my face, and bonus I found a few cans of  unopened Strongbow that someone had snuck into the pub.

I guess what it comes down to is this.  Weddings to me are about family and loved ones coming together to celebrate the love of a couple.  Yesterday, my family and loved ones celebrated that love and then we pulled together and made the day a success.  It may not have been the day that we had planned and it might have been hard, but to me this is the true essence of family and of what a wedding means.  This year when my sister gets married, it will be fair to say that I will have done pretty much nothing to help her out with the preparation, but then I am on the other side of the world.  But I am sure that when I get home, I will be put to work with any preparations that are required and for Christmas, so I will be put to good use again.  Oh and to those that call me a hopeless romantic for getting so damn sentimental about weddings, hell yeah, I believe in romance, and that it will one day be in my life, even if I am a hopeless singleton.

So have you ever stepped in to help a friend at a moments notice?  Where did you watch the wedding?  Were you overwhelmed by the loveliness of it all?

In you I see dirty....

In you I see Dirty – it’s a line from one of my fav Smashing Pumpkins songs – Ava Adore.  I really like this song for a number of reasons, but my strongest association of it is with my Dad.  My Dad likes rock, he listens to a classic rock station in his ute and is a bit of a Pink Floyd enthusiast. My Mum, not so much.  So when this song came on the aforementioned classic rock station, he was singing it at her, and go to the line ‘And I’ll pull all your crooked teeth, you’ll be perfect just like me’ she guffawed and gave him a look.  The reality being that my Mum has perfect teeth.  They were laughing at this and having a nice joke.

But when I heard that song the other day when my ipod was on random, it got me thinking about the line ‘in you I see dirty’.  And it struck a chord.  There are certain people that you can look at and just know that you are going to be good friends, or that you just know you are going to be very dirty with.  I am sure that most people can relate to the look that passes between couples – let’s get out of here now.  Or one that passes between strangers that says something very similar but perhaps in a more crude way – I want to bang you in the alleyway or your legs would look best wrapped around my hips.  I have seen this look most often in a club on a dancefloor.  And don’t lie you all know and love this look.

Perhaps it’s something to do with the primal instinct that comes into play when we were dancing and reacting to music.  I am a big music person, and I have been known to start and finish the dancing on more than one occasion.  There is something very animalistic about dancing and the way that it makes people react to each other.  Films like Dirty Dancing show that it’s an emotive way to interact with others.  Given the right music a dance floor can be a very prim and proper place or it can be a complete porn fest. I will never forget dancing in a waterfront bar in Auckland and hearing Christina Aguilera’s, Dirty, come on.  The place became a scene from some sort of soft core video where people who seconds ago had been normal and having a bit of fun, bit lips and proceeded to take on the Dirty persona.  If you were there that night – you will have a fair idea what happened next….

Or perhaps it’s something more instinctive than that.  I was watching Wedding Crashers the other day.  Cheesy I know but I love a good Rom Com and this one is a little quirky.  The line – ‘True love is your soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another’ also struck a chord with me.  There are some people in this world that you become friends with very fast, others it’s a long slow burn and others are your friends for a short while.  It can be down to the smallest things.  I bonded with a very good friend over a love of rubbish tele that no one else wants to watch.  Another, our love of movies.  Or it could be that you are crazy just like them.  But early on in the relationship you saw something in them that you see in yourself.

Recently I have been described as a few things.  Some of them have been lovely – smiley, cute, that dress looks nice etc.  One of the most surprising ones though was sexually raw.  Hmmmm not sure about that one at all.  Yes, it’s true that I am up for a conversation about sex and its finer points any day of the week.  We all love to chat about sex – deep down you know it’s true.  And it can be hilarious to hear what others have experienced, likes, dislikes, the good, the bad and the very ugly.  Maybe that is why I was described that way as I am very honest and frank about it.

This friend is writing some kind of book about sex and wanted to interview me about my experiences for it.  My first instinct was - oh no what if my parents read it?  Then I thought well why not.  I am sure that they have their own experiences and whilst they are not sharing them with the world, I am a 30 year old woman for goodness sakes, they must have some idea what I am up to – whether they like it or not!  Having said that living on the other side of the world means that I don’t really have to answer to anyone, so there is a certain amount of anonymity about it, as well as the strict don’t ask don’t tell policy that I seem to have with my family.

At the moment there is not really anyone that I can think of that I see dirty in.  There is not really anyone that I can see non-dirty good clean family fun in either for that matter.  And this is normally about the time when it smacks you in face like a wet fish on a random Tuesday morning and you are blindsided by something that you didn’t expect.  I am kinda looking forward to that.  Meanwhile, my Mum reads my horoscopes and tells me that I can expect this on the weekend of the 14th of May.  How did my life come to that – my Mum scanning horoscopes in the hope that I will find love?

Maybe this weekend with all the Royal loving in the air I will see something in someone that will excite me or intrigue me some more.
So what do you reckon – are we that instinctual that we can communicate lust with a look?  Do you think that opposites attract and the line from Wedding Crashers is wrong? (n.b. I am not foolish enough to take wedding advice from a Rom Com.  I am crazy but not stupid).

What a difference a year makes....

Happy Easter!  I am hanging out for the forbidden V drink this afternoon, hell, I have earned it.  Well this time last year I was a very different girl and the difference is there for all to see.

 
Last year I was ill, suffering with endometriosis, awaiting a surgery date, nursing a shattered heart and generally just miserable.  I was still living with him that shattered the heart and life was really a bit of a struggle.  I managed to find an Easter Sunday mass, on the internet, which told me the wrong time and we were late.  But we were in time for the blessing and to sing a few hymns.  It was a lovely service.

Then we headed to our local pub where we were acquaintances with the landlords.  After a yummy lunch where we read the papers and generally chilled out, they invited us to dinner.  Unlike today, the weather was a bit shite so we spent the afternoon on the couch with DVDs before ambling back there.  Dinner was with about 20 other strays and we had a ball.  I had a tambourine and the sing a long was great.

FF a year and wow – I am pretty healthy and am very contented with my single lifestyle.  Easter Sunday has dawned bright and sunny – a bit of a breeze in which my washing is flapping.  I am worshiping at the oven making some yummy treats for the kind people who invited me to dinner a year ago.  Guess what?  They are now my best mates, I very rarely go more than a couple of days without seeing them and we refer to each other as family!  I don’t know where I would be without them.

I have spent the morning on the phone to my family who were having Easter dinner.  I miss them right now, but Mum and Dad will be here very soon and I will see everyone else for the second most important wedding of the year in December.

When asking my boy flatmate if it was ok for my parents to stay for two weeks, he just smiled and said that they must be pretty cool and laidback if they have bought me up to be the way that I am.  We have a mutual love affair with each other – I think that he is the bees knees and we have joint custody of a few tomato plants.   But it got me thinking about the way I was bought up and yes it was pretty cool and at the time I didn’t realise just how laid back it was, granted that my parents have chilled out a bit now that the hard part is over and they don’t have to tell us what to do anymore. 

A prime example of this is my Grandma.  Very sadly she passed away in the first August that I was here.  She was not ill for long, but she had discussed what she wanted for a send off with my Grandad before this time.  There was to be no depressing service, and no sandwiches and hushed voices after wards.  Hell No!  There was a to be a party to celebrate this woman who had 5 kids and what sometimes feels like a million grandkids and one great grandchild.  Eulogies were to be given at the house and then there was to be dancing.

 
I called from a London phone box as there was no phone at our tiny flat and was crying as I spoke to my Dad.  And boy did he give me a telling off.  That was not what she wanted.  Everyone else had been partying despite the tears, dancing even if it was with a heavy heart.  So stop crying and get celebrating her life.  I did that – I drank a bottle of wine and had a nice dinner with friends that night.  I later saw a DVD where my sister tearfully read out the eulogy that I had written and then some footage of the party where my family followed her instructions to the letter.  She was there in spirit and she would have loved the hooley that was had.

As I dance around the kitchen to a mix of Paloma Faith, Lady Gaga, Gin and Cake, I am thinking of her.  She who loved to hear her grandchildren sing and laugh and to see them happy.  I hope that both she and my Nana are up there having a cuppa and a huge easter egg, grinning at this crazy, happy, blonde nutter that they had a hand in raising.

Happy Easter peeps!  Love ya all xx

In Nicca we Trust

When I was growing up it was a long held belief in my family that I could not keep a secret to save myself.  If you wanted someone to know what you got them for their birthday, just tell me.  I repeated everything that I heard and that embarrassed my parents at the craziest times.

Then I learned to be quiet.  I was well aware that I often opened my mouth to change feet and it was something that I did not like about myself.  It was hard work cause quite often I would not realise what I had said until the words had left my mouth.  But despite it nearly killing me sometimes I have learned to keep a secret.  What cracked me up was when I had learned this skill, I remember my Dad saying to someone No don’t tell Nicca cause she can’t keep a secret.  I replied that no I was great at keeping secrets now and I could be trusted.  He asked well what secrets are you keeping?  That is the crazy thing – I can’t tell you the secrets that I keep, cause then they would not be kept.  It was a hard skill to prove that I had learnt.

And then I became one of the most trustworthy people you can find.  Yes I still get excited when it’s someone’s birthday and desperately want to tell them what I got them but I also don’t want to spoil the surprise.  And yes I still sometimes say the wrong thing, but it’s less often now.  And I apologise straight away.  Normally when I am very tired, I have trouble with my words.  Have you ever been so tired that you can’t event speak?  I remember I used to come home from work on a Sunday afternoon and I could barely get out that I was off for a nap.  I would get the words in a sentence round the wrong way.  I once told someone that I would have worried about them if they had become a cockpit!  What I meant to say was if they had become a pilot.  I knew what I meant but it did not come out right.  It’s been a while since I have said something very offensive and I tend to read my emails over a few times before I press send.

If I really want to say something right I tend to write it to people.  Hence birthday and Christmas cards become an emotional affair.  I often cannot find the right time to get out what I want to say to people, especially some of my urban family.  Others seem to be so good at it, I often receive compliments, but when I want to tell someone how I really feel, I will write it down.  I also like to receive written sentiments, I will read those things over and over again and treasure them.  Even fun texts that remind me of great nights out and great friends are kept for as long as the phone lasts.

A strange thing about living overseas, is that despite the technical advances, people think that they can tell you anything and that you won’t be able to tell anyone else.  Since being here I have been told about pregnancies, well before anyone else.  I know babies names before they are born.  I am the first to know about proposals, and I get sent pictures of wedding dresses, shoes and colour schemes.  Part of me wonders if this is the way that my friends and family are trying to keep me in touch, or have they forgotten that I used to be terrible at keeping a secret because I am not there on a regular basis to remind them.   It seems strange to me that distance has led people to believe that they can trust me more.  I am not trying to say that I am untrustworthy, but it baffles me that people that I don’t see very often trust me with such great secrets.  And for the most part I do a good job at keeping them.  Or have I become their personal version of Post Secret – I love reading that website, reading other peoples anonymously posted secrets.  I guess when you just have to tell someone then it is kinda cool to tell the world about something that they know nothing about.

Am I the only one that feels like they say the wrong thing often?  Am I the only one that still has a poem that I received for my 16th Birthday from one of my friends?  Can you keep a secret?

Going to the Chapel...

I am 99% sure that I was the first person that my sister told about her engagement.  Within hours I had a picture of the ring and was hearing about details for the wedding that was being planned.  I am beyond happy for both of them and can’t wait to board the plane to be her bridesmaid.  But… there is the feeling that I wish it was me – not to be confused I don’t want to marry her fiancé, I wish it was me getting married.

One of the perks of my urban family is that not knowing my sister personally, they were excited for her and me, but they also asked ‘How are you doing with this?’, something that no-one in NZ asked at all. Truth be told I am doing ok with it – the dress that was sent was too big, the shoes are perfect and other than that it’s all going very well.  What I am not ok with is the fact that I will be going stag.  Or for those not up on the elderly slang – I will be going alone.  I would love to have a wonderful partner that would board the plane with me, meet my family at the airport and then dance with me at her wedding.  But that dream grows more and more faint with the passing of time.  The likelihood of me meeting anyone that would make the 30 hour trip to NZ with me in December is slim right now.

 
Part of me feels very silly about this.  I will be at a wedding where I will know a vast majority of the guest and I am sure that I will be able to coax some of them to the dance floor with me at some point.  Lord knows that I will be dancing with my sis should Guns and Roses Sweet Child of Mine come on.  My family will not have seen me for the best part of two years so there will be lots to catch up on and chat about.  Oh and the fact that this is not actually about me!  It could be quite a boring event for someone who has not met my family before and I am ensconced with the wedding party.

I was having a good old drunken moan about this to a good friend.  And she gave me a very new perspective on this.  She has a girlfriend and mentioned to me that whilst she has a partner, that the partner is not always welcome at weddings.  And it floored me.  I could not believe that in this day in age when we are all so very PC and accepting, that this would still be a problem.  I could not comprehend what it might be like to be unwelcome in not only my family or my close group of friends.  Or that my partner would be unwelcome with them.  And suddenly my problems were not that bad.

So at the moment I am feeling lucky that should I have a boyf by December that they would be welcome to what is promising to be the wedding of the year.  I am excited about going home to see my family for the first time in 2 years.  And to know that when I see my kiwi besties that there will be tears, a glass (or 20) of wine poured and within about 10 minutes you would not think that we had been parted.  Oh and thanks to my sis and her fiancé for making all of this happen.  Mwah!

The need to belong....

Whether we like it or not, we all feel the need to belong.  Be it at a sports game where we all wear the same Tshirts, be it with our family where we all resemble each other or the wearing of wedding rings.  Woman with children want to belong and be understood, and so coffee groups were born.  People feel the need to belong with people who believe the same things as they do, and so visit churches in their droves.  Cult groups of those that like radio shows, television shows or just famous personalities have sprung up on Facebook – another way that we all belong to each other.

Being far from home, I feel the same need to belong.  I have managed to find my own urban family in London where I now live.  I belong there and we belong to each other.  I am very grateful for their presence in my life, without them I don’t think that I would still be living in London, I would have given up and gone home ages ago.  I spend a significant amount of time with them and it was upon having a discussion with a close member of this family that we began discussing the need to belong.  She felt that most people were individuals and were able to get along without belonging to a certain group.  I felt that most people belong in ways that they are most probably not aware of.

 
Waitangi Weekend this year, on the Friday of this weekend, I forgot to put my bone carving on around my neck.  I felt its absence all day and it was the first thing that I put on when I got home.  The thing is that this carving was given to me on the day that I left NZ by a very close friend of mine.  Once I put it on, it takes me a long time to take it off.  Part of me likes the way that it makes me belong to a group of people that are 12000 miles away, and that it denotes me as belonging to them.  Then in the midst of this feeling, Christchurch happened.  And more than ever I clung to what was home and solidarity with the group of people who were going through this tragedy.  At this time my urban family came into play bigtime.  We spent most of the first week of this nightmare together, living in each other’s pockets and holding each other as we cried.  And I felt the need to belong even more keenly.  We needed to be with people who understood what it was like to feel that horror.  Whilst others sympathised they could not fully understand what it was like.  And the carving stayed where it belonged – around my neck.

 
This weekend I am going to a fancy dress party, and I am going as a Stepford Wife.   I have a fab dress, heels and will be fixing my hair Stepford.  The problem for me is, that I need to take this carving off.  And it’s got me torn.  It seems silly.  Just take it off.  Put it back on later.  But then I might not belong.  So strong is my feeling of needing to belong right now.  Part of me thinks that it has a lot to do with where I am right now.  My job is shaky at the moment, so I might no longer belong to the first job I had when I came to England.  The people who work there have become my good friends.  I don’t have a partner right now, so I don’t have the privilege of belonging to a couple.  I miss my family and whilst I know that I belong there no matter what – I felt very lonely on the weekend that my sister held her engagement party.  My urban family were there for me in that moment.

So what makes you belong?  Where do you feel that you matter?  Am I crazy to be feeling this so strongly?

Choose Spinster

For decades woman have been scared to become the woman wearing the beige cardies and surrounded by her million cats.  The stereotype of spinsters with cats is an enduring one.  Woman fear it, kids make fun of it and men avoid woman in cardies.  Those who have seen Grey Gardens are frightened by the speed at which it can happen.

But after the way that I have been treated by men over the last few months I am beginning to see this as a valid life choice.  After all no one judges single bachelor men.  I kinda feel like Mercedes holding her sign for TOTS.  I am holding a sign in silence that says SPINSTER.   I am very happy with my life, whilst it would be good to have a man in it, there is no one suitable at the moment and I am unwilling to settle.

It’s fair to say that I am crazy, but crazy in the right kind of way.  I laugh a lot – and I am quite good at cracking the odd funny joke, but more often than not they are just cheesy.  I am a great friend, loyal, trustworthy and there for you at the drop of a hat should you need me.  But I need the same in return.  In the past I feel that I have given, god knows that I have given, and got nothing in return.  I don’t know if this is a life stage thing, but I am not willing to give so freely anymore.  Don’t get me wrong, once I find the right man I will give until it hurts, but he will be doing the same.  Not because I demand it, but because he wants to and wants me.

Recently I have seen great acts of love in my friend’s relationships, I am surrounded by committed couples and it is lovely to see.  They are real couples though, they have their fights and their ups and downs but they love each other and it shows.  That is the kind of example that my parents and friends have set for me.  It’s one that I have lost sight of in the past, but no more.

But the irony of it all is that I am very allergic to cats.  So my spinsterhood will be spent surrounded by kids.  I will have my nephew who will be happy to visit me, providing that I provide him with good food and a tele and the odd visit to the zoo or museum.  Well he was happy enough to do that when he was a wee un.  And then there are the kids of my many friends.  You see I am great with kids.  Remember the crazy I mentioned just before, kids love it.  I love having kids around, they have a load to teach us, as much as we have to teach them.  It helps that I am a big kid myself.  I love toys, I love Disney movies and I love mucking around.  Perfect babysitter and a great aunt.

All of this adds up to the same thing.  I am perfectly happy being a spinster.  We have talked about my active social life before, I have mentioned my great friends and given the way that I bake, I don’t think that I will be short of them for a while.  My only wish that is that other woman would see this as a valid choice.  For some reason people ask me for advice or share with me about their relationship issues – (really!!! I find this very surprising given that I am clearly not the expert on these).  Whilst I know that there is give and take in any relationship, some of the things that I have seen woman put up with in the past have further strengthened my resolve to go it alone until Mr Right rather than Mr Nearly there comes along.  (n.b. none of these friends are any longer with the losers that they were dating – and all of this is in past tense – no one I know is currently dating a loser!)

So in the immortal words of the Wombats – If this is a romcom kill the director, this is no Bridget Jones.  And in my words Choose Spinster.  Choose Happiness.