Come dine with me...

I am currently in amongst a sea of bottles,a pile of washing up that you would need oxygen to get to the top of and with a lovely view of a skip.

After some reconsidering, we all decided that we're running out of time to do five nights of it so somehow I ended up doing one all on my own at a moments notice.

i went suit shopping with my brother yesterday as he wanted some advice on what to wear for his wedding and halfway through the day, we cooked up the plan for the evening's come dine with me.

I had a great day with him, it's been a long time since we did anything just the two of us and we had a right laugh in the wedding shops. My favourite was in Moss Bros where he asked to try on a suit and had to borrow a wing tip shirt. Fine we thought until he went to put it on and it stank! he told the man and apparently he'd only got one in my brother's size and it was a returned one. So, my poor brother had to squeeze himself into someone else's onion pits shirt and reek whilst trying on suits. When i went to tighten his cravat the smell almost knocked me out.

We also trailed round John Lewis and a load of other suit shops, trying on everything from lounge suits to dinner jackets but we soon realised that they seemed to make him look like a member of shawaddywaddy! I then had "under the moon of love" in my head all day and almost got walloped by my bro when I kept singing it every time he tried something on.

Eventually we ended up fitting him for a morning suit and he looked lovely. Really handsome and much happier than in the suits. So, we then had to wrangle with every hire company in our local area to try and hire 8 suits for under a grand - not easy. Seems the hire business is a complete rip off. It did make me laugh in Pronuptia though, whilst my brother was trying stuff on, I told the lady i wasn't the bride but was the groom's sister. She said, "I'd worked that one out. You're far too calm to be the bride. You're acting like a normal person". It reminded me of how stressful planning a wedding could be and so I instructed my brother to buy his fiancee a little pressie for when we got back as she'd been on her knees in the lounge all day wrestling with making all of the orders of service whilst me and my brother lunched and tried suits on.

When I got home, I dashed to the post office to pick up Tom's pressie for his birthday. I've bought him a signed race number from Lance Armstrong when he won the tour de France. Tom adores cycling and so hopefully he'll really like it.
I was then in a whirlwind of cooking and sorting out but managed to cobble together a 2 course dinner for five in under an hour. My best mate, my brother and his fiancee and Tom then did a pretty good job of knocking a hole in not only the dinner but 2 bottles of champagne, 4 bottles of wine and half a bottle of gin - helped ably by my mum who turned up later on. I have been reliably informed this morning that there are a few sore heads.

I didn't sleep a wink last night for some reason; the combination of Tom's snoring and the random conversation we all had about all moving en masse to st Albans (where did that come from?) meant that my mind was whirring all night and so I sat in the spare room reading so as not to disturb Tom. I then had to leap out of bed at 7am this morning to have the skip delivered and move my car. Yuk, it was vile. Peeing rain, windy, the whole downstairs looking like Bargain Booze had exploded and a skip man with BO that could burn your eyebrows off - not the nicest start to the day. I'm now waiting for the weather to let up a little so that i can start filling the skip with loads of ST related junk and crap and begin to clear the house and garden ready for letting it after the summer.

Tom also had a sore head and was cringing as he remembered that he kept telling my mum and brother last night that he wanted to marry me. Loon. I have reminded him that there will be no more bloddy weddings for me! We did hatch a plan though to send my brother and his fiancee to the Cavalieri in Rome where we stayed as a surprise wedding present. They're not having a honeymoon as they're planning to go travelling in the autumn but aren't going anywhere directly after the wedding. So, we told them we'd surprise them with a few days away but they have no idea that they're going to be in a junior suite in the Waldorf astoria cavalieri in Rome - they think they're having a couple of days in Oxford or York or something. Can't wait to see the look on their faces.

Anyway, am off now to try and make some headway in the clearing up stakes. It's such a tip in the dining room and kitchen that I'm thinking of moving into the skip as it's the only tidy place I can find!
So, i'd better don my rubber gloves, tie on an apron and declare war on last night's debris - why do you always end up with 5 times as many dirty glasses as guests?

Bye for now then

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P.S "Anonymous" you're not published and you know why, I'm proud of Tom that's all. I'm proud of everything from the way he looks after his family, the way he is with everyone he meets and how he is adored by everyone who works for him because he is so fair, talented and a brilliant boss.
Oh and a message for, "WTF" - if you remember, I married a penniless student for love. I supported him financially for our entire relationship and my relationship prior to that was also with a bloke who earnt less than half of my wage. I'm sick of receiving comments that seem to say that I'm a moneygrabbing cash obsessed nasty person. I knew Tom for quite a while before he revealed he was successful and my entire family have instilled in me the ethic of "If you want it, bloomin well go out and earn it yourself". I did, I have, ST robbed me of over 26K which I'll never see again and I've managed to buy, renovate and look after properties completely on my own for the last 11 years with no help from anyone except my own hard work. Just because I have a bloke with a good career now does not erase all my own hard work or successes. My prized possessions in the world are not my car or bags (which I paid for all myself) not my house which I also paid for all by myself but are a photo of my Grandma, my teddy from childhood, a second hand leather jacket from Brighton and the health of my friends and family. Yes I like nice things and Tom is more than generous but if he was penniless (like my previous 2 relationships) I would still love him and thank heaven that I've found somebody kind and loving and not a vile, twisted thieving duplicitous weasel like ST.