Category: Rebecca’s Wedding

Woody and Wedding Dresses

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Rebecca's Wedding

After the last few weeks where these posts have been more a cry for help than a blog, you might expect me to start once again by whinging about my week at work. Well, you are absolutely spot on. It’s been another relentless tsunami of shite that I don’t wish to repeat but alas the lack of a lottery win means that I will have to.

Friday ended like one of those skids you have in your car in icy weather when you almost crash but somehow manage to avoid any large hard objects, but only just. With heart racing, pulse racing and bearing the battle scars of a war I’d struggle to call a draw, the weekend began.

We were booked to see Toy Story 4 at 7pm, so the transition from work to weekend was a rushed one for us all, and we arrived at Middlebrook (extensive retail park next to Bolton Wanderer’s stadium) again in that car crash, sweat on brow, pulse racing mode, with seconds to spare. There was barely enough time to secure a life threatening amount of Pick n Mix before settling into our ever so posh reclining leather seats.

Not having the time to adjust my brain to leisure mode properly and having missed the 45 minutes of adverts and trailers, the opening moments of the film passed me by a bit as I just wasn’t mentally prepared for what I was about to see.

Soon enough the adrenaline started to subside and the enjoyment of the film kicked in. This will be a spoiler free zone of course so my review will be brief. It’s very good. All the stuff you want in there is present, with jokes that work on many levels, a good story line and of course the heart tugging emotion, and they all come together to make it another film that will entertain families for decades to come.

The emotional bits, I suppose, work best for the likes of our viewing party. The Toy Story quadrology (hey, I may have made that word up, but it works) has been with us as a family as a constant. Sat there with the next generation in the form of Freddie, when Emily started crying her eyes out, at the time when Freddie taking his turn on her knee, it was no surprise. The thing that happens, that I won’t spoil, is a symbol, once again, of time passing, new generations taking over and things often never being the same again. Having swallowed too many sugary snacks, I had to work extra hard to swallow the large lump in my throat.

Freddie, at 18 months old, behaved fantastically. Beyond the occasional “Quack Quack” at the appearance of a duck like toy which made our row chuckle if nobody else, he didn’t make a peep and broadly sat captivated throughout. It augers well for the watching of shows in WDW in 65 days time. Ooh see how I crow bar a countdown update seamlessly into a post.

He was on a massive snack and sugar overdose which helped but that’s how the cinema works, so he deserves all the credit.

Speaking of important family milestones, time passing, and kids growing up. Remember, Rebecca? The little girl you’ve seen in my trip reports over the years….

Well, yesterday Louise and Emily watched her choose her wedding dress. If the themes and motifs of the Toy Story films are ever more accurately mirrored in my life at any other time, I will be amazed.

Yes, yes, I don’t look old enough to be the father of the bride. That’s just my natural athleticism, classic good looks and military grade fitness regime, but it’s happening nonetheless.

I haven’t seen the dress. Rebecca wants me to see it for the first time on the day and that’s fine. Mine and Louise’s job is just to deliver the day she wants. She is delighted with it, and, as the cliche goes, she knew it was the one the moment she tried it on. I had a similar experience last week in Matalan trying on a new pair of jogging pants. Just the bills for those two items were different.

So at the risk of being THAT patronising person who thinks they know it all about parenting, if you are taking your young kids to watch Toy Story 4 anytime soon. Enjoy it. Despite the perpetual exhaustion, financial woes, never ending work and day to day struggles, drink it in. Next week you’ll be planning a wedding and bouncing your grandchild on your knee. That’s great too of course, and I spend every moment in Freddie’s presence with a smile on my face, but just smell the roses of today, take a million photos, write endless trip reports that capture your holidays. Otherwise you’ll blink and miss it.

Here endeth the eyebrow raise inducing faux wisdom.

At the risk of not heeding my own advice, I have to go now and spend the rest of my Sunday fighting the dread of the impending Monday.

Till the next time…….

There’s Not A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow……

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, Rebecca's Wedding

This time of year is all about tradition. Today, that tradition is me googling ways to fake my own death to avoid having to go back to work. I accept that may be a little over dramatic, but right now, staring down the barrel of having to work for a living again/still, it seems the only viable option.

I have loved my time off and it has again confirmed my belief that I would be the best lottery millionaire on the planet and I demand a chance to verify that fact properly. Surely my balls must drop soon? That didn’t sound right but you know what I mean.

I have done very productive things, like playing my new PS4 games and I have re-watched all of The Thick Of It on Netflix between walking the dogs and (Louise reads this) spending hours on household chores whilst she was having fun at work.

Friday saw me gigging with Mustard again, this time in Blackpool. You can keep your Live Aids. Until you have played a Blackpool club on the first weekend after Christmas and New Year you can’t call yourself a musician. Mustard have had a busy few weeks, so much so that we had to have our band Christmas do last night like taxi drivers do, once the festive stuff is over. We went for a curry and a few drinkies and the fact that I haven’t dared step on the scales since I finished work tells you all you need to know about how I have enjoyed myself gastronomically as a whole and there will be a price to pay for that for sure.

Following last week’s news about Rebecca’s wedding (I know Tom will be an important part of the event, but let’s be honest) the save the dates have been going out this week. At this point little else needs to be done but I know for sure that Rebecca will have lists of stuff picked out already. It’s just how she is wired.

Christmas also saw a couple of Williams households crash into the 21st century. I bought Louise one of those fandangled Alexa things for Christmas and she loved it so much that she then went out and bought another so there could be one in the bedroom too. If you’d told me just a few years ago that my wife had added an Alexa to our bedroom I might have raised an eyebrow. So we are voice activated and futuristic in a big way.

We also got my Mum & Dad one. Then, for my Dad’s birthday yesterday, we added two smart sockets to their set up so they can now turn a couple of lamps on and off with just their voice. It hasn’t escaped me that with a VR headset next to our telly and us all turning stuff on and off with our voices we are finally living in that final scene from Carousel of Progress.

Even the dog looks not too dissimilar from Oli.

Thankfully we won’t be burning turkeys with our voices, more making it less dark or playing an 80’s play list.

Have I made any resolutions for this new year? No. I hate all this New Year, new you shite. If any business sends me an email with that in the title I have to burn their head office down. I should do lots of things of course. I refer you to my earlier comments about my waistline, but I also really need to finish that book I started years ago. I mean the one I am writing (or not) rather than reading, but I should of course read more as well. I could also do with finding a way to earn a living that I truly enjoy, but I guess that applies to most of the working population. I am finding the rat race routine more and more tiresome the older I become. I need to be like those couples on those property shows. One of them makes African pottery out of phlegm and dandruff in their garage and somehow they have a budget of £2.5 million.

So, I intend to milk every moment out of today, doing as little as possible before the horrors of tomorrow. If I didn’t have to walk the dogs I would consider not even getting dressed…yes, I am blogging in my dressing gown…calm yourselves. With the state of my recent diet, I may have to wear it to work too.

I always try to take off a few extra days at the end of the festive period to reduce the horror of the return, but even on the 7th day of the new year there will still be some idiot wishing me a “Happy New Year” or asking me if I had a good Christmas. Just stop it.

If you have been working all the way through, as Louise has, you are well within your rights to call me all the names you are currently muttering under your breath, that’s fine. Allow me to wallow a little.

Alexa, play my EMO play list.

Till the next time……

The Planning Has Begun…..

by mkingdon, posted in Rebecca's Wedding

Right. So, a blog every week about normal life. O….K. Erm……I think I remember how this goes, but bear with, this could be a bigger car crash than normal.

Since we last spoke, we’ve been away on holiday. I’m not sure I mentioned that? I should tell you all about it at some point. I still have had to go to work most days which is remains a source of enormous and constant disappointment, and Louise too finds herself still dealing with all sorts of sores, wounds, weeping things and stuff that oozes to earn a crust. Life is cruel.

We have continued to be delighted by Freddie on a daily basis. He was round at ours yesterday for a few hours whilst Rebecca and Tom were out and about and he is just a constant source of joy. I apply the grandparent’s caveat to that, in that we only see him for a few hours at a time and can hand him back, but he’s just lovely. I know we are biased but he is just a smiling bundle of fun and he makes our day whenever we see him.

I said that he was perfect on holiday and indeed he was. We went out for our Christmas meal this year at a local restaurant and again, he just took it all in, wasn’t an ounce of trouble, which was handy as I was sat next to him, and enthralled the waiting staff.

Many of the comments on the final instalment of the trip report were about booking another trip. I know I always say that won’t be happening, before it then does, but really, honestly, it won’t. That is because other events are in the early planning stages which will involve most of our available funds for the foreseeable.

For those of you that have been around a while and have for reasons I cannot fathom but appreciate, witnessed our family grow up (apart from me) over the years, here comes another landmark.

Rebecca and Tom are getting married, and the planning has begun.

The date they are looking at is in May 2020 and, as anyone who knows Rebecca will appreciate, lists exist, venues have been vetted and one looks to have been selected now. At every significant landmark over the years there is astonishment that it is happening, as surely the girls cannot be old enough to, walk, go to school, go to a gig, have a boyfriend and pretty much everything else they have done right up until producing Freddie. But it does seem that this is real, and all the thoughts I had when we produced two girls about weddings and all that it entails are now a reality.

I think the phrase I am looking for is “shit just got real”.

The venue in the frame is one that is quite close to our house, the Last Drop Village, which makes the most sense from a location point of view and, after laughing out loud at some of the prices from other venues, seems to be the best deal too, so that worked out OK.

I suspect that this whole wedding thing will test my planning skills to the maximum, but Rebecca is the queen of lists and getting stuff done, especially when it is something as important to her as her wedding day. That doesn’t stop me being a little bit scared of what this entails. As part of Mustard, the excellent wedding band in which I attempt to play bass, I have seen quite a few weddings recently and been witness to some of the planning problems that can crop up. I am a little bit afraid. With the collective efforts of Rebecca, Tom, Louise, Emily and myself we shall, I am sure overcome, and hopefully deliver a day that Rebecca (and Tom, but let’s be frank, mostly Rebecca) has dreamt of.

As anyone who has planned and paid for a wedding will know, unless you are significantly more wealthy than I, that does not allow for holidays to happen so alas, there will be no Florida based trips that I can foresee. Lottery wins and gifts from strangers from the internet (let me know if you want my bank details) aside, it won’t be happening.

So welcome back to normal life. I’ve probably forgotten to tell you about other stuff that’s been going on. I am ring rusty (there’s a cream for that) and still in the haze of those days over the Christmas period that nobody knows what to do with themselves so these things might get better as we go. I make no promises.

This one felt like it just arrived on the page like some verbal vomit so let’s hope improvement is the ongoing trend.

Till the next time…..