Tthere are no days so delightful as those of a fine October.

Well October went in a blur and November seems to be following suit, in fact whole year seems to have flown by at an alarming rate. It’s been a challenging month in certain ways, if I’m honest blogging has been pretty damn low on the agenda and I certainly owe a few phone calls and more than a few emails.

You may have seen from Mim and Vix I had the opportunity to meet with Mim and Emma and head over to see Vix in Bath a couple of week’s ago. It was a fab day out and lovely to catch up with them all after so many months. I didn’t go with the expectation of buying anything per se, I took some pennies just in case there might have been a handbag with my name on it. As it goes there wasn’t but I did buy three dresses! 

The two colourful ones were £10 each the purple one is handmade and as you can see is in rather an unflattering pose on the washing line because it smells of ‘old dress’ despite a wash, so it’s been out on the line airing. Actually it's been out for about two weeks now I come to think of it (mostly because it’s dark when I get up for work and dark when I get home so I keep forgetting it’s there!!) I’ll get it in this weekend and if it still needs it, will try what Vix suggested of sticking it in the wash with a scoop of Wilko’s equivalent of oxy-clean, I still need to buy some first mind.

The green dress is also handmade and smelt a bit fusty, like it had been in storage for ages, but I took a punt and washed it on a cool wash. It no longer smells but sadly bit did shrink (arse) however again as Vix suggested I soaked it with some conditioner, Aussie Miracle Moist, no less and it *seems* to have recovered enough to be wearable. I need to press it first though.  

As Mim mentioned I did indeed set her the challenge that if she wore her zombie dress I’d wear my mad Cheshire Cat one. That was a October purchase actually. I was home alone with a bottle of prosecco and nothing on the TV browsing the internet, fatal as I’m sure others will testify. 

It’s actually a Lindy Bop dress and yes I know I swore I would never buy from them again but as it goes it’s actually well made and a good fit. Anyone who knows me will contest I am a sucker for a novelty print so it was a no brainer that thankfully paid off.

I don’t have any pictures of us from the day because I arrived and knocked the Kinky Melon dummy flying which rather distracted me from the thought of finding my camera! I was just a tad mortified. 

Sadly the time with Emma was short because she had to head off early and even shorter with Vix because she was working. Mim and I had a good catch up though and she took us to a lovely tea/coffee shop in a bit of Bath I’ve not been to before as well as an ace cocktail bar when my train was cancelled and I suddenly had an hour to kill.

(photo nicked from Emma!)

As it goes the trains did put a real dampener on the day. Emma had a hideous journey to Bath and I had a crap one home.

The train I was due to catch was cancelled so they said they would get the next one to call additionally at my stop. They announced this various times so we all piled on, as you can imagine it was pretty full and I ended up standing in the middle of a carriage for the whole journey. We got to Swindon and apparently they told all the people there about the additional stop too so another surge of people loaded on, thankfully I had had the foresight to move nearer the end of the carriage before they did.

Sadly it seems in all of this the one person the forgot to tell about the additional stop was the actual train driver. He sailed straight through and didn’t stop until Reading!?!

Cue much swearing under the breath from me! Indeed there were so many irate people they made a special announcement at Reading and thankfully it was only a 20 minute wait for the next train back, (ironically the Bristol train which goes through Bath.) Again it was wedged full and standing, this time I didn’t get further than the vestibule. A rather flustered lady got in and said she was all of a dither because she had been on the train from Bath, the man next to her went ‘so was I’ and like an AA meeting we went round one by one the 15 people in the vestibule with each and every one of us going, so was I, so was I, me too, me as well. 

I was in complete grumpy old woman mode by the time I got in I vented my spleen at the GWR twitter account where I got in the most ridiculous twitter conversation with someone called Jordan who didn’t seem to know what planet he was on let alone what a train was. I come to the conclusion it’s actually a very clever ploy by GWR, to have your angry and frustrated customers answered by the most vacant of airheads so they will just give up and go away!   

October has meant the cinema. We saw Victoria and Abdul which was gently entertaining and I managed to catch the new Kingsman film just before it went off. I enjoyed it, not as good as the first but thoroughly entertaining never the less.  We also went to see the new Thor film on the release day. I bloody loved it, everything you want from a marvel film and more (including a moment with Chris Hemsworth in a tiny towel!?!)

 

I also squeezed in a dinner with Soo and Melissa. Soo met me at work and we popped into a little chi-chi boutique because she had spotted a top that would be perfect for her sister. As they are a similar size she decided to try it on and whist she did I pootled about looking at all the accessories and bits which were beautifully displayed about the shop.

Now the proprietor was nice enough, very friendly but just a tad too over eager to get us to buy, she seemed determined I should buy something too. To set the scene she and the majority of her stock were dinky, we are talking on the whole, the largest size of most ranges being a U.K size 12 and a petite one at that, so you know, pretty tiny. I’m not teeny tiny. I'm tall and a bit fat.........It was never going to end well. 

She chatted away as she frantically rummaged before triumphantly announcing I would look “just fabulous in this!” ‘This’ turned out to be a voluminous and completely shapeless dull green trouser and top set. I’m perplexed at how such a huge circus tent of an outfit was actually there at all when you consider the rest of the stock, clearly an ordering aberration at some point in time.

Anyway not withstanding that I could easily have fitted three of me in said outfit and as I say I’m by no means slim.

It was one of the few moments in my life where I was completely and utterly  lost for words, Soo stepped out of the changing room right at that moment and was also looking with the same mute surprise/horror/despair at the vision in green. She weakly said something like “oh, it’s trousers” which broke the spell and thankfully as she was wearing the top she was trying out, we quickly turned the conversation to that instead. She went back into the changing room and luckily my sense of humour got the better of me and I started to giggle and then to snort with laughter when I thought of the humongous green outfit.

I did think about it afterwards though, from the point of view of if I had been a shy and insecure kind of a person I might well have been devastated by what could have been perceived as a judgement on my size, because there were other things in the shop that would have fitted me much better and were also more my style and colour. There was a beautiful black top with Chinese style print of a crane in gold and white for example, also even if the trouser set would have been in my size,  the colour was hideous and would not have suited me and my colouring at all.  It reminded me of a recent story in the paper about some vicious little cats in a Topshop store who roared with laughter and then mocked a middle aged lady who asked for something in a bigger size. 

I could have left in tears, and now I wonder with hindsight whether I should have said something even if it was just the “Jesus that’s enormous! how fat does she think I am??” that went through my head out loud to try and make the scales sizeism fall from her eyes a little.

Anyway dinner was great and Soo got a perfect present for her sister so that’s all that matters.

The end of the month was our 20^th Anniversary, that’s dating not wedding just to clarify, still no plans for any time soon on that front. We have got into the habit of going to London for our anniversary and this year was no exception. As it was 20 years we wanted to do something a bit special and with that in mind I got us tickets for Young Frankenstein at the Garrick starring Ross Noble as Himself is a big fan of his.

We went up for the whole day and visited The London Transport Museum to see their exhibition Poster Girls. I really wanted to see it and I knew it would appeal to Himself as a graphic designer. Of course we forgot until we got there that we were going to a museum, in the capital, at half term………it was rammed! 

Shrieking kids running everywhere is definitely my idea of hell so we didn’t spend too much time in the museum itself. Thankfully there weren’t many in the exhibition so we got to browse in relative silence. We tend to amble about at different paces and catch each other up at the end, we both agreed the early work up to the 1940’s were our favourites. 

It’s well worth a visit if you happen to be in the Covent Garden area. 

We mooched towards the theatre having dinner on the way at a lovely Italian we have eaten at before. (Definitely the food theme of the anniversary!) 

We both enjoyed the production especially from the point of view of the cast who were all amazing, the musical itself was not so good. To be fair it had it’s moments but on the whole it was just trying too hard to be big and clever and funny, it was all very 1970’s Benny Hill sexual innuendo and not in a good way, cringeworthy rather than funny if you know what I mean. 

Big shout out to Hadley Fraser the leading man though who was absolutely amazing, oh and also to Himself for buying me an ice cream in the interval without dying with shock horror at the price! There was a problem with the sound equipment after the interval which lead to Hadley Fraser and Ross Noble coming out in front of the safety curtain and ad libbing for a good 15 or 20 minutes which in some ways was actually the best bit of the night.

Himself had been very mysterious and asked whether I was doing anything at the weekend and when I said no said “keep it free” It turned out he had booked us dinner at our favourite restaurant in Bournemouth so I also had to pack an overnight bag! It was a lovely surprise (even though I hate surprises) and we had a great weekend. The only downside was the hotel he booked us into was pretty awful. The room wasn’t very clean, there were no towels and the whole toilet moved when I sat on it!! 

Thankfully the bed was clean and as he pointed out it was only for one night. We got changed and went for a mooch along the beach stopping for a drink at a bar on the beach side.

We had a delicious dinner, the proprietor of Valentino’s told me  “you are very colourful, your dress has a lot of colours” I preferred the comment from one of the little girl’s at the birthday party behind me that my dress was “amaaaaazing!”   

We went from the restaurant to Wetherspoons and drank lots of prosecco.

Yes 20 years down the line and he still makes me cry with laughter, especially when I'm trying to pose for a nice picture. 

Anyway let’s just say I was feeling quite 'tired and emotional' by the time we headed back to the hotel. I couldn’t face breakfast the next day which I’m quite glad about as it smelt pretty grim when we checked out. 

Instead we sat by the sea drinking tea (me) & coffee (him) watching the world go by until it was time to head to the station. On the walk there we stumbled across a Day of The Dead Parade which was amazing, such good fun to watch a real bonus addition to the trip.

Our actual anniversary date was Tuesday so we went for an Italian hat trick and ate at Gino’s in Oxford. Mostly because I didn't want to be at home for trick or treaters after being completely mobbed last year.(Bah Humbug)

So that was October, I have done some more October spending, quite a bit actually, so I'll share that in another post. November is going to be manic, I've already been out gadding twice and it's only the 4th!