I did it!

So I did it, and I have discovered some things, of which I will dutifully report back.

We didn't, it's ok. We are sorry and Squiggle has forgiven us.

In no particular order, here are some things I have discovered since this time last week:

• Horses are awesome, but also really stupid. 

How something so big can be scared of so many strange, tiny things escapes me. And sitting on top of one is really quite a long way from the ground, it turns out. But we spent a lovely morning, way up on the fells somewhere near Ullswater, just me, L, the pony-trekking Wifey and 3 horses. It was sunny and it was warm and I didn't fall off. Hold on tight and trust that this animal's herd instincts will make it follow the others. We did all right. Bit of a sore butt, which is not to be recommended the day before a trip to a big theme park, but we did good.

• Pod camping is a thing.

We stayed our first night in a "pod" at a camp site, which has a bar that was built in 1751! All of the chairs are made of whisky barrels and the tables have some seriously ancient pennies inlaid. And there are dead things hanging from the walls which I hope were shot a very long time ago. Everybody might not have a water buffalo*, but these guys do.

Some of these heads are not Queenie.

We stayed 2 nights, either side of Alton Towers, in a "timber tent" at a camp site in Staffordshire. This was definitely a shed. It smelled like a shed and it was chilly! I think in the height of summer it would be a lovely little spot, but in October, with absolutely no-one else around it was all a bit cabin-in-the-woods for my liking. The Dick Francis book I was reading at the time probably didn't help matters either, tbh.

Thank God for blankets.

For us, the main attraction to the whole camping-minus-tent thing was to just stretch the season a bit further in to Autumn, and that it did. The guys with the ace bar and the heater in the (carpeted, ventilated) pod win hands down though. If you're ever passing the Lakes, look these guys up.

• I am a wimp, and L is far too chilled about being dropped from a great height in to a whacking great hole. 

But I damn well did it anyway. My theme park buddies are seasoned veterans of numerous Alton Towers trips, and nothing phases them. They did a darn good job of looking after me, calmly walking me on to rides that turned out to scare the you-know-what out of me, letting me sit in the middle and only laughing at me a little bit. There was only really once when we had to let me have a little sit-down, but they followed that up by going and sticking me on a ride called Oblivion, which does this.

Went and put me in the front row and everything.

And I'm still here to tell the tale.

• Massive adrenaline rushes at 15-20 minute intervals all day make you incredibly tired, and very spaced out. 

I'm also not used to being really really scared, packed full of adrenaline but sat still and unable to do anything about it. In my real life, any time I'm genuinely nervous it's because I'm about to go on stage, or teach a dance class, or go to a job interview or something. Those times there's actually some use to put all the adrenaline to, but being strapped in to a seat where all I can do is scream and try not to puke is different.

• Roller-coasters make me sweary.

Sorry 'bout that everyone. It was somehow still good fun though. I have a new favourite ride. It's called Air and you get to pretend to be Superman. It's nice and smooth and doesn't drop you or go dark or go backwards when you don't expect it, and if I close my eyes at just the right time, I don't even need to swear at all. I went on it 5 times!

Not me in this picture, we were all to busy worrying about whether or not we'd done our shoelaces up tight enough.

• York is a really cool place. 

Thinking we'd treat ourselves to a bed, we wound up at a strange little hotel, which promised a swimming pool. Should have read the small print. What it didn't promise was a heated swimming pool.  There was even more swearing.

York has York Minster, which is breath-taking. If you do go, seriously do the "Undercroft", because it's nice to know just exactly what is holding our big historic buildings up.
York has a takeaway where you can get a roast dinner, and York has Trains. Lots of 'em.

Turntable! (L is in here too)

Lunch, on a station platform!

• York is a long way from Aberdeen. 

• Holidays are nice.

But being back home again ain't that bad. There were banjo-duelling hamsters in Church. Worth coming home for. This week I'm off to eat Hungarian food with enough friends that we're going to get the whole restaurant to ourselves. I might even write them a dance or two.




* Here, enjoy.

Doing scary things before I grow up.

So here we are. Right now I'm sitting in a bar that was built in 1753 (we think, but it's cold and I'm not going back outside to check). There's wi-fi, but only just, so this might wind us as a text-only post! It's the cutest place ever. Big log fire, all the chairs are made from barrels and there are ancient dead things mounted all over the walls.  We're staying at a campsite somewhere near Ullswater, and it's pretty special. The other campers are all clustered round the fire comparing their favourite corners of the lakes.

We've even got a "camping pod" in place of lugging a tent around. Having spent all summer putting up and taking down tents for other people it was quite nice to get away just to have a bit of a holiday.

Thinking this week about how I'm absolutely petrified of a bunch of the things around me. And is that a bad thing because I haven't found a way to get comfortable doing fairly normal things? Or is it a good thing because I am still choosing to go and do things I am shit-scared of? Here's three scary things by way of example.

Scary thing number 1. 

Yesterday I had my second shot at teaching the Advanced class for our local branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. These are the people who do Scottish Country Dancing Properly, because they get to decide what Properly is. They have serious fun. They have written the rule book for something that maybe, dare I say it, is a form of Folk dance and likely doesn't need to have quite so many rules. It's a good class, and I'm stoked to be teaching it, but it is a million miles away from what I'm used to. What I'm used to is yelling at bunch of easy-going students, and generally pushing and pulling them around till they go in about the right direction and then calling it a success. They learn how to survive, and they learn it quick and they have fun. It has to be fun, else next week there'd be no-one there to teach.

Scary thing number 2.

Tomorrow I am going horse-riding. With L, who went riding every weekend of her childhood.

Scary thing number 3.

We're going to Alton Towers. The day after tomorrow. Now I am scared of crowds and prone to motion sickness, so we'll see how this works out. I have very carefully planned that we have somewhere comfy and close by to stay (ok, it's another timber-tent set-up, but there'll be beds and heating) the night before and the night after. All I have to worry about is doing a day at Alton Towers and not losing my friends. And if it all goes wonky I'll go on the carousel and enjoy myself all the same.

None of these scary things are as easy as talking to your parents about a wedding, and I managed that.

I promise there will be photographs of scary things numbers 2 and 3, you can have them next week. Wish me luck.

Venice Lagoon and 25 Year-Old Malt Whisky: Will Nobody Marry Me?

This week's post is sponsored by Lemsip and those funny hankies that are meant to be softer than normal. 

I don't believe in brand names, tbh, but these were purchased in a Co-Op in Aberfeldy, which doesn't have the luxury of enough space to stock more than one of each thing.

Today I have been in bed, sniffling, sneezing and generally feeling snotty and sorry for myself. This is because I do too much and don't eat enough vegetables. I should really know better.
The sum total of achievements I have managed today is (1) putting the dishwasher on, (2) putting the washing machine on, and (3) making the journey from bed to sofa.

What doesn't kill you...

Disclaimer: The remainder of this post is a small rant about weddings, and how I'd quite like to have one. Just one. Normal non-wedding-related service will be resumed next week. For sanity's sake this will be interspersed with photos from the weekend.

On Saturday we spent a while in a coffee shop in Aberfeldy, flicking through whatever magazines they had  in their magazine rack, looking for possible colour combinations we might like. Because that's a lot easier than actually planning anything.

So, option 1, blue and orange?

So here's the thing. 

You go and get engaged, and I think in most cases that's a big flaming surprise for one of you, less so for the other. In my case, I was the one that was pounced upon, far too early in the morning, after not enough sleep, with a life-changing question and a breakfast of sugar and alcohol. Holy cow, I think she means it. Everybody say yes and drinks a lot of fizz in a short time. Yay Woop.

It all takes a bit of getting used to. And then there's the telling people, and the resulting excitement and disappointment that this particular news was met with. The balance tipped way, way in favour of the bouncing excited Squee-ing and genuine congratulations, it should be said. 

And then that takes a bit of getting used to. 

But sooner or later it dawns on you: there will eventually have to be a wedding, and we will have to organise it. L and I have only been allowed to marry each other in proper legal terms for less than a year. It's pretty awesome that we can, but it means that for a while I've never really thought about what my wedding would look like. Now we get to play catch-up on all of the imagining. 

So what do we want?

• To wind up married in the boring official sense. 
• To wind up married in the Yay Jesus sense. Y'know, someone in a dog-collar and some stonkin' old school hymns. 
• All of our friends to be there
• And for them to have a good time and for it not to be stressful or expensive for them.
• Good food and plenty of it. Also wine and cake. 
• Music and dancing and general conviviality. 

Simples. Err, well no actually.

Unrelated pheasant is unrelated. Probably dead by now actually, if its tendency to hang out in the road is anything to go by.

If we were a straight couple we'd phone the Minister, pick a date, and send the council a form and a small sum of money. Then you both show up, say yes and it's all sorted. One stop shop. 

Except our Minister can't do that. We can show every Sunday (well ok, most Sundays, it's been a busy summer), and be welcomed as an ordinary part of the congregation. We can listen and sing and do the readings and be on committees we don't understand and take communion and put money in the strange CofS velvet-bag-on-a-stick thing, and generally just get on with being part of the congregation. We stick out more for lowering the average age than we do for both being girls. The week we got engaged we couldn't leave our seats for post-service congratulations and came away home with a whacking great big bunch of flowers. This Church, its congregation and Minister are a million miles better than some other places that I could, but won't, mention. But the Church of Scotland can't get it's act together and let him be a proper Minister to us.

Isn't she lovely?

So what else is there? The University Chapel, well we could get married there; Aberdeen is one of only two Scottish University Chapels that are available for same-sex weddings*; but we'd still need to find a Minister, neither of the University Chaplains would touch us, and it would still cost a bomb.

Other denominations, limited success there too. Yeah, make that no success. The Episcopal Church look to be doing their best, and are at least thinking about it, but the very quickest they could marry us will be in a few year's time, and frankly, we ain't that patient. 

We're not Quakers or Unitarians, which is unfortunate, because they might actually have been able to treat us like normal people and marry us.

All of the people who could marry us in a Church, well, they either can't or won't. 

And a Registrar, well they can marry you anywhere you like, except a in Church. 

Beautiful.

So here we are, in 2015 stuck in a place where marriage is not yet equal. Churches actively withholding the blessing of God from a whole swathe of Christian couples who really want to get married, in the sight of God, just like anyone else. 

This is getting a bit heavy-going. Here's a nice picture of a tent in a field beneath some blue sky. 

Humph. We'll work something out. If wouldn't be the end of the world if we had to have a small ceremony at the Town House or somewhere similar before wandering off somewhere else. What it would be is more faff and more expense, which would be being forced upon us where other couples would have more choices and better options. 

I know I should be grateful that we can now actually get married, and perhaps one could argue that hey, it's legal now, shut up and stop making a fuss. Doesn't quite sit right though, and I think it comes down to this:

I should be able to take Equal Marriage for granted. It should be normal. 

Just because it's new and shiny doesn't mean it shouldn't have happened a long time ago. I shouldn't have to be thankful and grateful that the State has taken pity on me and finally let me have what many people have had all along. I shouldn't have to settle for vastly limited options from the Church. It shouldn't have to be an awkward question. A Minister should be allowed to marry me if they want to!

As for me, I'm off to have one last Lemsip and put myself to bed. Till next week!

*Well done Aberdeen, well done St Andrews. Everyone else, c'mon, please.