Marriage

Finally this blogger is getting married. I’m shocked. It’s not as if I look down on the institution, I’ve always respected the ideal of committing to someone for life but in this modern, self-obsessed age it has taken a knock.
The concept of marriage as an inevitable, expected stage of your life no longer exists. My parents knew they’d get married in their twenties. You were a kid, you left school and you knocked about for as few years but you knew you’d get hitched before you were twenty five. Everyone else did, why would you be different?
My parents were lucky. They didn’t have to worry about the whole love thing. They were introduced formally by their parents and given the choice. It still happens nowadays albeit not as frequently and you can say no. However you can only say no so often without looking like a fussy cunt.
Love comes later as you build your lives together but because you never had that dizzying, passionate abandon at the start you don’t have it to mourn if it fades as the years go by.
This is where my generation falls down. We have lived our lives to an extent that our parents didn’t even dream of. Not couldn’t dream of, didn’t because our lives, full of multiple, short, non-committed and forgettable relationships wasn’t something they even considered never mind wanted.
As men we are no longer obligated to make honest women out of you girls. You don’t need a husband anymore; you don’t need someone to take care of you. You won’t obey us and you’ve lost many of your domestic attitudes and let face it, precious few of you can cook.
You take all of these things away and essentially you’re left with an arse-y bird that doesn’t listen to you, doesn’t need you and resents doing anything for you. Then you tie this in with the fact that you can get no-strings sex anyway without any commitment and you come to the conclusion you’d have to be an idiot to get married.
Inevitably you end up going from relationship to relationship. You enjoy the honeymoon period and when that evaporates and you’re still not getting a decent meal put in-front of you your feet starts getting itchy and you’re off.
By now you’re in your thirties and even your mum doesn’t mention the fact that you’re still single. You get the impression she’s longing for a grandchild so much she’d be quite happy for you to knock-up some random shag.

‘So what’s happened Stel?’ You ask.

The answer is simple. I found her. I found my soul mate. I found the girl that can infuriate me, piss me off to the extreme yet I don’t resent her for it. I don’t stop loving her for it.
I found the girl that I can come home to everyday and be content. She’s my baby. Our passion hasn’t faded one bit even as we’ve slipped into to the mundane day to day. I want her now as much as I’ve always done. She feels right, she smells right and she looks perfect to me. She is my One.

Can’t cook for shit!

So it’s better for all concerned if I do the cooking. Our date is set. We’re counting down to May the fifteenth next year. I’ll be moving in soon and I’m enjoying this relative peace before all hell breaks loose.
Organising a wedding is carnage. All of a sudden you have to consider stuff you didn’t realise you had to consider. Your guest list seems to grow daily and everyone on that list is going to cost you money. A lot of money.
We’re having cupcakes, lots and lots of cupcakes. These cupcakes will be pink to match the ribbons that are tied around all the covered chairs and my tie. I am told I will be wearing a pink tie.
It is fundamental law of nature that faced with the prospect of her own wedding every woman, no matter how intelligent and grounded, will go completely insane.
The Girlf certainly hasn’t disappointed. Currently she’s narrowed her choice of wedding dress down to two dozen possibilities. You have to understand these are all the same dress with minor variations in detail. Also, being wedding dresses, all the detail is white on white therefore is hardly noticeable to my man eyes.
I voice this and I'm frazzled by the glaring looks from the Girlf and the Eldest.
When we mused upon the idea of getting married the Girlf was quite happy to do it on her lunch break in a registry office. Now that we’ve set a date she needs seat covers for all of our two hundred guests. Seat covers can cost up to five pounds a seat. That’s a thousand pounds! A thousand pounds to put sheets over the seats. I could buy a car.

These are, I’m told, essential as are the cupcakes. Don’t get me started on the chocolate fountain.

Ben Elton once said to re-create the wedding experience simply open the window and start shovelling money out of it. Now I see where he was coming from.
Luckily for us I’m Greek therefore rather than presents we’ll have money pinned on us on the day. We will recoup some, if not most, of our costs. This embarrasses her, it is mercenary apparently and her guests might not appreciate it when they’re expected to cough up.
I’ve pointed to the fact we’re buying all their booze and feeding them so they can get over that and pay up seeing as we aren’t expecting any presents.
Quite frankly I can’t see the difference between our way and writing out a present’s list. It’s much less arse ache for the guests to chuck us fifty quid than go to a shop of our choosing and buy a present that we’ve picked at what ever price the shop is selling it for.
I’ve got seat covers to pay for I’d rather have the money and I expect she will when we start paying for stuff.

At least we’ve got fourteen months to get organised. Slowly, slowly this wedding will come together and we can settle into married life. I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. She’ll look lush in her dress, whichever dress she finally settles on and it will be the best day of our lives.
She will no longer be the Girlf, she’ll be the Wife and we won’t be able to get away from the fact that we’re finally grown ups.

Women

The Girlf has asked me to stop working my chest. She informs me it has become hard and uncomfortable to lie on. In bed she’s taken to butting my pecks with the side of her head in a futile attempt to flatten them down.
‘Hurrumph, to hard hurrumph.’ She mutters.
This morning she asks me to stop working them so vigorously.
‘No,’ I say ‘I enjoy it, it’s my thing.’
She’s pissed off that I’m abandoning the eldest, off sick from school, to go and workout at home.
‘You’re addicted!’
‘Yes, yes I am.’
The eldest is fine. I make her a bacon sandwich before I go and leave her to Billie Piper whoring it up on Sky plus.
She can’t watch the filth scenes with me in the room out of embarrassment. She tells me they’re pretty full on. I say they can’t be that bad but she says they are.
Billie looks great but I doubt primetime ITV is going to serve me anything to titillating up so I go into town to buy melons. The Girlf wants water melon (kar-pou-si) and the Eldest wants honeydew (mel-o-nin). I treat myself to a single malt that’s on offer.
I’m very disappointed with the kar-pou-sia in Tesco. They’re tiny! As a child I remember picking watermelons in Cyprus as big as me. These are the as big as footballs, a quarter of the size and twice as expensive.
The malt is reduced and peaty so I justify it to myself.
The Eldest tells me her mum doesn’t want me to train just in-case it encourages other women to look at me. I’m hers and no other woman should look upon me lustily. I’m flattered but no amount of training or lifting knocks up my hit rate.
I suppose I get chatted up as much as any other man of comparable age that isn’t ugly which is not often. I occasionally notice the odd wistful look but that’s it. I think it’s my eyes and there is nothing I can do about that.
I must say though I did get touched up while surveying the whiskies. I felt a hand on my arse. I turned and found my attacker was an eighty year old woman.
‘Sorry love,’ I said automatically.
‘Don’t apologise, I walked into you. These things happen at my age.’ She said as she put her arm around me.
‘It happens to all of us.’ I said politely.
‘It happens more when you’re eighty-six, but you can get away with murder.’ she winked.
I bet you can love, I bet you can.
Maybe the Girlf might have a point.
Currently she’s feeling fat which is ludicrous because she’s not. I think her body is perfect. She has a proper woman’s body with all the curves in all the right places. Like a lot of women though she hankers after the culturally acceptable hungry eighteen year old look.
As men I suppose we’re lucky. Most women don’t lust after eighteen year old boys for the simple fact they are indeed boys. The Eldest shows me Facebook pictures of lads she fancy’s at school. I’m informed that they are fit. To me they look skinny and hairless and quite feminine, almost like girls.
Even if women did go for nine stone waifs that had been shaved down I couldn’t see myself striving for it. Losing four stone would probably kill me, literally.
Anyway, this wouldn’t be possible because the Girlf insists on filling her house with crisps, chocolate and Haribo. Even if either of us wanted to lose weight we couldn’t. The Haribo is for me. The Girlf buys it because she knows I’ll cane it late at night when my willpower is weak thus keeping me plump and less desirable.
If I wasn’t so vain I’d put on three stone to prove a point. I was pretty fit when she first met me and a lot of her initial attraction to me was physical. Obviously, now, she loves me and the way I look wouldn’t change that, she says.
I have notice though; since I’ve started benching again she has gotten a lot touchier. My chest might not make an ideal pillow but she can’t keep her hands off it.