Ep.29: FW
‘So’ David says, in between a gulp of beer and a mouthful of steak ‘I guess we could get married next year’
In a brief moment of calm after the storm of summer visitors and while lockdown is loose enough to allow such things, we head out for dinner at a local pub. After 5 months of enforced self-catering it feels weirdly extravagant and indulgent to have someone else make our food, even if it is just posh pub grub. It reminds me of my 70s childhood when going out for dinner was a treat so rare it was treated with an almost hushed reference. Back then we generally would go out to The Gardenia, a long-established Greek restaurant in Cambridge’s Rose Crescent, where we’d eat mezze and kebabs with fat, pickled green chillies while my mum and dad talked about their life in Cyprus in the mid-1960s and mum would pronounce all the dishes with an exotic, if faintly embarrassing, Greek accent. Tiny cups of thick, sugary Turkish coffee always followed with sticky, almost overwhelmingly sweet baklava, kataifi and halva. It gave me a long-lasting passion for both Turkish coffee – which I adore but have never managed to perfect at home – and halva. As a student in Newcastle, on the odd occasion when I’d see it in a supermarket, I’d always buy some so the taste could transport me back to those family meals where we seemed unusually united, a lull in the day to day arguments and general warring which predominated. But just like holiday food tastes bland eaten back at home, that halva never quite captured those meals out either. It would taste cloying and powdery without the seasoning of context and I’d come away feeling like a pretentious idiot eating a weird dessert straight from its plastic packet in a Newcastle street.
‘erm, yes, I guess we could’ I say, then ‘was that a proposal?’
‘sort of’, he says
‘It’s just I was sort of hoping to be asked’
‘what, down on one knee?’ David pulls an incredulous face and forks another slice of steak into his mouth
‘no, just asked’ I say.
‘Hmmmm’ is his only reply but I’m not sure if it’s meant for me or in appreciation of the steak.
And that was how I become what David fondly terms his ‘FW’, future wife. And in spite of the impossibly unromantic, totally David-ness of the whole thing, by pudding I’m past my indignation at not actually being ‘asked’ and we’re already talking excitedly about when and how and where.
Something in this gift of a thing to look forward to, to plan for, lifts me. Suddenly my horizon stretches out that little bit further ahead, there’s a shift in me I think. Within a week or two I have the venue booked, a humanist celebrant secured, the band have been paid a deposit, Ghillie has been pleaded with to help with the food, my friend KJ will make the cake and I’ve an appointment to see Hazel, a local jewellery designer to talk rings. I’ve a notion to incorporate my late Aunt Liz’s wedding ring into my own, we shared breast cancer and mastectomy, it feels fitting to have her with me on this next part of the story.
Even reading that back makes me laugh at how weird and slightly psychotic, bridezilla-ish I sound, but when you’re a radio producer for a living, producing a wedding feels no different. This is just stuff I can do.
Stuff I can’t do, or at least can’t imagine being able to do, is the business of buying a dress. I start to google dress styles and go down endless rabbit holes a-wash with beautiful, young, glamorous brides with teeth as white as their gorgeous gowns, all with the full compliment of breasts packed into miles and miles of figure hugging lace and silk. Even before bad boob came on the scene this would have been my idea of hell but I brace myself and pluck up the courage to phone a wedding dress shop. The owner, Mel, asks if I’ve any idea what I’m looking for, ‘long sleeves, nothing with cleavage and something which covers my back to hide my scar’ I tell her, ‘no problem’ comes her enthusiastic reply. I put down the phone and think ‘holy shit, I’m actually going wedding dress shopping!’
Before I got cancer I’d spent years perfecting the art of self-criticism and self-loathing. I could happily have spent hours documenting each and every physical fault I have, I had studied myself at great length and could voice my every ugly failing. I’ve never been sure of the root cause but for some reason pulling myself apart was my go-to for almost as long as I can remember, particularly if I was down or anxious about something. Now though that self-loathing feels wrong. It IS wrong. This poor body has been through hell these past few months and I'm bored and tired with beating myself up, it’s not a fat, ugly body, it’s a strong, powerful, capable body and I’ve decided to give it a break but in order to do that I need a hand.
Jo comes to the rescue. She’s runs a wedding venue and has seen a gazillion brides in a gazillion dresses and she will be utterly honest with me. Jo definitely won’t let me buy anything horrific. Jo agrees to be the one pal I’m allowed to take with me and so one Thursday morning shortly after, we find ourselves in a land so utterly feminine and sparkly and girlie that I’m struck dumb. Never in my 50 years on the planet have I dropped into somewhere quite so completely and overwhelmingly alien. Mine is a world of jeans and fleeces, hoodies and lycra cycling bibs - lots of lycra cycling bibs. I can’t remember the last time I wore a pair of heels and find any occasion which requires me to dress up excruciating. Because I’ve got a strong and muscular body, solid, somehow when I’m dressed up I always have the slight suspicion I look like a bloke in drag but as I cast around at the rows of sequins and sparkles a small, tucked away part of me lets out a squeal of delight. And I can’t help smiling because I know for sure that the me before cancer wouldn’t have come into this wedding dress shop, not a chance, nope, that me would have begged for the most low key, quiet, fuss-free wedding possible, ideally without the need for any dressing up and preferably minus guests, but this new me thinks differently. I know the old me is here somewhere, she’s lurking near the door, ready to suggest we make a run for it, she’s whispering in my ear that I’ll look fat and embarrassing and hideous. ‘Do one’ I hiss back at her, ‘fuck off, you are not ruining this, this is something special and precious and possibly quite bloody lovely and you are not welcome’ and with that, in my mind, I open the door and firmly shove the old trout out into the chilly street. And I love the fact that I have pushed that side of me away, I’m amazed yet again that cancer has given me something, opened something up in me which couldn’t open before this point.
So with the old me firmly banished I try on dress after dress and mile after mile of lace and frills. And in spite of the fact that I am surrounded by mirrors where I can see my scarred and puckered body from all sides together with all my wobbly bits and wrinkles I don’t care. I feel special and over-joyed to be here with Mel and Jo searching for a dress to wear to marry David. And because I’m feeling that way I decide to buy my poor battered body the most beautiful, figure hugging, utterly jaw-droppingly gorgeous, obscenely expensive wedding dress I’ve ever seen because, well, I think it deserves it.