I don’t know how common it is for long married women to be invited on Hen Weekends – when I got married people only had a night out somewhere, not an entire weekend! As an old friend of the Groom I suppose it should have been the Stag Night I went to, but my attendance at another men’s night out earlier in the year had caused problems, despite the moustache I acquired for the evening, (this is another story, which I won’t tell here!) so all in all I was pleased to be invited to the Hen do.

           Being a busy person, as we all are these days, it was only a few days before the Hen Weekend at Butlins that I actually started thinking about it and what it might be like. There were eighteen people going all told, including the bride to be, who I had met only a few times. Lovely girl, but she and her friends quite a few years younger than I am. I suddenly had a mental picture of me, surrounded by young things who are partying and dancing like mad while I sit there with one of ‘my heads’, not enjoying the music, looking like a wet weekend. Hmmm. Too late to back out now.

I had been told to pack ‘plenty of drink’. How much was ‘plenty’ for a weekend I wondered? I packed three bottles of wine. And a bottle of diet coke. And some tea bags. I decided against taking any food – far too mummy-ish and unparty-ish, taking food. The other mothers , who I later picked up in the Espace, had brought masses of food as it turned out so they weren’t worried, but then they were sharing an apartment with one another; I and my mate Jackie were sharing with four girls we didn’t know.

The first surprise on arrival was the accommodation – I had expected cramped conditions, maybe a sofa bed in the living room, but the apartments (‘Gold’ standard) were close to the car park, three bedroomed, pleasant and well equipped, if somewhat densely packed in a little holiday housing estate. Our Hen Party three apartments, with six girls in each, were stacked one on top of another, with front doors up an external steel staircase. The other girls had already arrived in ours, leaving Jackie and I in the double room. We decided against putting pillows down the middle, though when I asked Jackie which side she likes to sleep, she commented “I’ve never been asked that by a girl before!”

We looked round and the first thing I noticed in the kitchen was four unopened litre bottles of vodka, several small bottles of vodka, several bottles of non diet coca cola and half a litre of brandy. Opened the fridge and inside were weight watchers sausage rolls and a weight watchers pizza. Yeah, that’s going to help keep down the weight after all that vodka and coke….! The girls introduced themselves and all seemed friendly and up for a good time. But on the table next to the television was what looked like an innocent DVD player with two microphones on top. “You don’t mind if we sing, do you?’ one of the girls asked. “Gets us in the mood to go out” Aha! a Karaoke machine. “What sort of music do you like?” the chief Karaoke fan asked. I looked at the screen. Something called Coward of the County had just given way to ‘Blanket on the Ground’ by Dolly Parton. I just couldn’t say the words ‘Led Zeppelin’ somehow.

The next shock came in the very small shower room – I have rarely seen so many bottles of shower preparations, moisturisers and cosmetics outside Boots. And this was just the cleansing stuff, the massive make up bags were in the bedrooms. It soon became apparent that titivating is a hugely important part of going out for young gels. Now I was a young gel myself once, but I somehow by passed this titivating thing. I used to put on a clean tee shirt, my deliberately dirty jeans, smear a bit of eye shadow on, run a comb through my hair and go out. I think I did used to take the comb with me. Modern gels it seems, have a shower (the second of the day, the going out shower), dry their hair, straighten their hair, spray their newly ironed hair until no hair should ever stray, plaster foundation and all sorts over their faces and then apply the straighteners one more time in case an unwanted kink has appeared somewhere. Then, in high heels, skimpy trousers with minimal underwear and little filmy chiffon tops they teeter off into the night, already full of vodka and coke and with small bottles of vodka in their handbags. I looked on and thanked God I had boys.

Jackie and I threw down some wine after a Harry Ramsdens fish and chip supper and headed for one of the bars in the pavilion prior to going to ‘Reds’ (home of the Redcoats, though the Redcoats weren’t home) where more wine followed. By the time we got to Reds, I was in a bit of an inebriated state, but not so much so that the wine in a plastic cup I was handed appealed to me. It tasted like vinegar and looked like wee. I left most of it and moved on to water, but the damage was done. After much dancing to hits from the Blues Brothers and several more bottles of water, at about 2am I’d had enough and headed for the apartment.  Actually I headed in completely the wrong direction at first, but I figured out where I’d gone wrong and found my way back. There were few people about, but those who were around appeared all to be inebriated and completely lost. One man who asked me directions turned out to belong next door, but I had no more clue where anything was than he did. It is clearly a good idea when you go to these weekends to make a note of some landmarks to find your way back to your flat before downing copious amounts of alcohol.

A while later Jackie returned and promptly brought up the Harry Ramsdens and much of the nasty wine, all over the bathroom. She was very concerned because it wouldn’t go down the sink. I couldn’t stop laughing. We’d just cleaned up when the other girls came back with a couple of fellas and turned on the Karaoke machine – dum diddy dum diddy dum…Knock on Wood, poorly sung, began to penetrate before I got into bed and put in my earplugs….

In the morning I felt very, very ill. Jackie too had a headache. We got up, tried some tea, registered the fact that one of our flatmates was having vodka and coke and weight watchers pizza for breakfast, then I was sick and we both went back to bed. Lying there, like Morcambe and Wise in a double bed looking pale and pasty, we heard from the living room….dum diddy dum diddy dum ..’It was Dolly Parton again ‘Just because we are marreeeeeed…’

‘Oh God’, I groaned  ‘it’s like some horrible nightmare. Like being on Big Brother.’ Jackie just about had the energy to laugh.

Saturday was spent in various ways. Jackie, having benefited from sicking up most of the horrible wine the night before, went for a walk on the beach and to a pub for lunch with the girls. Our flatmates went to the Butlins Karaoke bar with their vodka. I sat on the sofa with some Resolve. I really do know better you know, I deserve no sympathy. 

By the evening I was feeling somewhat restored, though sworn off drink for ever and ever, naturally. We titivated a bit (Well, I put on some perfume) and went downstairs to share in the (now) traditional festivities of watching the Bride to Be dress up like a devil with horns and tail and flashing Bride to Be badge etc. We blew up a lot of balloons shaped like willies. Then, armed with the balloons and all dressed in tee shirts saying Hen Night, purple feather boas and purple sparkly cowboy hats we set off once more for Reds, where the band was playing exactly the same few popular Soul hits as the previous night’s band. I like these songs, but the disco was playing them as well, over and over during the night. Regardless, we shook our tailfeathers obligingly and danced. We also invented a new game using some things we found in a Hen Night Kit – did you know, condoms blown up float extremely well? We spent some time playing condom/willie balloon volley ball. I also discovered naughtily that if you wanted to, you could make rude shadows on the compere by placing a willie balloon in the light from the follow spot light. Tee hee. (I was on nothing stronger than diet coke, and that’s the truth). Revelation number – oh I don’t know I’d lost count – leaving the kids behind entitles adults to behave like Kids. We’d been far too traditional as parents obviously, taking our kids everywhere with us, all these years.

Having eaten virtually nothing all day I was overcome with hunger and made off on my own for Burger King in the Butlins Pavilion. Halfway there I wondered if I’d feel odd, on my own in my party gear. On arrival at Burger King I looked around. One lone inebriated cowboy, trying to figure out how to make his finger connect with his mobile phone, six middle aged school girls in straw boaters with attached plaits, one middle aged lady with flashing bunny ears, eating alone and a Sound of Music fan nun. Not odd at all then.

Sunday came and with it a terrible hangover for our poor young friend of the vodka and coke breakfast. I genuinely sympathised and passed the Resolve. That afternoon our lot from the bike club, untroubled by thoughts of our hair frizzing, went to the swimming pool and had a brilliant time on the Master Blaster water ride and being swept around the rapids. After this healthy activity we went to the camp supermarket and bought the makings of a feast – cheese rolls, hot chocolate with whipped cream and flakes and toasted tea cakes, after consuming which, we watched a soppy film and then pored over bridal dress books, because another of our number is to marry next Easter. Now that’s what I call a girly afternoon. No make up or alcohol needed!

By now it was dark, so we spruced ourselves up a bit (accompanied in our flat by the merry sounds of Karaoke and Hair Straightening – dum diddy dum diddy dum…Debbie can you pass me the hairspray?’) and went to Centre Stage bar to see another band playing….yep, assorted hits from the Blues Brothers. They played them well, but by now we had heard it all several times before! Our young flatmates were playing games with a young man who had latched onto one of them and had the misfortune not to realise they had classified him as a ‘nutter’. He sat near us waiting for them to come back for fully half an hour before he realised he had been abandoned at one point, yet I am fairly sure the dim figure I spotted on the sofa with one of the girls in the night when I tottered out for a glass of water, was in fact, the ‘nutter’. Strange. Very glad I had boys.

Monday morning came. The Housemates had consumed four litres of vodka, two litres of cherry coke, two litres of normal coke, half a litre of brandy, one litre of wine, and two pints of milk. The wine and milk was Jackie’s and mine. I had survived a Hen Weekend, had no worse a hangover than a young person (though it took considerably less alcohol to cause the same effect) and managed to enjoy myself despite the music not really being my thing. It was only as I drove away that I realised I had been in Bognor all weekend and not once seen the sea.

Solicitors are, for many of us, like Funeral directors; people we only come across at stressful times in our lives. And they don’t exactly advertise openly what they do, or how and when they do it. It’s all a bit of a mystery and I begin to suspect this is deliberate. When you are stuck between a solicitor who is the equivalent of Terry Pratchet’s ‘Death’ (ie not without human qualities yet still oddly scary) and an Estate Agent, the latter being generally acknowledged as Scum of the Earth, this is not a pleasant place to be.

 
The estate agent selling my late Father in Law’s house is a cheery soul, East End girl with an East End accent and very keen. At the bottom of the short chain we are involved in, is a purchaser initially desperate to ‘move in before Christmas’. Why people are often so desirous of spending the festive season living out of boxes in a strange house is beyond me, but perhaps the people concerned are renting or living with relatives, who knows. When, in November, the idea of our purchaser’s purchaser and therefore our purchaser moving before Christmas, was mooted, our Solicitor’s response was “Hmmmm”. Or perhaps, in keeping with his ‘Death’ like qualities that should be HMMMM. As in, no chance, sunshine. We weren’t bothered so took no notice of this. We were too busy with work to sort out clearing the house and so on before Christmas in any case, so afterwards suited us better.

 
The moving deadline was quickly re-scheduled for early January, with exchange of contracts before Christmas. Fine, we said. If I heard a distant ‘Hmmmm’ from our solicitor’s direction I did not take any notice. Two days after agreeing to the ‘completion date’ in January, we had a call from the estate Agent, concerned that our solicitor had not sent out draft contracts. I called the solicitor who told me that draft contracts would go out in ‘the next day or so’.

 
‘Or so’ turned out to mean at least a week; further phone calls from the estate agent resulted in my other half popping across the road to pick up the draft contracts a week later. The solicitor was extremely annoyed with our Estate Agent. How dare this jumped up little East End girl phone him up and demand to know when he was going to get around to doing the legal stuff on this house sale? Outrageous. What was all the hurry anyway? Ridiculous!

 
Concerned now that badgering was having the reverse of the desired effect, my other half brought home the documents. He spent an evening muttering over the sheets you nowadays have to fill in, detailing down to the soap dispenser and toilet roll holder exactly what you are leaving in the house, then hand posted the documents back through the solicitor’s door. Three days later, said documents had still not been posted. Now, all our Solicitor had to do was sign them and pop them in the post. Speedy, he is not. The Estate Agent at this point offered to drive round there and pick them up from him, personally. Brave girl! It all worked out okay in the end, Contracts were exchanged today, but we still have a house purchase to get through next year.

 
What we wonder about our solicitor is, how do we know if he is being particularly slow or if all solicitors do things in their own sweet time? We are in their hands by and large; they deal with arcane and obscure things of which we know little or nothing. It’s a bit like appealing to the gods, you begin to wonder if some offering would speed things along. Although I have a feeling sacrificing a goat on an Essex pavement might raise a bit more than a ‘Hmmmmm’ from our chap, it might get his attention……but then, having got his attention, do we want the force of his Death like gaze focused upon us? Will something horrible happen, like…….it all costing us more money?!

Current Location: At my desk, as usual
Current Music: None, who snagged my 30 seconds from Mars CD?

The People From London

Our decision to move out of town was not motivated by some dream of life in the country, by a desire for wellies and Labradors and horse riding; it happened in slow motion; crept up on us, infiltrated it’s way into our minds. We initially just wanted to get to somewhere just beyond where the traffic halts your progress at the end of your road. We wanted to be some place where the school run does not create grid lock, where the street sweeper and next door’s Harley Davidson don’t wake you at 06.30, where you cannot hear your neighbour clearing his throat in the bathroom and where the neighbours children don’t appear, then disappear, appear, then disappear, with the squeaking sound of trampoline springs, every single time you are in the garden. I mean, we like children (and motorbikes!) but we also like our privacy (and our sleep).

The search started therefore with places more suburban, where the inner city was not yet encroaching. Places like our place in Ilford was when we moved there over 15 years ago. One afternoon however, stuck in the Saturday afternoon traffic around Brentwood, we suddenly realised we’d be swapping like for like. We had to go further. We looked at Epping and those nice little lanes and villages to the North East of London …and choking at the prices, began to investigate wider Essex. There’s a band of new development around the half hour drive mark from the very edge of Greater London; Chelmsford and Braintree are expanding at a terrifying rate, served by the new wide, shiny A120 – but we’ve lived in a brand new development, in a brand new house, when we first got married. It was interesting, particularly when the upstairs window fell out and the developers broke in to plant a tree in the middle of our back lawn (well, there was one on the drawing you see…) but that’s another story. Suffice to say, we don’t want to go back to that situation ever again.

So, avoiding all those shiny new indentihouses like the plague, took us further out from London still. All manner of reasons not to buy loomed up – lack of any planning regulations it seems have resulted in huge swathes of Essex looking like a wealthy shanty town, all distressing lean-tos and ill advised extensions, tumbledown corrugated iron garages and scrap yards. Where it is smart it tends towards footballers wives territory; lions on gate posts and Corinthian columns, lamp posts in over manicured gardens with swimming pools. Not really us, we said, with snobbishly wrinkled noses. Then there were the rumours of gypsy camps, new prisons, flood risk…….

Cut a long story short, we eventually wandered out to Suffolk. Where we became ‘The people from London’ to estate agents and owners. People began trying to persuade us of the wonders of thatched roofs and greeted us at their five bar gates, holding back the dogs, with the words “Do you have horses?” This was a whole new world! We leant new things quickly. Old cottages are almost always right on the road and if they’re not, all the garden they have is between them and the road. A ‘secluded’ or ‘private’ or ‘pretty’ garden, means small. The word ‘acre’ is always used to describe anything that can’t be described as ‘secluded’, however tiny (my favourite was a description of ‘gardens of approximately 0.2 of an acre’! Does that mean you can keep 0.2 of a horse on it? I’m told you need one acre per horse.) People’s estimate of the size of an acre, vary widely too – those estimates and indeed often the boundaries themselves, tend to be more vague than in town, where your fence is your fence, unless it’s falling down and then it’s your neighbours fence.
Timber framed houses are a completely different kettle of fish from brick built and apparently even some surveyors don’t really know enough about them to spot any danger signs. Choose your surveyor carefully, we were warned.
Drainage is almost always ‘private’, meaning once a year or so someone has to drive up to or onto your property with a big lorry and empty your septic tank – or tanks in some cases, if your home is converted from more than one cottage! When considering central heating, you have to decide, LPG or oil? What kind of tank to hide behind a bush in the garden?
Most illuminating of all was the number of properties up for sale due to a divorce, the number of people who said “We thought this was ‘it’, the final move but…..”. What happens to The People From London, who move out? Are they all riding ponies, taking the dog for walks, sitting by the lovely log fire, pressing flowers, popping round to the neighbours for drinkies etc? That tends to be the picture they paint and yet…..there they are, moving out. A Divorce, a change in family circumstances, a new dream to pursue…This made us think. We are looking for a house, not a dream. Hold that thought.

We risk estrangement from our teenage children, who may be horrified that we have transplanted the home they hoped to come back and loaf about in, during University holidays. I take the view that if to them it seems more like staying somewhere on holiday with us, than coming back home (home being a place they feel free to treat as a hotel) then that’s probably no bad thing.

Although I could live with a view over fields, I am slightly creeped out by the thought of having no neighbours, so we quickly decided that an isolated country cottage was really not for us. Nor were wobbly old timbered properties where almost inevitably the history tends to get in the way of modern living, tripping you as you step over lintels where doors have been let into ancient walls, forcing you to duck your head and leave finger marks where you guide yourself under low doorways, confusing you as you wind your way up and down different staircases in what used to be two cottages. Where would my perfectionist other half run his cables for all our electrical entertainment devices? Could he ever live with uneven plaster on the walls? I don’t think so.

However, having got over the shock of Estate Agents who have time for a little chat on the phone and do not seem like the wideboys London Estate Agents are, we have discovered to our dismay that we have missed the boat where Suffolk is concerned. House prices have shot up here recently because no one else can afford anything nice in the other counties around London, either. My dream of Georgian rectories or Victorian farmhouses appeared to be doomed. Our budget could no longer afford such luxuries, unless they nestled right on an A road or had no garden, perhaps because they had already had several dozen new ‘affordable’ homes built in the back garden.

Anything that needed ‘refurbishment’ let alone ‘general modernisation’ has long since been done up like a dog’s dinner with UPVC windows, extra bedrooms and bathrooms, sturdy ‘Shaker’ kitchens, and the ubiquitous plastic conservatory in which people conserve nothing but a set of nasty cane furniture. Every other garden seems to have been ‘landscaped’ (laid to lawn with curving beds of low maintenance shrubs and conifers, with a deck or patio next to that nasty conservatory). Every driveway is deep gravel, a weed nursery in my book. Anything on the edge of a town is under threat from development on any spare patch of land that is not designated as agricultural (like, people’s gardens for example).

And all the owners have watched the house selling programmes on TV. They have emptied their tiny cottage bedrooms of clutter, white painted everything in sight to make it all ‘neutral’, re-arranged the furniture, made the coffee and practised their sales spiel. As the year winds down towards Christmas, an air of desperation pervades the atmosphere in some properties where people have 'lost' buyers and missed the summer, yet are aching to move. Committed to their next house or project and having spent large sums on their (in our opinion) regrettable refurbishment, they cannot afford to slash prices in an end of season sale – shame! I might have been up for a bargain, had there been the remotest sniff of one, but the housing market is one in which such a thing surely does not exist in these days, when everyone sees property not so much as a home, but as a way of making money. Will we ever succeed in our move to the Country? The search goes on.

Current Location: At my desk
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Seth Lakeman

Have just wandered into the Torchwood area, like Gwen in the TV series. Not quite sure of the rules or how people relate to one another here....have I forgotten anything? Oh, where's the pizza?