Happily Ever After

Some time, ago, Bridget Clay and I drank pink Cava in front of 'Bride Wars' and cried because we couldn't afford champagne, or even Prosecco on shitty teachers' wages, and it was evident that at least one of us was going to die alone with cats.  Since Bridget is a dog person, things looked pretty bad for me.  Possibly in the same year, I asked my mother what would happen if I never got married.  Some mothers would have dismissed this, laughed it off as absurd.  My mother, ever the honest realist, simply replied, 'Well, Emma, some people just aren't meant to get married.'  I cried.  In a pub.  Whilst my father nervously asked the waiter for more ketchup.

For a long time, my profile picture on Facebook was thus:

I think you get the point.  To make matters worse, I'm a raving feminist, consider most men below me, and turn to violence if I ever feel that the female gender is being oppressed/put down/objectified in any way. I didn't realise how vehement I was until a young student told me her intention of getting a tattoo of the famous war propaganda poster, depicting a land girl saying 'We Can Do It' on her thigh, because I had, like, y'know, taught her about feminism and stuff.  Oops.  Permanent bodily mutilation for the sake of The Cause... Emmeline Pankhust would have been proud!

Thank goodness, then, that Frenchie is as crazy as I am, and through his strange perception of the world finds my insanity charming, my rage endearing and my stubborness a 'challenge'.  This morning, whilst sporting the baby-vole eyes of extreme fatigue and glaring at him over my cup of Earl Grey, thinking early morning death thoughts, he looked up, smiled in a melting sort of way and said, 'You look pretty.'  He is clearly a LIAR, or completely deranged.  I hope the latter because that, at least makes two of us.

If you haven't met him yet, then here he is:

Luckily, the rock he bought me to propose with, was much prettier, even if it was slightly smaller, and he mostly wears a shirt and jeans to go to work in, rather than this strange, elongated boob tube. Facial hair is similar.

It would have been rude to say no after bullying him into it, so of course I accepted, and ended up with a rather nice sparkler.  Tadah!

Yes, it is on the wrong finger, because officially the proposal was a surprise (in reality, it was a matter of conquest and aggression, whereby I lead my armies of Insistent and Deceptive Questioning into Frenchie's undefended realm of Having Never Planned a Proposal Before) and Frenchie chose the ring all by himself because he is very clever and artistic, and a little bit camp, and whilst he managed to pick a beautiful design, he was also convinced that I have monster great big giant fingers (which I do, to be fair), and so it doesn't fit on the right finger/hand.  Romance and surprises come at a cost, alas: just look at Romeo and Juliet.

If anyone reading this, by the way, wants to spend their lessons/working hours/lectures/retirement time doodling wedding dress designs for me, surrounded by floating love hearts and chirping birds, please do so and submit your entries to ElizabethSheppardWeddingPlans.org.uk and my sister will get back to you whilst I despise myself and resist the temptation to sit down with all designs surrounding me in a cloud of weddingdressness by searching frantically for my 'G.I. Jane' DVD.

I now spend my weekends in Singapore, which have become too passé for a blog entry every time: forgive me.  However, I will endeavour to blog at continuing regular intervals whenever something mundane and Vietnamese/Singaporean amuses me.

For example, today, when coming through passport control at Saigon airport, I put my handbag on the immigration counter.  As the security lady was checking that the frizzy haired eighteen year old was in fact the very same person as the radiant, sophisticated fiancé standing in front of her, my phone beeped to tell me that I had a message.  I ignored it, as it is possible not to be a slave to technology and leap at any handheld device the moment it makes a noise/vibration, but she stopped what she was doing and looked at the bag, blankly.

Immigration Lady: you have a message.
Me: GUFFAW.  Yes.  I do.
Immigration Lady: me too.  *Reaches inside important looking drawer, removes Samsung, checks and replies to Samsung-chat message*
Me: *thinks: maybe I should have smuggled some drugs this time?*  Oh, it's my fiancé.  (Because now I only ever receive communication exclusively from him.)
Immigration Lady: you are a teacher?

How bizarre.  Can you imagine the Immigration Officer at Heathrow doing that?  Israeli immigration would never stand it.

In other, beautiful news, RoD and I discovered that Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Romeo, Juliet, the Nursemaid and John the Baptist had not in fact, been flushed into the sewers of Vietnamese hell, but had simply been relocated to an Appropriate Pool of Joy on the other side of our apartment complex!  How exciting.  They now live in the Playground Pond where small children can fall off apparatus into the sand, cry, and then be soothed by them... and maybe healed if Jesus is feeling gracious enough.  What great news, right?  I was very, very, very happy to see them, and RoD and I have agreed to continue saving fish from the Plastic Bag Man to release them into their new happy home.