Falling Sky

1,096 Days Later...

Ah, it's almost like it was yesterday... yet at the same time seems like an age away, in the best possible way. Yep, the missus-to-be and me have been a Couple for three years now, ever since Tom Cruise and martian death rays brought us together. Plenty in our lives has changed since then, yet she remains as ruddy marvellous, sweet and smart as she was back in 2005, if not more so, and every day spent with her is brill. (Conversely, on the rare occasions when we're apart for a day or more, I'm pathologically useless and can barely function beyond pacing around the flat looking lost.) Honestly, it's so fucking good being engaged to her, the rest of Planet Earth really ballsed up in letting me get to her first. Ha ha! Too late, you fools!

[Title edited by one digit after the good lady pointed out this was a leap year and February had therefore been a day longer. Best sub-editor ever!]

A Breather

Very light posting lately due solely to being a busy little bee, but as I'm on an unplanned day's leave to look after a poorly Burd now seems a good enough time to catch up a bit. Soooo, what to tell?

Lungs! They seem to have calmed down nicely after last month's nastiness, helped no doubt by the twice-daily use of a steroid inhaler. Whether this'll be an ongoing thing or not isn't clear, I'm hoping that it'll be back to normal, so it's back to the doctor's in a month to review how things are going. Daily doses of traffic fumes on the way to work aren't helping, but the clean air further out where we live, especially in the park and along the canal, helps balance things out. Still, it's one more reason to move away from cities over the next few years. Whether finances, employment, property prices and mortgage rates will ever allow us to is another matter.

Tom Waits for no man... well, no man who doesn't have £80-100 to spare. Last week I was in what will surely be a once-in-a-lifetime position - to have tickets to see the mighty Tom Waits playing in the city I live in going on sale, the only show he'll be doing in the UK this year. He's pretty much the only one of my favourite living musicians who I still haven't seen in concert yet and the initial news made my eyes bulge and heart leap with startled joy. This quickly changed to immense guttedness and much soul/wallet-searching after I saw the ticket prices - £75 and £95 (plus a chunky booking fee, no doubt). Readers with elephantine memories will remember this post from 2006 when I questioned whether £35 was too much to pay for a ticket to see Nick Cave live (in retrospect, the conclusion I came to was staggeringly wrong). In the end, I couldn't justify paying £75+ for one concert, no matter how rare, no matter how special, no matter how incredibly good it might be (and for that price, you'd expect the Second ruddy Coming). It's not just a question of whether I have the money to pay for it - with a wedding in the next 12 months, what do you think? - but whether I could feel comfortable spending that much on what ultimately amounts to three hours entertainment, and I don't think I could. Hell, the total cost of seeing Portishead, Radiohead and Melt Banana in concert this year would come to less than that one ticket. And by comparison, a ticket to see him on the same tour in America costs $85 - less than £45. That, I would pay. Inevitably, it sold out and, equally inevitably, tickets are now turning up on Ebay for stupid fucking prices despite the anti-tout overkill measures that would make it impossible to sell the ticket on if you happened to be horribly ill come the day of the gig (it happens). But it's gutting to know that he'll be in town, this town, and I won't be there simply because of prices that really can't be justified. Damn damn damn damn damn.

Still, happy thoughts. The wedding! Content is now starting to appear on our dedicated ding-dong-the-bells-aren't-going-to-chime website, 230509.co.uk, useful for anyone who reckons they'll be invited or just wants to see what planning shenanigans we're up to. There's only a couple of posts so far, but expect more over the next few months, with password-protected pages giving detailed information for guests once invites have been sent out (anything to avoid the paparazzi). There's even an RSS feed to subscribe to, or you can just stare at the countdown as it cheerfully ticks away the seconds - 30675231 to go!

Saw Bob Mould in concert a couple of weeks back with the Brothers Grim of illustration, Rob and Gordon. It was a good gig, quite intimate in the snazzy setting of ABC2, thankfully finishing with plenty of time for me to scamper back to Queen St and get the train back to Edinburgh. Unlike last time, he had a full band behind him, the sound big and heavy, enough to leave my poor lugholes ringing for about 24 hours after. The Sugar and Husker Dü numbers were blistering, taking me back to seeing Sugar at Brixton Academy in the early 1990's (oh, I was so young!), and although the set sagged in the middle, it picked up speed nicely and the final third was pounding. Setlist here, and there's a couple of photos of the big man here.

Having come to the conclusion that I need more potential forms of employment than just artwork (no sales since last November) and The Law if I'm to hope to leave the city behind and live far away (and still pay a mortgage), coupled with that oh-so-distinctive surname, I am semi-seriously thinking about the potential of Nagl's Bagels (incorporating Jon's Scones). Not that I've ever fancied being a baker before, but with that surname what else can I do? Nagl's Ladles? So, with the thought of opening a bakery/gallery/record shop in some distant countryside village in the far flung future, I've started dipping my big toe into the world of baking, committing myself to one new baked goodie every week. Last week, using a recipe from Jock & Muriel at Thisselcockrig Farm, I made some raisin flapjacks, slightly crunchier than planned but with a surprisingly effective salty undertaste that counterbalanced the sweetness very nicely. Yesterday, thanks to the National Trust Traditional Recipes book, I had a go at Erddig Apple Scones (so called because, says here, this recipe comes from Erdigg, a National Trust house and estate in North Wales). They turned out well, using Gala apples grated and chopped, improvising a tad by adding a touch of cinnamon. A really pleasant taste, and the smell of baking wafted warmly through the flat like a cosy blanket.So far I haven't thought to take photos of the process or the results, but starting next week I will - it'll be good to keep a record of what works and what fails spectacularly. I'm not giving up on the art or the law, but there's no harm in adding another daydream to the collection. And who on Earth could resist the allure of a little bakery called Nagl's Bagels? Try saying it out loud, it's incredibly satisfying.

Oh, have you seen the GraphJam website? Finally a worthwhile use for the Charts function in Microsoft Office. They can be a bit hit-and-miss, but when they're good, they're good. Meanwhile, highlights from I Can Has Cheezburger, one two three and a glorious four.

The High Cost of Loving

Things have been pretty hectic the last few weeks, with the practical aspects of this whole marriage malarkey coming into consideration. The proposal? Man, that was the easy bit.

Now, I knew coming into this that weddings are, on the whole, rather pricey. How much so? According to this site, the average cost of a wedding in the UK is £11,000. Eleven grand! That's 11 iMacs! It's a boggling amount of money, all the more so considering it's basically funnelled into one day. Taken over 24 hours, that's £7.64 a minute. The thing is, when you look further down the page at what that total breaks down into, it gets increasingly ludicrous. £2,000 for a wedding reception, then a further £750 for the evening? £300 for printing? £400 for, er, videography? And these are average figures?

With us both being rather financially prudent (and, personally speaking, skint) there was no chance that the future missus and I would be going for anything so pricey, but the wedding industry - and, oh, what a greedy, insecurity-preying, dead-eyed industry it is - seems determined to wear down any intentions of frugality, clear thinking or common bloody sense. As the Lass noted, the magazines are appalling, presenting weddings that cost tens of thousands of pounds as though they're the norm, the implication being that anything less would be miserly and result in a cheap, cheesy and lesser wedding. For fucks sake, chair covers? I never even knew such things existed until the Lass pointed them out to me on website after website in abject horror.

[At this point in writing, I mentioned to the Lass who'd just popped into the study about the £11,000 figure. She said that she'd heard it was actually a fair bit higher these days and that the above figure was probably a few years out of date. A wee bit of Googling later and this article from the Scotsman comes up. In summary: TWENTY FUCKING THOUSAND?! (And that was two years ago, so by my calculations it must now be approximately a bazillion quid). I don't even want to think what that makes the minutely rate. If my flabber hadn't been gasted already, it truly has now. GUH!]

Anyway, it's one thing to have magazines bellowing SPEND OR BE LACKING - they can be cheerfully dismissed with a cursory curse and flung into the nearest recycling bin. My troubles came when we started researching for places to get married and hold the reception. Initially we'd thought about doing so on Skye, considering we're mouth-frothingly obsessed with the isle, but quickly realised that while it's a nice idea in theory, it'd be a pricey endeavour for all the family and friends we wanted to be present. If we lived there, there'd be no question, but as we'll still be here in the central belt for the next few years it makes much more sense to do it in Edinburgh, Glasgow or anywhere inbetween. So we scribbled down a long list of potential venues and started making enquiries. And the answers came back...

Let's be clear - we're not having a whopper of a wedding. Being the godless heathens that we are, doomed to an eternity of writhing in hell watching BBC3, we're not after any kind of church service. Registry office sounded fine, but we really liked the thought of having a Humanist service - one of the nifty points about living in Scotland is that, since 2005, Humanist celebrants are able to legally marry people in any location, just as religious ministers can. So - somewhere we can have the ceremony in the afternoon, some nice munchies afterwards for a few hours, and a bit of a do in the evening. Sounds reasonable, surely?

We looked at venues throughout Glasgow and Edinburgh. The latter were notably higher. The facility fee to hold the ceremony and reception at the Signet, for example, was priced at £6,000 + VAT and staff costs. This was about average. A small room at Surgeons Hall to hold the wedding ceremony itself for one hour - £600. For one hour. We looked at so many sites and the high figures that kept coming back left me feeling genuinely dazed and really quite drained. Likewise with catering. As the days went by, the sense grew and grew that either we'd be shelling out thousands of pounds just on venue hire, the costs inconceivable for any other occasion. One almost expected there to be an invisible wedding tax that must be paid on everything - as soon as that 'w' word is mentioned in a quote, whether it be for venue, food, photographer, car, flowers, whatever, there's a 40% mark-up on 'normal' pricing. It's as though people are expected to lose any sense of financial awareness when it comes to weddings, instead shelling out whatever ludicrous amount is quoted. The zoo, museums, galleries, gardens, hotels, centres, halls, caves... it felt more and more as though we'd have to get ourselves into debt just for one day, or otherwise go the registry office then hire a function room above a pub somewhere - which, after a week or two of this, didn't sound so bad to me at all (so long as it was CAMRA approved). No wonder threads like this are all over message boards, complaining that "[e]verywhere is too expensive, too pretentious or too popular."

There's this strange conflict at the heart of planning a wedding, or at least the stage of picking and confirming the venue. On the one hand, I know that it's the ultimate special occasion, one that we'll never have again, a genuinely once-in-a-lifetime event, and I feel that the Lass deserves the best day possible, in as wonderful a location as can be found. But on t'other hand, we're still living in the real world. We need to be saving money to make the move to Skye in the next decade, so to instead see it all go on one single day, so much money on just a few hours, seems almost obscene. So somehow, like a Venn diagram, we've tried to find a way to appease both feelings, allowing for a day that'll be lovely without sending us into a financial apoplexy.

Guess what? We did! Well, there had to be a happy ending to such a gloomy post. While I'd love to tell you where, we're keeping the locations shtum so as to guard against unwelcome guests and the paparazzi. I can tell you that we've hired one venue for ceremony and afternoon reception, then another for an evening shindig, the total of both being comfortably under 700 quid, and they're both slap bang on the Royal Mile which should be very handy for anyone arriving by train. The ceremony/reception venue is a cracking place, not what people would normally expect but I think we'll make it work perfectly (we've already concocted a theme for invites and such, though sadly it's not Lord of the Rings (imagine, an LOTR wedding! It'd be so cool! I'd make a fab Aragorn and we could get any kids to be kitted up as hobbits! Sigh...)). If it's a sunny day, it'll be stunning, but even if it's not it'll still be absolutely fine, no question about it. As for the evening, it's somewhere very distinctive yet (compared to everywhere else, anyway) very reasonably priced, and means we've got the place to ourselves, allowing our guests to eat, drink, natter, make merry and boogie their socks off well into the night. Trust me, the pictures are going to be awesome.

The moral of the story? Surprisingly, not "don't get married until you win the lottery" - rather, when you're venue-hunting, look, look and keep looking. It can be an overwhelming experience, especially if you're somewhere (such as Edinburgh) which has so many possibilities, all of which appear to be hella expensive, rattling around in your noggin. There are other places, ways you won't need to compromise your finances, you just need to keep going. Hell, once we've had our wedding, we'll be able to tell you of two perfect places in the centre of Edinburgh which offer just as much as neighbouring venues that charge double. If you've imagination, patience and a determination to not send yourselves hurtling into the swamplands of debt before you've even got rings on fingers, less really can be more.

(In case you're wondering, there'll be no chair covers at ours. Somehow, I think we'll manage.)

461 Days And Counting

Mark your 2009 diaries, chums.

Yup, that's the date. All booked and everything. It'll be in Edinburgh on the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend in England, so anyone coming up south of the border won't have to rush back to Blighty on Sunday. Aren't we thoughtful? The inevitable website is currently a barren wasteland, save for the above card, but will eventually blossom into a veritable cornucopia of wedding-related natter from both the Burd and meself, plus details on The Big Day for everyone attending. What happens when two blogs collide in the most romantic way possible? Stay tuned to find out!

A Modest Proposal

September 2007. I start researching what birthday pressie to get the Burd, with a mind to choosing a piece of jewellery just as I had in 2006. This time around, I focus on the work of Sheila Fleet, an Orkney-based jewellery designer with quite a range of styles. Bumbling around the website, even though I know I'm looking for a pendant, I find myself clicking on Rings. I click on Gemstone. Curious thoughts begin to form. I get back to finding the right pendant - in the end choosing a real beauty, if I do say so meself - but still catch myself coming back a couple of times to one particular ring. The price-tag makes my eyes boggle (well, more than usual) but that didn't really matter. A vague idea of putting such a ring on a certain lady's finger has set root in my noggin, but vague is all it stays. See, there's no way I could remotely afford the price tag on said ring - or any like it - and I'd also promised myself I wouldn't marry while I was still lugging (non-student-loan) debt around with me. At this point I've got a £2500 overdraft and it's in constant use. The idea floats about, wistfully, in the back of my head, along with the home on Skye and 100 Lives, my next animated short (due circa 2030). Life goes on.

October 2007. I buy a necklace for Burd's birthday. It's very nice. I look at the ring on the website a couple of times and rue my pisspoor finances.

November 2007. The Lass gets her birthday pendant and is very happy. I get a temporary, somewhat unexpected promotion at work and am also very happy. All the more so because the jump in wage is substantial enough to put me in a position where I could clear my overdraft well within a year, maybe even six months. Considering I've been in debt using that overdraft constantly for at least the last 12 years, this is pretty bloody exciting. The idea thickens. I realise that there is absolutely no doubt that I want to propose to my girl, but I need to figure out how, where and when.

December 2007. I ask the Lass for advice on good Orcadian jewellery, ostensibly to consider what to get Mum for Christmas (when in fact I already knew just what I'd be doing) but really to see if there were other jewellers of note on those islands that might be good for a ring. The pay rise was good, but still not enough to reach the heady heights of the Sheila Fleet ring, and if I waited until I could afford that, well, that'd be a ruddy long time, and the floaty idea was getting impatient, insistent and more serious by the day. She recommends Ola Gorie, and gives me a catalogue to look at, where I make a big deal of looking at the ear-rings.

Ha ha! Such subterfuge! Once alone, I instead went straight for the rings, my eye very quickly settling on one particular design. It's still more than I'd ever normally spend on anything non-Apple, but not the heart-crushing figure that the SF ring was. At work, I ask a few of the women in the office their opinion of said ring and whether it would be a suitable engagement ring. The squeals are all positive. But! I have no idea what ring size the Burd is, asking her would be too much of a clue, and I dread getting an approximation from her existing jewellery, ordering the ring and then, on the day of days, discovering the approximation was way off and it would only fit on her pinkie. Even if I got a 'token' ring produced for the proposing - having contemplated commissioning Hugh to carve a wooden ring for this purpose - there's no way to be absolutely sure what finger size it should be. What to do?

7th December 2007. Breakthrough! I ask the Lass for a list of various goodies she might like for christmas, so that I can be sure of getting her something she'll like. A very handy list follows, including - gasp! - a ring. Complete with the Lass's ring size. Now we know! I follow the link, and the ring is a beauty, simple and silver, produced by Elizabeth Scott who sells on Etsy under ES Designs. When I see it, the pieces that have been floating around my head for a few weeks fall into place: this is the ring you propose with, then - assuming she says yes - you make sure she likes the Ola Gorie ring, the two of you go up to Orkney and you get that ring there, fitted especially for her finger. It's perfect.

25th December 2007. The Lass doesn't get the ES ring for christmas. However unbeknownst to her, I've been in contact with Elizabeth Scott and arranged to buy the ring, having it sent to my office address so Burd doesn't spot it in the mail and wonder why I've received a strange little package from Americaland. Floaty thoughts about how, where and when to propose are considered in more detail.

7th January 2008. First day back at work and the ring arrives. Oh, it's lovely. The ladies of the office coo their approval. Various thoughts and plans on the how, when and where of proposing have ramped up furiously over the last fortnight and crank up all the more now I'm back at work.

...Edinburgh Zoo... no, too many people... Hidden Gardens... maybe, what if it rains?... surprise trip to Skye... she'd guess the moment we're on the train... dinner at the Witchery... venue would be a giveaway... cook a special meal at home... maybe, I dunno, feels like it should be done somewhere else, somewhere non-everyday... at the train station when she gets back from Paris next week... no, she'll be knackered, exhausted ... propose via CuteOverload... tsk, too late... edit together footage from Family Guy to make a proposal, burn it onto DVD and put it on one evening when we're having dinner... cute, but very fiddly... where, dammit, where?... and when - oh fuck, it's a leap year - what if she pops the question on the 29th?!... at the train station just before she goes to Paris next week... are you nuts, that'd be fucking cruel... at dinner at Iglu... hmm, maybe, can imagine everyone watching us there... we're shy, dammit!... it's got to be a good 'story', we'll be telling it for days after...

See, I want the proposal to be a complete surprise. I'm very very aware that this is the only time I'll ever get the chance to do this, so I have to get it right. It needs to be somewhere that's sweet in some way, personal, but not cheesy; out of the ordinary, yet not so much that she'd immediately suspect something was up. At this point I'm thinking that the best time to do it would be Monday 21st, a day after she's back from Paris when we were planning on both taking the day off and taking it easy, maybe going for a nice meal somewhere - Iglu, David Banns - which seems like the best opportunity to pop the question. The ring sits in my filing cabinet at work, impatiently.

11th January 2008. It's the end of the week and I've come to the conclusion that I need to propose before she goes to Paris. I keep imagining her sitting on her tod on the Eurostar, looking down at the ring on her finger and smiling. I have to make this happen somehow, but I'm still very much undecided on how. I'd concocted plans during the week for us to go off somewhere nice - but not far - on Saturday 12th, to make up for being apart the following weekend, my proposal targets being either the Hidden Gardens in Glasgow or, if she didn't fancy getting the train over there, go for a coastal walk by North Berwick, then pop the question. On the plus side, the weather forecasts for the 12th are good, chilly but rain-free. However, the unsuspecting target of all this plotting has been feeling poorly all week and doesn't know whether she'll want to leave the flat at all. I tell her not to worry about it, trying not to sound remotely nervous or hysterical, thinking all the while of the ring sitting in my coat's inside pocket. So close, so close...

12th January 2008, 9am. Argh! Balls! Fuck! Tits! The Lass is not a healthy lass this morning and clearly is in no shape for travelling to Glasgow, North Berwick or quite possibly anywhere else for that matter. I ponder furiously, briefly considering waiting a day until I check the forecast and see that Sunday is expected to be 24 hours of heavy rain. Monday or Tuesday are both workdays and I'm damned if I can think of a decent way to propose with us both worn down from a day at work. One furrowed brow later, I'm positive that it has to be this day.

12pm. I gently talk Burd into coming for a walk along the canal, reasoning that the nice fresh air (very chilly, very sunny, not a cloud in the sky) might help her feel better and it'd be good to get moving for a wee bit. She accepts! I make sure my business-as-normal face is on securely and we leave the flat, heading west along the Union Canal, my awareness of the ring in my coat pocket cranked up to infinity, I almost expect it to thud loudly, Telltale Heart-style. How can she not know it's there? How can everybody not know it's there? The forces of gravity and mass seem to go wonky around the ring and I have the peculiar sense of orbiting the ring, or following it, pulling me where it wants to go. Lyrics from Tom Waits' Crossroads briefly spring to mind before being drowned out by loud, wide-eyed, super-anxious thoughts:

...Where are we doing this??? The bridge? Don't be stupid, too narrow... She'll want to turn around soon... What are you going to SAY?!... has to be a surprise, got to get it right FIRST TIME... where? when? where? how? where?... along the Water of Leith... will she go that far??... what if it's full of walkers?... where?... think what you're going to say, THINK...

Much of the canal is iced over and it looks lovely, spooky and still. There's plenty of people walking, jogging and cycling on the canal and it feels wrong, it's too open, too public, it won't work anywhere along here. Since last night, as a contingency, I've had one location in mind and the nearer we get to it, I know it's the only place I can do this. We just have to get there.

12:30pm. We've reached Slateford Aquaduct, the point where the Union Canal and Water of Leith overlap (albeit at very different heights), but the Lass is feeling tired and wants to go home. Shit! Don't panic lad, we planned for this. I play the somewhat pitiful over-excitable boyfriend card, saying I just want to go a teeny bit further along the Water of Leith and see the nice little stone building we saw there last time on a similar walk a week or so ago. She agrees, I act pleased (inside I'm whooping with relief) and we start walking down the steps towards the Water of Leith pathway. My adrenaline levels leap, I feel my eyes widen just a little more and my hands shake, but not from the cold. Thank goodness for sunglasses and coat pockets. My mind is screaming:

OH CHRIST OH FUCKING HELL WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO SAY?!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU PRACTICE THIS?! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO SAY?! FUCK FUCK FUCK! YOU CAN'T MESS THIS UP! OH GOD IT'S JUST A FEW MINUTES AWAY! THINK!! THINK!!! DON'T FUCK UP!! WHAT IF SHE SAYS NO?! THINK!!!

12:45pm. We cross the road and walk past the Dell Inn (once known as the Tickled Trout), following the Water of Leith. It's notably quieter, and we hardly see anyone as we walk along a little further. My heart is racing like FUCK, as is my mind which is scrabbling for the perfect opening line and failing miserably, and when the little stone building we're aiming for comes into view my mind briefly shrieks like a firebell and I feel so anxious, so nervous, so inexplicably scared that in retrospect it seems ludicrous but at the time was utterly genuine, I shit ye not. See, that little stone building is where I'd decided to propose, being a wee bit secluded, by the water, with a 'window' at the back through which you can see tiny waterfalls rolling down towards the river. I didn't know what it was for and assumed it was something to do with milling, just like every other old stone building alongside the Water of Leith, but it felt right. Mind you, the fact the doorway is open to the elements meant that just before we walked in my thoughts suddenly yelped

OH GOD WHAT IF IT SMELLS OF PISS IN THERE?! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

(It was only a few days after that I discovered that, far from being mill-related, the little stone building was an 18th century romantic grotto for a nearby mansion house. Really, you couldn't make this stuff up.)

12:50pm. Thankfully, it was pee-free. We went in and the Lass sat down on the ledge of the window, taking a well-earned rest. I stayed standing, affecting nonchalance while inside I told all the shrieking thoughts to

SHUT THE FUCK UP because here we go, here we go, no pre-prepared lines, we're going to do this now, no turning back, ready, ready, ready, you can do this, you're the man, just say what's right, say what's true, ready, ready, aaaaaaand GO!

I stroked the top of her head and made what I hoped sounded like a conversational note of how long we'd been together (2 and a half years, fact fans!) and let that hang in the air for a moment. She smiled, happy enough, and I knew - she really doesn't know this is coming. SWEET! FULL STEAM AHEAD!

I told her how wonderful those 2 & a half years had been, how she made my life so much better, how I didn't want to be with anyone else but her for the rest of my life, and they were the truest words I've ever spoken.

Her eyes widened. My heartrate was like a hummingbird. The universe beyond the little stone building vanished.

I reached into my coat pocket , pulled out the ring box and got down on one knee. Katherine gasped "oh my god...", hands to her mouth, utterly astonished.

I opened the ring box, looked into the eyes of my love and asked her to be my wife.

....

12:55pm.

Well, that was a relief.