We're off to West Sussex in less than an hour, and the laptop is not coming with me. In the meantime I am sitting at the kitchen table in my wedding clothes, since the ceremony is at half past two and the hotel can't guarantee to let us have our room before two o'clock. I remembered to top up the chickens' water last night, so that I wouldn't have to go into the run dressed like this, but had to fill up their food and check for eggs (one, still on the roosting board instead of in the nesting box. I wish I could work out why she is doing that) this morning, wearing wellingtons over my new tights. It might look like the photos in the Toast brochure, but I can tell you that the brochure is silly. I think I have escaped without bits of sawdust stuck to me.
They're funny things, wedding clothes. You are trying to look nice, but not too eye-catching, since the guests' job en-masse is to provide a backdrop for the bride and groom, and make it look like a wedding. I have got a houndstooth print shift dress in fine viscose, with a frilled front and bow. It is not perfect, being cut too wide across the back so that the neckline flops, but I liked it enough not to want to send it back. It does have pockets, which an awful lot of ladies' clothes don't have, and which are very useful if you are expecting to stand about nibbling and drinking on a terrace (weather permitting) in late October, especially if you have a slight cold.
I was worrying that I'd have to get a jacket to go over the dress, and wondering what would do and whether black was too funereal, when I realised that I could layer the dress over a thin sweater, 1960s style. Nowadays every decade is being revived constantly and simultaneously, so 60s is as good a look as any other. For less than the price of a jacket I didn't really want I could get a really, really good sweater, and have gone for John Smedley sea island cotton. It is incredibly soft and very comfortable, though I don't think pure black is honestly my colour nowadays. Black baroque pearls fit over the black sweater, and I have bought some new tights in zillion derniere black cotton, in the expectation that it's going to be chilly on that terrace.
The shoes are not new. They are completely unfashionable black suede ones with a moderate heel, square toes and a sort of loafer top with a bar across, that remind me vaguely of the illustrations from the very boring French language books we had at school, and as such are retro enough to go with the dress. They have the great advantage that I can walk in them, and believe I can wear them all day without giving myself blisters. Though they do feel a teeny bit tight, and I'm not sure I've ever put them over thick tights before. I have just shoved a box of elastoplast in my bag, just in case.
With the hat it should do. I tried the whole ensemble on yesterday to make sure, and was not transformed into an elegant creature, but looked slightly bewildered and as if I would have felt much more natural in my gardening clothes, or at any rate in flat heels. It is so much easier for the Systems Administrator, who is going to wear a suit. At one point a new suit was spoken of, but the SA never got round to buying one, and by yesterday afternoon it was raining.
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