There are a few things that I know lots about, there are a lot of things that I know a fair bit about and there are a few things that I haven't got a bloody clue about. Diamond engagement rings is one of those things that I know naff-all about, I had brought one before about six years ago, but that woman cleared off within 3 months with the ring, a Black & Decker sander, a 20m extension reel and a pair of my sport socks.
Not that I'm bitter but I did shed a tear when I had to buy a brand new sander last year to finish off decorating the bathroom. Pippa has tried her best to educate me about cut, clarity, caret and the other 'c' that is something to do with diamonds, I always remember it as 'cost'. I have tried to learn and take an interest, if I was going to spend some serious spondoolies on a highly polished jubilee-clip, then I wanted to get the real McCoy.
After all, the money you are talking about is going to buy you a 45" TFT HDTV system that would really go well in the lounge, as Pippa pointed out though, it's not the traditional thing to do, buy your girlfriend a big TV when you get engaged and neither is it practical for wearing on a day to day basis.
We had spent Friday night at my parents in Cannock, there was no real special occasion, I happened to be working in the area that day and Pippa had a day off, so we made a day of it and rounded it off with a Chinese takeaway. My parents made Pippa feel very welcome in the home and everything was fine and relaxed.
However, once my mother had got Pippa sat opposite her at dinner, she felt she was in an ideal position to start to question Pippa in more depth, Sandy (my mum) had Pippa eye-to-eye there was no way she could lie. My mum’s demure 4’11” frame was not an issue now, they were sat down, but mum had the advantage, this was her house, her manor and the game was gonna be played on her terms. I’m sure without a breath my mum rattled off a verbal chain of questions, “How did you meet Neil, how long did you know him beforehand, did he chase you or did you chase him, have you set a date yet, will it be in a church, what will you wear, do you want children ?” my mum then inhaled deeply ready for the next barrage.
Luckily this was enough time for Pippa to gently raise one hand an issue a ‘Time-Out’. This is a system that I think Pippa has invented for dealing with my parents when they get a bit boisterous. My parents are great and I love them to bits, but when they get ‘a bit excited’ they start to ‘muck about a bit’ like naughty teenagers, I’ve grown up with it and I’m a bit the same so I hardly notice it. Pippa however has a low tolerance when it comes to ‘noise & banter’ so she invented the PTO (Pippa Time-Out) where she is permitted to raise one hand, call a time-out quite loudly and this indicates that the noise level is getting too high and people should just ‘chill a bit’. In some instances when I have been issued a PTO it has been swiftly followed by a GTYR (Go To Your Room) and think about what you have just said/done. These are quite rare but often stem from me not following some simple guidelines that Pippa had laid down several months ago ‘Please think what about what you’re going to say before you say it’. I don’t mean to offend people or say the wrong thing, it just pops out, a bit like tourettes, but without the blinking or twitchy shoulders.
Both Pippa and I revealed the information that my mum was after, Sandy was satisfied, she closed her notebook, popped her pencil back behind her ear and we were allowed to leave the table.
The next morning we decided to leave quite early and get back home as we had stuff to do, not sure what ‘stuff’ but as sure as ‘egg are eggs’ Pippa would find some jobs that needed doing. Polishing the TV aerial, wiping the top of all the sauce bottles, arrange the newspapers in date order in the recycling bin all these sorts of things that just have to be done. However, I can never leave my mum’s house without at least doing a couple of jobs for her, these usually involved re-wiring something, reprogramming a microwave or fixing a leaking tap. This Saturday mornings task for mummy’s little soldier, was to connect a PIR movement detector to the outside porch lights. It was actually reconnect the sensor that I had installed a year ago when I put the little spotlights in, only to be told by my mum at the time that she actually wanted them on a timer. So with that little task out of the way, we were set to leave.
Before starting the engine, we did briefly discuss popping into the jewellery quarter in Birmingham to see if there were any rings that took Pippa’s fancy, but we couldn’t really be arsed so we drove straight home.
I have come to realise that certain idea’s, when they get into a woman’s head, start to germinate and grow and take root until the idea blossoms into reality, engagement rings had become Pippa’s seed for today.
If procrastination were an Olympic sport then I’d join the England Team, not for the next Olympics, probably the one after. So with this attribute I tentatively agreed that we might pop into London on Sunday to Hatton Garden and have a look at rings, perhaps. I had no idea that the ring idea had really taken root and before I knew it, we were at Leagrave station waiting for the 14:25 train to Farringdon.
As we walked up Greville Street into Hatton Garden, I felt like I had been transported to the tunnel at Wembley Stadium, marching onto the pitch with the England team in the World Cup final. I felt overcome by the emotion of the moment, in awe of my surroundings, a little bit scared and a little bit that I shouldn’t be here at all.
Pippa on the other hand was the proverbial ‘kid in a candy store’, she couldn’t pass a shop window without pressing her nose against the glass and admiring the array of sparkling beauties. After leaving her nose-print on about six windows, I suggested we actually went into one of the shops to find look at some close up. Whilst stood in the doorway of one of these fine establishments, we were greeted by the salesperson who was a cross between Dawn French and Cher, well to be honest she was just fat with long hair, lovely personality though. She showed us to a seat, asked a few questions of what Pippa liked and didn’t like, then presented a tray of four or five different rings. Some Pippa liked, some she didn’t and the rest she wasn’t sure about. The assistant then wisely advised us that if this was the first shop we had visited, then do look around at what is on offer and come back if you want to. It was at this point that I think she had spotted Pippa’s particularly ‘Chavvy’ ‘Diamonds are a Girls best Friend’ t-shirt, in rhinestone letters, sparkling from the opening in her ‘hoody’. We thanked her for her time and left.
Thirty minutes later, Pippa’s nose was getting sore and I was finding it hard to look interested, they all look the same to me; small, sparkling and ‘effing expensive. I decided we needed to go into another shop, not to get closer to buying one, but because it was getting cold. I chose the shop across the street called ‘Eternity’ mainly because I remembered that it had a good website whilst diamond browsing on-line earlier that day. As we walked across the street toward the shop, I started to imagine some appropriate taglines to go under the ‘Eternity’ shop Banner. ‘Because you will regret it for a lifetime’ or ‘You can’t buy it on the never-never, but you will end up paying forever’, it’s thoughts like this that I don’t often share with Pippa, as she sometimes gets the wrong impression.
Well as they say, thirty minutes in Eternity can seem like a lifetime, and they came a point when I thought the jeweller was going to either ask us to leave or suggest that he would have to hand craft a totally unique ring for Pippa as she had said no or turned her nose up to nearly every platinum, diamond solitaire in his shop. “There might be one ring that just fits the bill” the jeweller uttered as he felt the will to live draining from his body like a tyre with a slow puncture. “This one came in just last week and it’s a bit of a one-off”, you could almost here the prayer-like hope in his voice that his 30 years of experience might count for something or had Pippa finally convinced him to jack it all in and take up window cleaning.
There are moments, and they are quite rare that you feel something ‘instinctively’ and I would say that they are even rarer when two people share that feeling simultaneously. He laid the ring on the tray before us and we knew that this would be our engagement ring. I examined it closely with his eye-piece, Pippa tried it on and scrutinised it, first with one eye, then the other, then both eyes, then with both eyes shut I think, just to see if she could see it in the dark. Finding the right ring is the hard part, putting your Visa card in the Chip and Pin machine is the easy bit, telling her that you’re four grand over your limit is the really hard part. Luckily I had just transferred some of my life-debt onto my new Royal Bank of Bermuda Mastercard (0% until next spring). The transaction was approved, I was on the edge of bancrupcy, but blissfully happy.
The ring had to be altered to accommodate Pippa’s twiglet like fingers, and I thought that if he was taking a bit of platinum out that I should get a reduction, I soon learnt that this was the case, well at least not in Hatton Garden. I did confess to Pippa that on reflection I think it was right that we bought the ring together and that we came to Hatton Garden to do it. My earlier ideas of a high-street jeweller or Argos, which had been point blank refused by Pippa seemed so wrong now, but I had learned something, a valuable lesson – listen to Pippa – she is generally right about stuff.
We strolled back toward the station, smiling and holding hands, Pippa thinking that everything was falling into place and that once I had the ring all I had to do was ask, and me thinking ‘well you can’t take it with you!’. As luck would have it, a Wetherspoons pub is located at the corner of Greville Street, so we popped in there for a swift one before heading back home.
As we neared the tube station in Cowcross Street, we decided that it was maybe a bit early to go home so we popped into The Castle for a snifter, (1) to get out of the rain and (2) to plan our evening. We decided that we should carry on celebrating our ring purchase by going into the west end and getting a bite to eat. This is exactly what we did and found a lovely Italian restaurant in Irving Street, just of Leicester Square. We eat pasta drunk wine, chatted, felt very tired and went home.
Not that I'm bitter but I did shed a tear when I had to buy a brand new sander last year to finish off decorating the bathroom. Pippa has tried her best to educate me about cut, clarity, caret and the other 'c' that is something to do with diamonds, I always remember it as 'cost'. I have tried to learn and take an interest, if I was going to spend some serious spondoolies on a highly polished jubilee-clip, then I wanted to get the real McCoy.
After all, the money you are talking about is going to buy you a 45" TFT HDTV system that would really go well in the lounge, as Pippa pointed out though, it's not the traditional thing to do, buy your girlfriend a big TV when you get engaged and neither is it practical for wearing on a day to day basis.
We had spent Friday night at my parents in Cannock, there was no real special occasion, I happened to be working in the area that day and Pippa had a day off, so we made a day of it and rounded it off with a Chinese takeaway. My parents made Pippa feel very welcome in the home and everything was fine and relaxed.
However, once my mother had got Pippa sat opposite her at dinner, she felt she was in an ideal position to start to question Pippa in more depth, Sandy (my mum) had Pippa eye-to-eye there was no way she could lie. My mum’s demure 4’11” frame was not an issue now, they were sat down, but mum had the advantage, this was her house, her manor and the game was gonna be played on her terms. I’m sure without a breath my mum rattled off a verbal chain of questions, “How did you meet Neil, how long did you know him beforehand, did he chase you or did you chase him, have you set a date yet, will it be in a church, what will you wear, do you want children ?” my mum then inhaled deeply ready for the next barrage.
Luckily this was enough time for Pippa to gently raise one hand an issue a ‘Time-Out’. This is a system that I think Pippa has invented for dealing with my parents when they get a bit boisterous. My parents are great and I love them to bits, but when they get ‘a bit excited’ they start to ‘muck about a bit’ like naughty teenagers, I’ve grown up with it and I’m a bit the same so I hardly notice it. Pippa however has a low tolerance when it comes to ‘noise & banter’ so she invented the PTO (Pippa Time-Out) where she is permitted to raise one hand, call a time-out quite loudly and this indicates that the noise level is getting too high and people should just ‘chill a bit’. In some instances when I have been issued a PTO it has been swiftly followed by a GTYR (Go To Your Room) and think about what you have just said/done. These are quite rare but often stem from me not following some simple guidelines that Pippa had laid down several months ago ‘Please think what about what you’re going to say before you say it’. I don’t mean to offend people or say the wrong thing, it just pops out, a bit like tourettes, but without the blinking or twitchy shoulders.
Both Pippa and I revealed the information that my mum was after, Sandy was satisfied, she closed her notebook, popped her pencil back behind her ear and we were allowed to leave the table.
The next morning we decided to leave quite early and get back home as we had stuff to do, not sure what ‘stuff’ but as sure as ‘egg are eggs’ Pippa would find some jobs that needed doing. Polishing the TV aerial, wiping the top of all the sauce bottles, arrange the newspapers in date order in the recycling bin all these sorts of things that just have to be done. However, I can never leave my mum’s house without at least doing a couple of jobs for her, these usually involved re-wiring something, reprogramming a microwave or fixing a leaking tap. This Saturday mornings task for mummy’s little soldier, was to connect a PIR movement detector to the outside porch lights. It was actually reconnect the sensor that I had installed a year ago when I put the little spotlights in, only to be told by my mum at the time that she actually wanted them on a timer. So with that little task out of the way, we were set to leave.
Before starting the engine, we did briefly discuss popping into the jewellery quarter in Birmingham to see if there were any rings that took Pippa’s fancy, but we couldn’t really be arsed so we drove straight home.
I have come to realise that certain idea’s, when they get into a woman’s head, start to germinate and grow and take root until the idea blossoms into reality, engagement rings had become Pippa’s seed for today.
If procrastination were an Olympic sport then I’d join the England Team, not for the next Olympics, probably the one after. So with this attribute I tentatively agreed that we might pop into London on Sunday to Hatton Garden and have a look at rings, perhaps. I had no idea that the ring idea had really taken root and before I knew it, we were at Leagrave station waiting for the 14:25 train to Farringdon.
As we walked up Greville Street into Hatton Garden, I felt like I had been transported to the tunnel at Wembley Stadium, marching onto the pitch with the England team in the World Cup final. I felt overcome by the emotion of the moment, in awe of my surroundings, a little bit scared and a little bit that I shouldn’t be here at all.
Pippa on the other hand was the proverbial ‘kid in a candy store’, she couldn’t pass a shop window without pressing her nose against the glass and admiring the array of sparkling beauties. After leaving her nose-print on about six windows, I suggested we actually went into one of the shops to find look at some close up. Whilst stood in the doorway of one of these fine establishments, we were greeted by the salesperson who was a cross between Dawn French and Cher, well to be honest she was just fat with long hair, lovely personality though. She showed us to a seat, asked a few questions of what Pippa liked and didn’t like, then presented a tray of four or five different rings. Some Pippa liked, some she didn’t and the rest she wasn’t sure about. The assistant then wisely advised us that if this was the first shop we had visited, then do look around at what is on offer and come back if you want to. It was at this point that I think she had spotted Pippa’s particularly ‘Chavvy’ ‘Diamonds are a Girls best Friend’ t-shirt, in rhinestone letters, sparkling from the opening in her ‘hoody’. We thanked her for her time and left.
Thirty minutes later, Pippa’s nose was getting sore and I was finding it hard to look interested, they all look the same to me; small, sparkling and ‘effing expensive. I decided we needed to go into another shop, not to get closer to buying one, but because it was getting cold. I chose the shop across the street called ‘Eternity’ mainly because I remembered that it had a good website whilst diamond browsing on-line earlier that day. As we walked across the street toward the shop, I started to imagine some appropriate taglines to go under the ‘Eternity’ shop Banner. ‘Because you will regret it for a lifetime’ or ‘You can’t buy it on the never-never, but you will end up paying forever’, it’s thoughts like this that I don’t often share with Pippa, as she sometimes gets the wrong impression.
Well as they say, thirty minutes in Eternity can seem like a lifetime, and they came a point when I thought the jeweller was going to either ask us to leave or suggest that he would have to hand craft a totally unique ring for Pippa as she had said no or turned her nose up to nearly every platinum, diamond solitaire in his shop. “There might be one ring that just fits the bill” the jeweller uttered as he felt the will to live draining from his body like a tyre with a slow puncture. “This one came in just last week and it’s a bit of a one-off”, you could almost here the prayer-like hope in his voice that his 30 years of experience might count for something or had Pippa finally convinced him to jack it all in and take up window cleaning.
There are moments, and they are quite rare that you feel something ‘instinctively’ and I would say that they are even rarer when two people share that feeling simultaneously. He laid the ring on the tray before us and we knew that this would be our engagement ring. I examined it closely with his eye-piece, Pippa tried it on and scrutinised it, first with one eye, then the other, then both eyes, then with both eyes shut I think, just to see if she could see it in the dark. Finding the right ring is the hard part, putting your Visa card in the Chip and Pin machine is the easy bit, telling her that you’re four grand over your limit is the really hard part. Luckily I had just transferred some of my life-debt onto my new Royal Bank of Bermuda Mastercard (0% until next spring). The transaction was approved, I was on the edge of bancrupcy, but blissfully happy.
The ring had to be altered to accommodate Pippa’s twiglet like fingers, and I thought that if he was taking a bit of platinum out that I should get a reduction, I soon learnt that this was the case, well at least not in Hatton Garden. I did confess to Pippa that on reflection I think it was right that we bought the ring together and that we came to Hatton Garden to do it. My earlier ideas of a high-street jeweller or Argos, which had been point blank refused by Pippa seemed so wrong now, but I had learned something, a valuable lesson – listen to Pippa – she is generally right about stuff.
We strolled back toward the station, smiling and holding hands, Pippa thinking that everything was falling into place and that once I had the ring all I had to do was ask, and me thinking ‘well you can’t take it with you!’. As luck would have it, a Wetherspoons pub is located at the corner of Greville Street, so we popped in there for a swift one before heading back home.
As we neared the tube station in Cowcross Street, we decided that it was maybe a bit early to go home so we popped into The Castle for a snifter, (1) to get out of the rain and (2) to plan our evening. We decided that we should carry on celebrating our ring purchase by going into the west end and getting a bite to eat. This is exactly what we did and found a lovely Italian restaurant in Irving Street, just of Leicester Square. We eat pasta drunk wine, chatted, felt very tired and went home.
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