Brighton train station, on a crisp yet sunny Saturday afternoon. With a suitcase on wheels in one hand and a girlfriend in the other, we set off toward the seafront and the Grand Hotel. As the train tickets were £50 and a night in the Grand Hotel was going to cost an arm and a leg, I persuaded Pippa that we should walk from the train station to the hotel to get some air (and save a fiver on a taxi). Luckily it's all downhill form train station to Brighton beach, so didn't get too out of breath, even so my blood-sugar level had dropped as a consequence and I would need a beer soon.
We checked in and made our way to our room for the night and what a nice room it was, a bit small but it did have biscuits on the tea and coffee tray, so I knew I was in a quality establishment. A quick change of clothes later and we were off to the shops.
Two and a half hours later, I was tired, bored, hungry, thirsty and basically all-shopped-out. As we strolled back to the Hotel, we decided that we did have 40 minutes free to pop in for a swift pint in a bar en-route, if we happened to stumble across one. Luckily we did find a lovely little bar in which we purchased a Grolsch and a large vodka & tonic. We sat chatting about nothing in particular, who was going to the wedding reception that evening and what would people be wearing. I was also subtlety reminded that I did have a Pippa-ASBO in force for the evening which meant that I had to be on good behaviour and not get outrageously drunk and beat up the groom - as if !
As we were only minutes away from going to our first wedding reception together, the topic of conversation soon switched to us, "do you think we'll ever get married" Pippa asked with head on one side, these sort of questions can not be brushed aside with simple, one word answers. I had sort of asked Pippa to marry me about a month earlier, but it was 2am from my hotel bedroom in Croydon after a fairly lengthy visit to a pub which involved large straight vodka's with Smirnoff Ice chasers. It hadn't been a romantic proposal, more of a practical proposition "you know I really loves you Pips, HIC, so we should be married yeah, be great, HIC, woodenit ?" I sort of remember the deathly silence just before Pippa told me "It's two am, you've woken me up, you're pissed and you expect me to take you seriously, now go to bed and ring me tomorrow". So that was sort of a 'No' response at the time, but I knew she wanted too really.
"We should at least talk about it, we've been together over a year and neither of us is getting any younger, I would like to know how serious you are about this relationship" Pippa continued. Now at this point I actually new in my mind that I was going to ask Pippa to marry me, in fact I knew in my mind the date and place when I would ask her. It was going to be December 17th at the top of the Empire State building, on our xmas holiday to New York. But this was my secret and my big surprise, so to continue the cover up, I replied "Look, we've got New York and Christmas coming up and there's a lot going on so why don't we wait until after Christmas and we will talk about it then". From the response this received, I might have well had admitted to a string of a dozen affairs in the last month alone. Initially there was a look of anger on her face and I could hear her mind shouting "You utter bastard". Then she started to cry, "I knew you weren't serious, this isn't real for you is it, you know how I feel, you're just stringing me along". The solitary tears turned into a torrent a real gut wrenching sob. "I do love you, I really do and this is real for me and we probably will get married one day" I was scrabbling now to recover the situation, I knew I was on the cusp of a potential storming out the door in tears situation, which would not be pleasant and ruin our evening out. "You're just saying that to please me you don't mean it, do you ?" Pippa's nose was running now and this wasn't a good look for Pippa. I now had no choice, I would have to shoot my bolt, I would have to unwrap my big surprise, "I'll tell you how much I love you, I'm going to ask you to marry me on 17th December this year in New York...." there followed a brief silence whilst Pippa took in this new information, this pro-forma engagement invitation had come as somewhat of a shock to both of us. "You're just making this up to stop me crying and make me feel better" she sobbed back at me, with a bit of spit for good luck. I could taste her salty tear on my lip and I knew I had to dig deeper to qualify this great statement I had just made. "OK, then ring my mum, ask her or ing Graham, I've told them what I plan to do, speak to them and you'll see that I've not just made it up". Now foolishly, I thought this was a real powerful statement to make to back up my claim and it was true, I had told my parents and six of my best mates as well. However, I hadn't taken into account the complex workings of a woman's mind.
The crying suddenly stopped, the distraught look changed to a look of anger as did the tone of Pippa's voice, "You have actually, discussed getting married, with your best mates and your mum", at this point Pippa's teeth are so tightly gritted together, that the words are finding it difficult to escape through the small gaps, "yet you haven't had the balls or decency to talk to me about it". I knew at this point that if Pippa had been holding a garden spade, she would have swiped it toward my neck and taken my head clean off. My head would have flown several feet and crashed into the Trivial Pursuit machine, rolled down it's sloped from and trundled toward the bar, as my headless body twitched and spurted my life blood in a vertical bloom all over the table and floor and probably into my pint of Grolsch.
Luckily, she didn't have a spade and luckily her momentary anger switched to joy, she had just realised that I was going to ask her to marry me and her initial shock and confusion had cleared to leave a single undeniable fact that I would be asking her to marry me in five weeks time. Instead of a garden tool execution, I got a great big hug and a kiss.
We decided that this deserved another drink and that it didn't matter if we were a bit late for the reception, I'm sure they would start without us. We capped off our mini celebration by buying a large portion of chips, a big gherkin and two cans of pop. We sat outside the chippy at 7:30pm in November in an icy wind eating chips with a little wooden fork to celebrate the fact that we would soon be engaged. We knew how to celebrate, we lived the high life, we liked chips.
We did have trouble containing ourselves that evening as we had made a pact not to tell anyone before the big event of actually getting engaged, but I think it was pretty obvious to everyone else that we did have some sort of special secret that we were keeping. The wedding reception went off according to plan, a few Stellas, quick boogey on the dance floor, bypass the chocolate fountain, slice of pizza, couple more beers then off to bed. Not a late night, but a memorable one.
We checked in and made our way to our room for the night and what a nice room it was, a bit small but it did have biscuits on the tea and coffee tray, so I knew I was in a quality establishment. A quick change of clothes later and we were off to the shops.
Two and a half hours later, I was tired, bored, hungry, thirsty and basically all-shopped-out. As we strolled back to the Hotel, we decided that we did have 40 minutes free to pop in for a swift pint in a bar en-route, if we happened to stumble across one. Luckily we did find a lovely little bar in which we purchased a Grolsch and a large vodka & tonic. We sat chatting about nothing in particular, who was going to the wedding reception that evening and what would people be wearing. I was also subtlety reminded that I did have a Pippa-ASBO in force for the evening which meant that I had to be on good behaviour and not get outrageously drunk and beat up the groom - as if !
As we were only minutes away from going to our first wedding reception together, the topic of conversation soon switched to us, "do you think we'll ever get married" Pippa asked with head on one side, these sort of questions can not be brushed aside with simple, one word answers. I had sort of asked Pippa to marry me about a month earlier, but it was 2am from my hotel bedroom in Croydon after a fairly lengthy visit to a pub which involved large straight vodka's with Smirnoff Ice chasers. It hadn't been a romantic proposal, more of a practical proposition "you know I really loves you Pips, HIC, so we should be married yeah, be great, HIC, woodenit ?" I sort of remember the deathly silence just before Pippa told me "It's two am, you've woken me up, you're pissed and you expect me to take you seriously, now go to bed and ring me tomorrow". So that was sort of a 'No' response at the time, but I knew she wanted too really.
"We should at least talk about it, we've been together over a year and neither of us is getting any younger, I would like to know how serious you are about this relationship" Pippa continued. Now at this point I actually new in my mind that I was going to ask Pippa to marry me, in fact I knew in my mind the date and place when I would ask her. It was going to be December 17th at the top of the Empire State building, on our xmas holiday to New York. But this was my secret and my big surprise, so to continue the cover up, I replied "Look, we've got New York and Christmas coming up and there's a lot going on so why don't we wait until after Christmas and we will talk about it then". From the response this received, I might have well had admitted to a string of a dozen affairs in the last month alone. Initially there was a look of anger on her face and I could hear her mind shouting "You utter bastard". Then she started to cry, "I knew you weren't serious, this isn't real for you is it, you know how I feel, you're just stringing me along". The solitary tears turned into a torrent a real gut wrenching sob. "I do love you, I really do and this is real for me and we probably will get married one day" I was scrabbling now to recover the situation, I knew I was on the cusp of a potential storming out the door in tears situation, which would not be pleasant and ruin our evening out. "You're just saying that to please me you don't mean it, do you ?" Pippa's nose was running now and this wasn't a good look for Pippa. I now had no choice, I would have to shoot my bolt, I would have to unwrap my big surprise, "I'll tell you how much I love you, I'm going to ask you to marry me on 17th December this year in New York...." there followed a brief silence whilst Pippa took in this new information, this pro-forma engagement invitation had come as somewhat of a shock to both of us. "You're just making this up to stop me crying and make me feel better" she sobbed back at me, with a bit of spit for good luck. I could taste her salty tear on my lip and I knew I had to dig deeper to qualify this great statement I had just made. "OK, then ring my mum, ask her or ing Graham, I've told them what I plan to do, speak to them and you'll see that I've not just made it up". Now foolishly, I thought this was a real powerful statement to make to back up my claim and it was true, I had told my parents and six of my best mates as well. However, I hadn't taken into account the complex workings of a woman's mind.
The crying suddenly stopped, the distraught look changed to a look of anger as did the tone of Pippa's voice, "You have actually, discussed getting married, with your best mates and your mum", at this point Pippa's teeth are so tightly gritted together, that the words are finding it difficult to escape through the small gaps, "yet you haven't had the balls or decency to talk to me about it". I knew at this point that if Pippa had been holding a garden spade, she would have swiped it toward my neck and taken my head clean off. My head would have flown several feet and crashed into the Trivial Pursuit machine, rolled down it's sloped from and trundled toward the bar, as my headless body twitched and spurted my life blood in a vertical bloom all over the table and floor and probably into my pint of Grolsch.
Luckily, she didn't have a spade and luckily her momentary anger switched to joy, she had just realised that I was going to ask her to marry me and her initial shock and confusion had cleared to leave a single undeniable fact that I would be asking her to marry me in five weeks time. Instead of a garden tool execution, I got a great big hug and a kiss.
We decided that this deserved another drink and that it didn't matter if we were a bit late for the reception, I'm sure they would start without us. We capped off our mini celebration by buying a large portion of chips, a big gherkin and two cans of pop. We sat outside the chippy at 7:30pm in November in an icy wind eating chips with a little wooden fork to celebrate the fact that we would soon be engaged. We knew how to celebrate, we lived the high life, we liked chips.We did have trouble containing ourselves that evening as we had made a pact not to tell anyone before the big event of actually getting engaged, but I think it was pretty obvious to everyone else that we did have some sort of special secret that we were keeping. The wedding reception went off according to plan, a few Stellas, quick boogey on the dance floor, bypass the chocolate fountain, slice of pizza, couple more beers then off to bed. Not a late night, but a memorable one.
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