Wolverhampton, Wedding Countdown: 3 Days to Go

My first day back in jolly ol' England after a week in Spain and it was bloody freezing. Plus, UK Passport Control were not quite as lax on Round 2 as they were in Round 1. Sometimes it's like this because my itinerary usually involves going in and out of the UK several times in one trip.

Officer: "How long are you here for?"
Me: "Until Sunday, then I fly to Paris."
Officer: "What are you doing here?"
Me: "I'm in a wedding on Saturday."
Officer: "You're not just attending the wedding?"
Me: "No, I'm actually in it, I'm the head bridesmaid."
Officer: "Is your friend Canadian?"
Me: "No, she's English."

By this time, the rest of the de-planed sunseekers had all made it through Passport Control, because they didn't have to fill out the arrival card. The officer, unsure whether to continue his line of questioning about my friend, decided to probe in a different direction:

Officer: "Are you travelling alone?"
Me: "Yes."

The officer looked at me for a while, and little bells went off in my head, a flashback to my first time at Heathrow in 1993, when I was questioned for over two hours, under suspicion of possible drug trafficking. I was pretty relieved when the East Midlands officer waved me through.

On my Easyjet flight leaving Malaga, as per normal a person checked my boarding card and passport, but then only 5 metres behind her, another person did exactly the same thing. This, I've never seen before -- two checkers so close together. Except the Spanish guy was perplexed by my passport. Part of this is because:

1) I was born in a place called Zamboanga del Sur, which is in itself difficult to pronounce,
2) it's in a (*ding ding*) Muslim province of the Philippines, and
3) barely fits on the birthplace line in the passport, so the word "Philippines" has to be abbreviated.

Not to mention that Spain is pretty security-conscious at the moment.

Practically everyone on the plane with me was sunburnt from overexposure on the Costa del Sol. Silly Brits. I'm a brown girl and I slap on the SPF-60, while they arrive in Spain lily-white, ignore the sunscreen, and leave lobster-red. But I had to buy the SPF-60 because my hands and feet were going super-dark, which would've looked strange with the sleeveless bridesmaid dress and light brown bare arms.

Even Ruth's putting on a fake tan, and Lucy's taking in a 3-minute tan... this is a wedding, people, not a Sports Illustrated photo shoot. This is also England, not the Canary Islands -- I think dark tans look strange on wedding photos unless it's the summertime, and it's definitely not that now! In fact, the weather's been pretty abysmal this week, and I've been shivering since I've been here... but I'm not complaining, since I had my week in the sun.

After a week of touring around Spain and visiting museums and cathedrals and monuments and climbing hills, I'm actually quite content to be helping Lucy out with her wedding preparations and engaging in related mundane activities such as picking up vases, suits, hats, etc., errand-running and whatnot. There's nothing touristy at all about Wolverhampton, it's a town half an hour away from Birmingham in the West Midlands, with no tourist draw card at all. In many ways, it's a very typical English town. If it wasn't for the accent, I doubt it would be distinguishable from any other town of its size in the country.

While we were running errands around Wolverhampton, I had these flashbacks of years gone by: Christmases when we'd stocked up on the sales at Boots, or summertime when we'd all gone down to the pub for dinner, or hedges where we'd stashed Bank's Bitter pint glasses to take home later. One time when a bunch of us went to the clairvoyant's down the road to get our palms read, and I'd later received a VISA statement with the merchant "Psychic Foundation of England". When we were living in Scotland, Lucy and I would take the train down to Wolverhampton for bank holiday weekends, Christmas, Easter, or just whenever we wanted to take it easy on the weekend, i.e, raid her parent's perpetually-stocked refrigerator, wash our clothes, or just hang out with her large immediate family. Nearly 11 years later, there have been house moves, renovations, countless changes in vehicles and jobs and a collection of ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends (between 3 sisters and 1 brother), Grandma Hawker passed away, Joseph became the first grandchild, large and small-scale dramas, one smallish wedding, two engagements, broken hearts, and now Lucy's big day.

As expected, it's both stressful and exciting. The list of things to do in the last few days leading up to Saturday is still quite long, and because John's family are all flying in from Northern Ireland (around 30 people), there's a whole different set of transportation and accommodation logistics. A great majority of the people who are in the reception are from out of town, so people are either billeted out between the houses or staying at the hotel where the reception is. Plus, there are potentially worrying scenarios such as if the suits that are ordered for the Irish lads will actually fit -- cos they won't fly in until Friday morning and the warehouse for the suit rentals close at noon that day because it's a bank holiday weekend... as for me, I went for dress fitting #2 today, and I had to get my shoes stretched at the cobbler's because the toes are so pointy and narrow my feet were losing all circulation within minutes. I can't imagine standing for the ceremony, let alone dancing...