Teenage Torture

 My blog is a little later this week than normal because I wanted to wait until I had something great to talk about.

This week is the 20th Anniversary of my wedding. I literally cannot believe that 20 years has gone by. In some ways it feels like forever and in others it feels like the blink of an eye. 

We had planned to go somewhere really cool to celebrate, but let's face it - that's unlikely right now. I wanted to go to New York and husband wanted to go to Mexico - doubtless we'll come to a compromise when things are easy and go to Paris so neither of us wins (because that's the type of thing we typically do!). 

We used to be a one car family, I wanted a red mini and husband wanted a silver BMW - so that neither of us won we got an ugly dark gray Ford Focus that we both hated. That said it was an awesome car. I drove it from 6K miles on the clock to 150K miles on the clock and literally nothing went wrong with it in that time. Changed tyres and brake pads a couple of times - and the cambelt needed doing at the obligitory time - but apart from that nothing!

As soon as we both started commuting and needed 2 cars I went out and got my mini and husband got his BMW and the Ford Focus went to the Isle of White for its retirement.

Aaaanyway, what we decided to do was to find a really nice Spa hotel and spend a few days there. We got an AMAZING deal as well. We went to Ashdown Park Hotel just by Ashdown Forest a stunning building with the coolest rooms. Son came too - because we essentially do everything with him - it just feels odd not to. I know most parents farm out their kids, especially when it's a romantic stay - but it just never occurs to husband and I.

We didn't want to spend loads because we know we're going to do our big trip away at some point. I had this idea to use our Tesco vouchers - essentially we've done nothing with them for over a year since COVID. So we used their rewards scheme and exchanged Tesco vouchers for hotels.com vouchers (a brilliant deal - every £5 of Tesco vouchers is £15 of hotels.com vouchers). 

As a result of this we got a 2 night stay in a 4* hotel/spa for just £48 in cash for 3 of us. HOW COOL IS THAT!!! This meant that on our big day we could have a massive blow out in the hotels posh restaurant as well as enjoy champagne and cocktails without feeling like we were having too much of a blow out.

The hotel is absolutely stunning, somewhere between a huge country house and a castle - historically it's had many uses - once belonged to an admiral (not sure why he needed so much space) and was also a convent in the 20's. A really beautiful building, with huge grounds.

We spent our time playing golf (very badly), throwing lawn darts (loads of fun actually - I may buy some), walking the grounds and swimming in the pool. I'm not really one for spa treatments, but husband was a bit disappointed he didn't have a massage. However, there may well be a next time......

Dog spent the time away with one of our very tolerant friends, we discovered that over by the golf course they have special rooms for people that visit the hotel with dogs. So the big plan is that once dog has had all its jabs we'll see if we can go back and stay in one of those. We just need to get another awesome deal.

There are acres of grounds to go around with a dog and also amazing wildlife. On the final morning I woke up at stupid o'clock in the morning. The rest of family were asleep so I went for a walk. There on the lawn in front of the hotel were about 50 deer. The Stag saw me and took off and deer after deer after deer just ran past me - a stunning sight (if you're not the head gardener anyway!). My friends who own a wood are always complaining about the terrible damage the deer do to young plants - I daresay they'd not have been in awe at the sight in the same way I was.

Was very strange in the hotel as very few people were wearing masks. The staff were, but none of the guests. The other thing that felt very strange was the weddings. We were there on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Not your typical wedding day. It was strange to see a wedding car turn up with a handful of guests. I have to say the first bride we saw looked absolutely stunning. In fact all the brides did - this is where it got very strange - in the short time we were at the hotel we say the grand total of 5 brides! I wonder if they all shared the honeymoon suite.

On discussion the reason for this was very clear - due to COVID there must be a massive backlog of people that want to get married. My heart goes out to them - all of the brides looked absolutely stunning and had gone the full posh frock route. They had the stunning venue - the whole thing must have cost a lot - the one thing they didn't have were hundreds of guests to share there day.

If you are in a similar situation what I would say is that we had a really intimate wedding - by choice - just 20 people there and only 2 of those were friends (best man and maid of honor). For us this was perfect and my memories of the day are amazing. Personally I would have been very uncomfortable with a huge hooplah - but that's just me.

20th anniversary is china - which seems pretty lame for 20 years of effort. As husband is very literal I anticipated a mug and told him if I got one then he'd not make his 21st wedding anniversary. I still didn't expect anything amazing. However, he blew me away with a pair of stunning emerald earrings and matching necklace. They were hand made in Jersey. This is totally out of character for him - he's a wonderful man, but not one for the big gesture. I've been wearing them ever since I got them.

I hope he liked my present - it was more about thought than grand gesture. I'd sat down and listed as much as I could remember from our years together. Everything from nice restaurants (and nasty) that we'd eaten at, theatre trips, holidays, funny moments, etc. etc. 

I then made a picture of a scene in Brighton that we used to take in a lot - before West Pier burned down. Every night at dusk thousands of starlings used to dance in the sky before they settled in the Pier ruins for the night (they are now at the Marina). So I found an old photo of this and manipulated the image and then over the top of it I typed all the memories I had from our last 20 years.

He seemed to like this - also in a fit of amazing wit - I found a book about China (China in 4 words) - I got him this as a paperback. It was utterly wasted on him as I had to explain the joke!

So where does the teenage torture come in. Obviously there was much changing over the days we were away - for swimming and tarting ourselves up for the evening. Son got very distressed every time I started to change in front of him. He'd immediately leap into his bed (he had a sofa bed in the window of our room) and pull the duvet over his head. I found this very amusing - but then worked out how to really torture him. 

For the days I had one of my rather scrubby t-shirt bra's (it's meant to be gray - I always get gray as then you don't have to worry about them becoming gray - yup I'm a genius). If I threw one of my bras on top of the duvet son would remain under the duvet and refuse to come out until it had gone.

It's an amazing thing to have discovered. Next week when he's sleeping I shall surround his bed with bras - then perhaps husband and I can whizz off to Paris for the weekend, knowing he'll be safe and sound under his duvet until we return home and remove the underwear!!!!!

Anyway, that's it for this week - so lovely to have something nice to write about.