A Belly Full of Words

‘Your skin looks great!’

‘Wash your face more regularly?’

*suspicious tone* ‘You don’t look like you have acne.’

‘Make up will only make it worse you know.’

‘You need to improve your diet.’

‘Drink more water?’

‘I feel ya, I get bad spots all the time.’

‘You’ll grow out of it.’

Have you tried…?

I cured my bad skin by drinking grapefruit juice, worshipping the moon and washing my face in dog poo.

In what I hope is slowly becoming an annual tradition, the girls and I headed off for a weekend in the countryside this month. Last year: Wales, this year: the Peak District.

We stayed in a little cottage a few miles outside of Glossop – a market town in Derbyshire approx. 20 miles from where yours truly was born. Our cottage was on a little farm; it had a roll top bath, spiral staircase and an old English sheepdog that was basically a teddy bear and who we 100% wanted to take home with us.

Four of us arrived mid-afternoon on Friday and after a nose around the house (my friends seemingly like to inspect every single drawer and cupboard), we headed into Glossop in search of a Friday-night drink. Surprisingly, we stumbled across a cocktail bar with 2-4-1 cocktails before 7pm so this seemed like the obvious choice and we spent an hour drinking pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris and probably discussing things one shouldn’t discuss in public. Meh.

We then took a trip to M&S whilst a tad tipsy. Claimed we only needed a ‘few snacks’ – spent 100 quid. Top work gals. After picking up the fifth member of the crew from Glossop train station, we headed back to the cottage to snack and drink gin before curling up with a cheese plates on the sofa in front of the fire. Living the dream tbh.





 After a healthy lie-in and lazy breakfast on Saturday morning, we decided to head back into Glossop for a mooch and ended up stumbling upon an artisan bakery/café – Glossop really did have it all. We had some divine sandwiches and coffees sat outside in the sunshine before a lovely little wander around the local market. Reader – we discovered the most epic cake stand. The cakes were huge and intense and goddam I wanted them all. So yeah we bought a slice of each. And what?

Flavours included terry’s chocolate orange, millionaire shortbread, cadbury’s crunchie, cherry bakewell and oreo. Five enormous slices cost us a tenner. Can we get a cheer for northern prices please?

We collapsed back in front of the fire when we got back, ready for a few solid hours napping, reading and some random yoga; finished off by a 5pm glass of rose. So flippin’ cosy.

Naturally our evening involved food and nattering. Seriously, all we do is chat and snack; thank the lord these girls just get it. I live for the fact that none of them would ever suggest we hit a club.








We had an epic cheeseboard, a game of dipsticks and some very entertaining conversation before Claire announced that we’d – DUN DUN DUN – run out of wine. I’m not sure if we felt like we were lacking in adventure after last year’s rescuing-a-sheep incident or we just really wanted more wine but we decided we were going to jump up and walk to the local pub pronto. Down the pitch-black road. In the pouring rain. With the very real possibility of being hit by cars.

We banged on the door of the pub after they had closed like wine-thirsty maniacs. The guy behind the bar – cheers Ben – thought it was hilarious. Particularly when Claire expressed her distaste for the lack of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. The owner was slightly less amused. Still, they let us buy two bottles and we disappeared off into the night to celebrate our victory. And eat cake.

After a very lazy brunch of avocado and eggs the next morning, and another reading/napping session, we piled back into the cars for a drive home through the beautiful, heather-covered peaks.

I realise that a lot of my blog content recently has been very Scotland-heavy but that’s kinda what my summer has been like. Think I not-so-secretly want to live in Scotland tbh.

After many, many visits to Edinburgh and years of repeatedly saying I must come stay for the fringe, I finally made it to Edinburgh in the month of August, ready to experience the famous Fringe Festival.

And boy did I love it.

Less than 3 weeks after flying back from Inverness, I hopped on a v early morning flight (waaay too early for a Saturday; my body didn’t know what the fuck was going on) and was in the centre of Edinburgh by 9:30 ready to knock back a coke (I don’t drink coffee) and crack on. By half 11 I was drinking a gin & tonic so we certainly were cracking on.

Lucky for me, one of my oldest friends lives in Edinburgh so I got free accommodation, freshly baked cookies and my very own festival organiser – cheers Dan. As it was my first fringe festival, I was very happy to let Dan organise my weekend and go with the flow so I arrived to a pile of tickets and no idea as to what I was going to see over the next two days.

Spoiler: a lot.

The Festival Vibe … without the long-drop toilets

Realise it sounds kinda wanky to bang on about ‘the vibe’ but yeah, I loved the vibe, the feels; whatever you want to call it. It was that festival feelin’; happy, sunshiny, expecting the unexpected, plenty of weird and wonderful things going on, the smell of street food…. But all without the faff that comes with camping. I was clean, there were no long-drop toilets and I could sleep in a double bed. Win.

The Food

Sweet jesus, the food. THE FOOD. I will never not love the way street/festival food has developed over the past few years; it’s a flippin’ dream. You couldn’t move without finding an incredible-sounding food truck and we ate about 6 times a day. Halloumi fries, crème brulees, banana & peanut butter crepes, dumplings and cheesy aioli chips were just some of the highlights. Get in ma belly.

The Shows

The main event of course. I had made a couple of random requests based on some sparring research but otherwise Dan was in charge of the schedule. We managed to squeeze in 8 shows in 48 hours and each one was completely different; I felt like we saw such a wide variety. And that's not including the shows that were just happening in the street. A guy making up raps based on what people had in their pockets. A guy playing the most beautiful violin solo. Hundreds of people in costumes. I loved being surrounded by all the creativity.

We were in the audience for the BBC new-comedy award semi-finals, had our minds blown at an Ethiopian circus (how the hell are they so flexible?!) and loooved Margaret Thatcher: Queen of Soho (80s drag cabaret: Maggie gets lost in Soho and accidently becomes a cabaret superstar – so funny).

There were some slightly smaller productions which I enjoyed just as much as the bigger shows. These ones made me nostalgic for all my years at a drama group and actually felt the more creative. We saw a musical called 89 Nights – about a young woman living in New York for the length of her tourist visa. There was 9/11 was a conspiracy; a one-woman show about your beliefs fundamentally differing from your partners, and Anya Anastasia: The Executioners which was a musical/comedy performance about attacking the technology aspects of the modern world.

Baby Wants Candy was probably my favourite – a completely improvised comedy musical based on a title the audience shout out at the beginning. Ours was ‘Haggis, neeps and titties’ – it was hilarious. The same company also did Voldemort and the Teenage Hogwarts Musical Parody which was also snort-your-drink funny. Favourite line; Dumbledore: ‘well, I’m just going to go and stick my dick in the sorting hat’.

And on that note… See ya next year Edinburgh!

I feel it goes without saying – but I’m gonna say it anyway – that obviously the pictures in this post are a) not my wedding dress and b) nothing like the wedding dress I ended up choosing.

So yes lads, I’ve found my wedding dress. Don’t get weepy now.

Wedding dress shopping was something I had mixed feelings about. On one hand, obviously I was pretty excited. On the other, it was something that presented a whole load of issues (as I wrote about here).

When I first started thinking about a wedding dress I, naturally, did a lot of internet browsing. Whilst I have no other alternative as to how to research these things, I personally think this was a bit of mistake for me. I browsed an endless amount of bridal boutique shops and became more and more nauseated with what I saw. Women with impossibly thin waists. Shops that only stocked size 10s. Shops that – in an incredibly pretentious manner – had a whole section on why you MUST NOT take any photos during your appointment. I read blogs about women who’d been asked how much weight they were going to lose as though it was a given and saw dresses that cost as much as my entire wedding.

As a result, for a long time, I was pretty convinced that I didn’t want to go any bridal boutiques, didn’t want the dress to be expensive, and was happy to buy it from the high street and not engage with any of the madness (again, see this post).

Whilst that does still all sound rather pleasant, I’ll be honest, it’s all gone out the window.

But I’m happy about it, so all good.

I ended up relenting and booking two bridal boutique appointments for a couple of reasons. The main one being that I didn’t really know where to start. Whilst places like John Lewis, Monsoon etc etc do have bridal ranges, you can’t just rock up at your local store and find the dresses hanging around the same way you would a pair of jeans. From what I could gather, only specific shops (usually in some inconvenient part of London) stock them and no where seemed to be that clear as to how you would go about trying on the full range. Basically – it wasn’t immediately obvious nor obvious after a bit of research and that annoyed me. I like simplicity.

The second reason is, over time, I had decided on a specific style of dress that I wanted, right down to the maker, and only a handful of shops stocked them. Which is why we ended up, slightly randomly, in a bridal shop just east of Cambridge.

My mum and I booked a Friday off, got up early and started the day with cake and coffee in the sunshine, before heading to my first appointment. It was 31 degrees and I was mostly concerned as to whether the shop would have air conditioning to be honest.

When we entered the shop, we were greeted by the sight of a huge amount of white, poufy, laciness and my main thought was oh god please don’t turn me into a poodle.

As it turned out – we had a bloody whale of a time.

All my anxieties were proved completely wrong and I was so darn happy about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some bridal boutiques are just as heinous as imagined but not the one I’d stumbled into.

Odette, the owner, was so lovely. She ushered us to some comfy chairs, brought us drinks and chatted to me about the kind of wedding I was having and the kind of dress I was looking for. She was very good at immediately putting me at ease. We were shown round the shop, learning about the different styles of dresses in each section. My favourite fact? All dresses were stocked in sizes 6 – 30. Kinda wanted to high five her.

After this, we were given a big pile of tags and left to browse the shop (which we had to ourselves) at our leisure. The premise is you add a tag to a dress you think you’d like to try on and then she can whizz round the shop picking them out for you.

My mum and I had a lot of fun looking at all the dresses and tagged a combination of tea-length dress (my preferred style) and longer, boho type dresses. You do kinda hit a point though where it’s like okay, they’re all white, they’re all pretty… how does one differentiate?! 

And then it was time to get trying. I tried on a lot of dresses but – unusual for me when shopping – I didn’t get remotely fed up. I’m not sure if it was the 1:1 attention I was getting, having someone there who knew what would suit my body shape or just the fact that it’s pretty darn fun to try on really grand dresses.

Honestly though, the thing that struck me most was the fact that everything looked good on me. I kind of had this epiphany that the majority of body insecurities could probably be cured if we all could wear clothes that are beautifully made and designed to be as flattering as possible… so we all just need to win the lottery asap kay?

Odette was constantly re-adjusting my ‘top 3’ based on my preferences and I was beginning to learn that the old cliché is true – the dresses that look the best are often not the ones you would have picked yourself. If there was one that I particularly liked, Odette would then go grab more in that style so we could focus in on what was working. My mum was taking millions of photos, I was prancing around surrounded by mirrors and we were just generally having a great time.

Odette then brought one dress out that wasn’t the kind of style I’d been looking at but she thought it might suit me and it also came in a tea-length version. It was grander and, I guess, more traditional than I imagined myself in but I was happy to give it a go.

Soz for making you vom, but there definitely was a bit of a moment when I saw myself in it for the first time. I’m not saying I immediately burst into tears and was like IT’S THE ONE; it was more like I LOOK LIKE A PRINCESS AND NOW I’M CONFUSED.

We tried on a few of my other favourites again but that was the one I was most interested in putting back on and the second time round, I definitely felt a bit giddy in it. Particularly when I discovered that it had pockets.

It was the complete opposite of what I was convinced I wanted; longer, simpler, grander... and yet I was a little bit in love.

As we had a second appointment in Cambridge that afternoon, we decided to think on it for a bit. As it was very different to what I’d been claiming I wanted for months, it made sense to at least consider it over lunch before blowing a ridiculous amount of money.

So we headed into Cambridge, grabbed an enormous pastry and then headed to our second appointment. It was a similar set-up only a much bigger shop so there were more appointments going on. My mum and I both thought that the quality of the dresses wasn’t as good as the first place (although they were actually more expensive) but it was still a really nice experience. It did quickly become obvious to both of us that I already knew which dress I wanted, and it wasn’t in this shop. But I still had a lot of fun trying on a lot of dresses – including styles I knew I would never pick. Aka dresses with 3 metre trains… hey, it's not often one gets the opportunity to try on absurdly extravagant dresses. May as well make the most of it!

Afterwards, we went and sat in the park and looked back over the pictures of ‘the one’, confirmed it was ‘the one’ and rang the first shop back. My mum was whispering her credit card details over the phone whilst we sat on a bench!

I got to try it on again when we went back to the shop a couple of weeks later so they could take my measurements. It will now take 4-6 months (!) to be made specifically for me (I’m basically the queen) and then there will be a couple of months for any alterations. Honestly, I’ve never loved an item of clothing more. My favourite lounging joggers are thoroughly put out.

Night one: Lochcarron

Night Two: Gairloch 

Night Three: Ullapool

Night Four: Lochinver

Night Five: Kinlochbervie 

Night Six: Melvich

Night Seven: Lybster 

Night Eight: Inverness