Prince Charming’s got ‘em on speed dial- Pumpkin Weddings

Blog, interrupted. It's been brewing in the Drafts folder since July. I was banking on it marinating in a meltingly choice, sumptuous manner, although if it's been festering into litter-tray mush, apologies. But if it's got any idea of its content (my work experience with Pumpkin Weddings,. "The Fairy Godmothers of the venue industry!"), it'll be simmering over with rich, frothing swathes of flavoursome career goodness. Let's hope for the best because the Pumpkin team are, to use a more relevant analogy, magic.

 
 Time spent with the Pumpkin Weddings crew is a bargain investment- fish out a couple of working week, or a handful of loose days you've got lying around, and cash them in- you'll bag yourself beautiful venue visits, centrepiece/water-bowl/candelabra/ivy/crystal/favour/flower arranging, lunches a la M&S&LOL, chair cover races, cakes, brides, grooms, good tunes, great gossip and more Twix's than you should have, really, but go on then, if you're offering. They'll even throw in some post-venue vino and the offer of adoption, if you're still on the fence. Which you shouldn't be, because it's time for elevenses, hop down! Don't you want a HobNob?

 
Of course, there are those days when though the love shines bright, nature's having none of it...but no need to cloud over the celebrations- a flick of the Pumpkin wand takes this handy manor house from 0 to Organza in a few hours, earning "oooh!"'s, "aaah!"'s and "It's just how I wanted it!"'s as guests peek in at the windows. And let's be honest, when you can charm the crowd with cakes that creamily blossom and bloom, sparking up smiles and appetites with their vanilla glow, then who cares if it's tipping it down outside?

 

Thank you so much to Em, Paul and the team for having me- I know working with you over Christmas will be a cracker! xxx

"I was 'ere...are you?" - observations on desk graffiti

A view on the walk home from uni...what else are you walking away from?

Dashed and weathered by the tides of pens, pages, coats and elbows, their corners buffed into curved polish, their grains ground up with inks and dents of procrastination past.

The raring expectancies of lives beginning lies in these boards- illustrations of the subconscious, thoughts left too long un-tethered in those fragmented pauses between interest and understanding. Like the murk of an evening skyline, the harder you squint, the more biro constellations rise up through the blotted layers. Some wet black with fresh passion or distraction. Some softer- etches waning and wearing away; void and forgotten like the emotion, long since spent, that carved it there.

There are lessons learnt here, offered to us to make our own- it’s odd, both how often the word ‘time’ pops up, and how much there is etched out in English. A lolling scrawl simply suggests, “Take the Time”, another preaches, “time is something in your hands”, while here is scratched the sullen mumble, “kill the time that’s killing you”. There is an excitable, and as far as I can make out from the Italian, fairly derogatory comment about Gwen Stefani, and a few regulation doodles of penises. Some sketches are cruel, some are merry, some loving, some pondering, some make no sense at all- and why should they?



Except...I’m drawn (no pun intended) to a certain few patches of bleached scribbles- despite their age, and their bolder gel-pen successors, I find myself dwelling on them. Wondering if they hold on, in dull defiance, because they hold true, even now, though their authors long since left these pews behind. Their tattered messages are distant, but held here in purgatory, with dogged insistence. Do they stay loyal, somehow, to a dream never realised, a passion never chased, a love left untold? What do they say that their owner could not?



What have you written? Or, more importantly, do your thoughts live on, spectre-like on some desk gone by- shady reminders of a bottled desire? And don’t you think it’s time you let those laboured lines fade away....



Slightly less insightful graffiti, on the Literature Faculty wall

 (if you're bored, leave me a comment below. because...well, I like them :) )