#bridal I work in a charity bridal shop and it can be an illuminating experience. Humanity in all its many faces comes marching through the door. The eager bride. The bride who would happily marry in a pair of jeans but parental pressure dictates a dress. The Mammy who wants to play her part and has 1,000 opinions and does not hesitate to share them. The Groomzilla(yes,its a thing!), who does not want to be surprised by a meringue on the Big Day and wants to have his say. The young mother who wants to get up the aisle before the child is walking. The pregnant bride who wants something loose-fitting as not everyone would approve. The male gay best friend who tries on a dress for a giggle. They all show up and they all contribute hugely to the hustle and bustle of the shop.
Personally I love it when you get an entire family coming in. Granny, Mammy, the Bride to be and a few sisters thrown in for good measure. They voice every opinion under the sun( You have no boobs in that)and this is done with general disregard for the brides feelings.
I used to think some sisters of the bride could be a bit on the outrageous side with the comments but then again this is what sisters are for all the same. They might be excruciatingly forward but it is only because they want her to look brilliant on her big day.
Each appointment in the shop only lasts an hour but it whizzes by when the families come in and they are great craic all the same. Some of them want my opinion and to some of them I am there to be ignored. Each to their own.
The brides have a lovely time when they come into the shop and they thoroughly enjoy the hunt for the dress. I enjoy helping them out and the look on their faces when they have found the dress is indeed wonderful. Mammies weep and sisters shriek and everyone loses the plot for a bit. I wouldnt miss it for the world.
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#50 #oldernow. So on Monday I turned fifty. I never minded turning 30 or 40, those alleged milestones simply did not register with me.
I sailed through my thirties and forties without feeling the passing of time.
Now here I am and I am actually nervous about the notion of a birthday cake because it would require the fire-brigade to put the candles out.
Just to add to my lack of joy, I managed to fall and wrench my ankle on my birthday. Thank you Universe. I wonder why I imagined you would have my back now that I am older.
I tell myself that there are positives to getting older. I care less and less what people think. I have achieved more in terms of life ambitions in the past 3 years than I did in the previous forty-seven.
I have not had a drink in two weeks and I quit smoking three years ago.
Yet nothing would make me happier than to slash a decade or so off my age. Apart from the wrenched ankle, I dont feel my age at all.
I think maybe it is all a matter of how old you feel in your heart and not on your birth-certificate. Personally I feel like a girl of 40. So I am going to go out and get me a cake and lie about my age to myself. Each to their own coping mechanism I guess.
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#diet I have not had a drink in a week and believe you me it has not been easy. I can cope with most things knowing that when I got home, I could lock the door,put on a Dvd and horse into 3 cans of beer a night. Well, no more.
I do not like the shape I am in and I decided to do something about it. The last time I stayed off the beer, I lost one and a half stone in 3 months so it is time to do this again.
When you catch sight of your body in a shop window and you don't recognise yourself, you know it is time to shed some body fat.
This is not a question of low self-esteem but rather the opposite. I like me just fine, it's just that I prefer the size 14 version of me than the shape I am currently in.
This past week I have horsed into more salad than a marathon runner. I have downed enough low-fat yoghurt to keep several farms running.
This morning I noticed that the tubby tummy I have been sporting seems to have diminished somewhat. Of course this could be wishful thinking on my part but I am going to continue with the self-imposed drinking ban for now.
I am not saying it is going to be easy but there is a goal in mind. I am an actress too and I do not want to be fat in my headshots. Vanity,yes indeed but then again motivation can be such a personal thing and that is mine. So,in the company of the millions of women out there,I shall continue whittling away at my ample ass and tubby tum. I know I am not alone.
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#DonaldTrump
Why is this ginger airbag allowed to persist as Potus? America, you managed to get rid of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden but you can't seem to find a way to get rid of a bloated useless joke of a President.
He has done more than Nixon to bring the office of President into disrepute and needs to be removed in the same manner. He is so psychologically unstable he would actually pick a fight in an empty room. He is not even beginning to learn anything from having the highest form of office in the land.
We have all met someone like him, the bloated entitled white boy. I just don't think anyone thought that he would somehow con his way into high office due to an outdated electoral system.
You can literally google his name once every twentyfour hours and you will find something stupid or dangerous that he has done on the world stage. The other world leaders are laughing up their sleeves at the state of him. He said he would'drain the swamp'. Well, he needs to start with himself.
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#Bond It seems to have turned into a bit of a 3-horse race at the moment. Damian Lewis, Tom Hardy and Michael Fassbender are the main contenders and I have to say right now I think Michael Fassbender will get it on the basis of the fact that he is the highest profile one and he already has a massive fan following. I personally do not rate him as a sex symbol but he can act and he looks good in a tux.
I reckon Damian Lewis would be wrong for it because I simply cannot perceive Bond as a ginger. This is not to say that gingers do not have their appeal, I just dont think he is right for the part.
I reckon Tom Hardy would be wrong for the part because I cannot visualise him doing the whole suave and sophisticated thing in a casino, sitting there playing cards opposite a bad guy. Actually maybe Hardy would be better as the Bond villiain. I might be onto something there.
I do recall a while back there was all this speculation that Tom Hiddleston was going to get it and then he wore THAT notorious t-shirt which prompted global cries of derision. Personally I never thought he was Bond. When he does love scenes he looks like a frisky greyhound.
It will be interesting to see whom the producers decide to go with in the end. Any chance of a Jane bond I wonder?
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#Notavessel I am absolutely astonished on a number of levels at the way a pregnant 16 year old was treated by the State. Did we learn nothing from the X case?
The 16 year old got sectioned last year because the State felt she should not have an abortion. I would have thought that the State would have bent over backwards to ensure that she did not give birth at that age.
Do we really live in an Ireland that thinks it is okay to force a 16 year old to give birth? I am astonished and angry at this. She had an absolute legal right to her own body and this was taken away from her in the worst way possible. Thankfully, a doctor decided that he agreed with this and she was eventually released. If it was me, I would sue the almighty hide out of the State for clearly wrongful detention and the violation of her human rights to ownership of her own body. That could have been anybody's 16 year old daughter locked up in that hospital.
I hope she managed to secure her abortion in the long run.
I wonder why the State did not pursue the person who got her pregnant. I would have thought this was a clear case of statutory rape. How come they did not lock him up too? In the interests of equality and all that.
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I recall my first day at school. I was put in blue dress with a white blouse. New shoes had been bought for the occasion.
We went on down to the school and it was just a blur of other small children like me. Some of them looked happy to be there and some of them were howling the place down. I just stood there,mute and nervous.
I was brought to a classroom. There were lots of other wee girls there like me. I was shown to a chair and I sat down.
My mother told me she would be back later and then she left. It was a totally new thing for me and I did not understand where I was. I was not afraid,merely unsure. I looked around me. Then a woman began talking. She asked us our names one by one. We called them out. She gave us out crayons and told us to draw what we liked in our copy books. I drew a cat. We had cats at home and one of them was grey so I drew him. The teacher went around the room one by one and looked at all of our drawings. She told me my drawing was good. I did not know what she meant. I asked her what she meant and she was trying to explain it to me. She was most surprised I did not know what it meant. When my mother came to collect me, she asked my mother why I did not know what good meant. My mother said it was because I was a bad child and so she saw no reason to say it to me. The teacher just stared at her. I was too young to understand this at the time but now I understand the horror of the teacher. That I had reached four years of age without knowing the meaning of the word good was simply too much for her tolerate. After that, she would tell me I was good a lot of the time. She was always nice to me. She knew that praise was important. I blossomed in her class and was always grateful for how she looked out for me. Praise can set people down better roads.
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So I got published for a 2nd time today. I had always had this hope of going into Eason's which is a nationally famous newsagents in Ireland and discovering I had been published.
And so it was today. I was waiting to meet my daughter and decided to have a glance to see if it had happened. And it had! My short story' The Lady in the Coffee Shop' got published and I am on air.I had been waiting since lastFebuary to get published again. It is a short story based on an event that happened to me and my daughter in a coffee shop back in 1992. She read it and said it was very good.
Later on, we were walking down the street and she asked me did this now mean I was going to be delving into my weighty arsenal of 'embarassing childhood stories' and I assured her that it did.
After all, children do give us absolute acres of mortifying moments that can normally only be erased by alcohol and time.
She does not recall the incident in the story in question but I do. Yes, even after all these years, it is etched upon my brain.
We cannot get angry with our children though when they innocently give us these moments. We did exactly the same thing to our parents when were growing up. It was simply my turn.
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We awoke to the news about Manchester this morning. All those innocent lives taken at an Ariana Grande concert.
I cannot even begin to understand the evil nature of the minds that did this. I do not care what your ideology is or which imaginary friend you are praying to as you decide to end innocent lives. Murder is murder regardless of whoever you imagine you are doing it for.
Creating panic and mayhem only works on a small scale.
I hope you are brought to justice swiftly and I hope you get nice long spells in prison.
There are many ways to make a point in warfare but slaughtering innocents has never been one of them.
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I don't know why everyone is surprised by this mans ignorance. This is not the first time that the sexist bigot Paul Costelloe has gone on tv and belittled women. The last time he was on the Late Late, he stated that Irish women only go for the label and do not always buy what suits them. Well you know what Paul, finding your style groove can be a bit of a learning curve for any woman. We can do without your remarks all the same.
This time around, you decided to belittle the wife of the future King of England literally within days of her making a visit here. You also decided to go after Penny Stewart. From a business point of you, how on Earth did you imagine that this was a wise thing to do? There you were, on national television, with a chance to actually attract a whole new generation of customers and instead you decide to go and insult women. I hope Dunnes stores thinks long and hard about stocking your clothes in future. Frankly I think it is only a matter of time before your clothes end up on the bargain rail in Vincent de Paul.
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suzy bevan / Blog
Working in the wedding industry.
#bridal I work in a charity bridal shop and it can be an illuminating experience. Humanity in all its many faces comes marching through the door. The eager bride. The bride who would happily marry in a pair of jeans but parental pressure dictates a dress. The Mammy who wants to play her part and has 1,000 opinions and does not hesitate to share them. The Groomzilla(yes,its a thing!), who does not want to be surprised by a meringue on the Big Day and wants to have his say. The young mother who wants to get up the aisle before the child is walking. The pregnant bride who wants something loose-fitting as not everyone would approve. The male gay best friend who tries on a dress for a giggle. They all show up and they all contribute hugely to the hustle and bustle of the shop. Personally I love it when you get an entire family coming in. Granny, Mammy, the Bride to be and a few sisters thrown in for good measure. They voice every opinion under the sun( You have no boobs in that)and this is done with general disregard for the brides feelings. I used to think some sisters of the bride could be a bit on the outrageous side with the comments but then again this is what sisters are for all the same. They might be excruciatingly forward but it is only because they want her to look brilliant on her big day. Each appointment in the shop only lasts an hour but it whizzes by when the families come in and they are great craic all the same. Some of them want my opinion and to some of them I am there to be ignored. Each to their own. The brides have a lovely time when they come into the shop and they thoroughly enjoy the hunt for the dress. I enjoy helping them out and the look on their faces when they have found the dress is indeed wonderful. Mammies weep and sisters shriek and everyone loses the plot for a bit. I wouldnt miss it for the world.
Reply
And so I hit the big five-oh.
#50 #oldernow. So on Monday I turned fifty. I never minded turning 30 or 40, those alleged milestones simply did not register with me. I sailed through my thirties and forties without feeling the passing of time. Now here I am and I am actually nervous about the notion of a birthday cake because it would require the fire-brigade to put the candles out. Just to add to my lack of joy, I managed to fall and wrench my ankle on my birthday. Thank you Universe. I wonder why I imagined you would have my back now that I am older. I tell myself that there are positives to getting older. I care less and less what people think. I have achieved more in terms of life ambitions in the past 3 years than I did in the previous forty-seven. I have not had a drink in two weeks and I quit smoking three years ago. Yet nothing would make me happier than to slash a decade or so off my age. Apart from the wrenched ankle, I dont feel my age at all. I think maybe it is all a matter of how old you feel in your heart and not on your birth-certificate. Personally I feel like a girl of 40. So I am going to go out and get me a cake and lie about my age to myself. Each to their own coping mechanism I guess.
Reply
I have not had a drink in a week.
#diet I have not had a drink in a week and believe you me it has not been easy. I can cope with most things knowing that when I got home, I could lock the door,put on a Dvd and horse into 3 cans of beer a night. Well, no more. I do not like the shape I am in and I decided to do something about it. The last time I stayed off the beer, I lost one and a half stone in 3 months so it is time to do this again. When you catch sight of your body in a shop window and you don't recognise yourself, you know it is time to shed some body fat. This is not a question of low self-esteem but rather the opposite. I like me just fine, it's just that I prefer the size 14 version of me than the shape I am currently in. This past week I have horsed into more salad than a marathon runner. I have downed enough low-fat yoghurt to keep several farms running. This morning I noticed that the tubby tummy I have been sporting seems to have diminished somewhat. Of course this could be wishful thinking on my part but I am going to continue with the self-imposed drinking ban for now. I am not saying it is going to be easy but there is a goal in mind. I am an actress too and I do not want to be fat in my headshots. Vanity,yes indeed but then again motivation can be such a personal thing and that is mine. So,in the company of the millions of women out there,I shall continue whittling away at my ample ass and tubby tum. I know I am not alone.
Reply
Why is he allowed to persist as President?
#DonaldTrump Why is this ginger airbag allowed to persist as Potus? America, you managed to get rid of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden but you can't seem to find a way to get rid of a bloated useless joke of a President. He has done more than Nixon to bring the office of President into disrepute and needs to be removed in the same manner. He is so psychologically unstable he would actually pick a fight in an empty room. He is not even beginning to learn anything from having the highest form of office in the land. We have all met someone like him, the bloated entitled white boy. I just don't think anyone thought that he would somehow con his way into high office due to an outdated electoral system. You can literally google his name once every twentyfour hours and you will find something stupid or dangerous that he has done on the world stage. The other world leaders are laughing up their sleeves at the state of him. He said he would'drain the swamp'. Well, he needs to start with himself.
Reply
So who is going to be the next James Bond?
#Bond It seems to have turned into a bit of a 3-horse race at the moment. Damian Lewis, Tom Hardy and Michael Fassbender are the main contenders and I have to say right now I think Michael Fassbender will get it on the basis of the fact that he is the highest profile one and he already has a massive fan following. I personally do not rate him as a sex symbol but he can act and he looks good in a tux. I reckon Damian Lewis would be wrong for it because I simply cannot perceive Bond as a ginger. This is not to say that gingers do not have their appeal, I just dont think he is right for the part. I reckon Tom Hardy would be wrong for the part because I cannot visualise him doing the whole suave and sophisticated thing in a casino, sitting there playing cards opposite a bad guy. Actually maybe Hardy would be better as the Bond villiain. I might be onto something there. I do recall a while back there was all this speculation that Tom Hiddleston was going to get it and then he wore THAT notorious t-shirt which prompted global cries of derision. Personally I never thought he was Bond. When he does love scenes he looks like a frisky greyhound. It will be interesting to see whom the producers decide to go with in the end. Any chance of a Jane bond I wonder?
Reply
Where was her human right to be 16?
#Notavessel I am absolutely astonished on a number of levels at the way a pregnant 16 year old was treated by the State. Did we learn nothing from the X case? The 16 year old got sectioned last year because the State felt she should not have an abortion. I would have thought that the State would have bent over backwards to ensure that she did not give birth at that age. Do we really live in an Ireland that thinks it is okay to force a 16 year old to give birth? I am astonished and angry at this. She had an absolute legal right to her own body and this was taken away from her in the worst way possible. Thankfully, a doctor decided that he agreed with this and she was eventually released. If it was me, I would sue the almighty hide out of the State for clearly wrongful detention and the violation of her human rights to ownership of her own body. That could have been anybody's 16 year old daughter locked up in that hospital. I hope she managed to secure her abortion in the long run. I wonder why the State did not pursue the person who got her pregnant. I would have thought this was a clear case of statutory rape. How come they did not lock him up too? In the interests of equality and all that.
Reply
Why praise makes all the difference.
I recall my first day at school. I was put in blue dress with a white blouse. New shoes had been bought for the occasion. We went on down to the school and it was just a blur of other small children like me. Some of them looked happy to be there and some of them were howling the place down. I just stood there,mute and nervous. I was brought to a classroom. There were lots of other wee girls there like me. I was shown to a chair and I sat down. My mother told me she would be back later and then she left. It was a totally new thing for me and I did not understand where I was. I was not afraid,merely unsure. I looked around me. Then a woman began talking. She asked us our names one by one. We called them out. She gave us out crayons and told us to draw what we liked in our copy books. I drew a cat. We had cats at home and one of them was grey so I drew him. The teacher went around the room one by one and looked at all of our drawings. She told me my drawing was good. I did not know what she meant. I asked her what she meant and she was trying to explain it to me. She was most surprised I did not know what it meant. When my mother came to collect me, she asked my mother why I did not know what good meant. My mother said it was because I was a bad child and so she saw no reason to say it to me. The teacher just stared at her. I was too young to understand this at the time but now I understand the horror of the teacher. That I had reached four years of age without knowing the meaning of the word good was simply too much for her tolerate. After that, she would tell me I was good a lot of the time. She was always nice to me. She knew that praise was important. I blossomed in her class and was always grateful for how she looked out for me. Praise can set people down better roads.
Reply
On getting published a 2nd time
So I got published for a 2nd time today. I had always had this hope of going into Eason's which is a nationally famous newsagents in Ireland and discovering I had been published. And so it was today. I was waiting to meet my daughter and decided to have a glance to see if it had happened. And it had! My short story' The Lady in the Coffee Shop' got published and I am on air.I had been waiting since lastFebuary to get published again. It is a short story based on an event that happened to me and my daughter in a coffee shop back in 1992. She read it and said it was very good. Later on, we were walking down the street and she asked me did this now mean I was going to be delving into my weighty arsenal of 'embarassing childhood stories' and I assured her that it did. After all, children do give us absolute acres of mortifying moments that can normally only be erased by alcohol and time. She does not recall the incident in the story in question but I do. Yes, even after all these years, it is etched upon my brain. We cannot get angry with our children though when they innocently give us these moments. We did exactly the same thing to our parents when were growing up. It was simply my turn.
Reply
The news about Manchester
We awoke to the news about Manchester this morning. All those innocent lives taken at an Ariana Grande concert. I cannot even begin to understand the evil nature of the minds that did this. I do not care what your ideology is or which imaginary friend you are praying to as you decide to end innocent lives. Murder is murder regardless of whoever you imagine you are doing it for. Creating panic and mayhem only works on a small scale. I hope you are brought to justice swiftly and I hope you get nice long spells in prison. There are many ways to make a point in warfare but slaughtering innocents has never been one of them.
Reply
Paul Costello and how his ignorance
I don't know why everyone is surprised by this mans ignorance. This is not the first time that the sexist bigot Paul Costelloe has gone on tv and belittled women. The last time he was on the Late Late, he stated that Irish women only go for the label and do not always buy what suits them. Well you know what Paul, finding your style groove can be a bit of a learning curve for any woman. We can do without your remarks all the same. This time around, you decided to belittle the wife of the future King of England literally within days of her making a visit here. You also decided to go after Penny Stewart. From a business point of you, how on Earth did you imagine that this was a wise thing to do? There you were, on national television, with a chance to actually attract a whole new generation of customers and instead you decide to go and insult women. I hope Dunnes stores thinks long and hard about stocking your clothes in future. Frankly I think it is only a matter of time before your clothes end up on the bargain rail in Vincent de Paul.
Reply