What Happened To August?

I have been away so long. Two of my August weeks were teaching in London; lucrative but exhausting and straight home to plan a wedding - my own.

I have done well- venue is arranged, flowers are chosen and booked, menu selected and distributed to guests, the corollary of which is that we finally managed to make a guest list! A posh car is booked to haul my lame old arse to the venue and taxis will be booked to take out guests to the remote Handfasting/reception location and back to their accommodation after the feast. I found a lovely lady to make the cake and it's going to be pretty, I have booked accommodation for the future mother-in-law and a driver to go and fetch her and then return her to furthest flung Essex (not cheap, I can tell you!).

But I haven't got a dress.

Panic.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't fluster me greatly, not that I get married every week, but I do know that the sort of shops that stock my dress size won't do anything like a wedding dress and I'm simply not willing to settle for floral crimplene with an Evans label sewn in the collar. So, I have to dust off my sewing machine and remember how to make beautiful clothing. I feel a bit daunted by the prospect - not the sewing, I'm good at that and have made some really lovely things in the past - no, it's the looking through the pattern books and then finding just the perfect fabric that matches what's in my head. And, of course, there's not much time as we tie the knot on the 20th September.

I feel very 'dry' at the moment. I haven't had time to do any of the small domestic things that anchor me and increasingly make me feel good. I haven't had a chance to make butter and there hasn't been a crust of bread in the house all week as I'm determined not to buy any and I never quite find time to bake some. I'm determined to get the dress made up and then spend a day in my kitchen just pottering about and baking things - it's such a therapy for me.

Lots of other weird thing are happening in the background too - people doing things that I think I understand, but in odd ways. It has been an odd month altogether and people I thought I was tuned into seem to be suddenly remote and taking a "don't call me, I'll call you" type of attitude, while others have been warm and more effusive that I had expected. Things seem so topsy-turvy. More than anything I suppose it's me - I have pulled away from writing and reading other blogs, not only through time constraints, but because I have needed to be insular and marshal my energies, focus on the important things looming for me and there's only so many hours in a day.

Tonight I retire to my bed with a slight sigh of relief. I am booked to go to the Mercian Gathering that starts tomorrow, but with all the things I am dealing with, it started to feel like a pressure rather than a pleasure. I spent a happy hour on the telephone talking to the lovely Megan, who sympathised, made me laugh and generally cheered me on, whilst alleviating the smudges of guilt I felt at wanting to wriggle out of the Gathering. She's one of the people who have turned out to be such a boon lately, bless her.

I have decided to stay at home, go to the wonderful fabric shop (actually it's a whopping great warehouse stacked to the rafters with dressmaking fabrics) in Sturminster Newton tomorrow and hunt down a nice pattern. Even if I only pin the pattern to the fabric before the end of tomorrow, I shall feel like I have made great progress. And, of course, I shall be warm and dry. I ached so much with the impending rain storms that I spent the afternoon with my arm, right up to the shoulder, in the belly of the rayburn clearing it out and making it ready to light.

Mr Cat sat looking hopefully between the rayburn and the chicken that was roasting in the electric cooker, anticipating cat heaven. Could it be that his world was going to be 'right' again, with the big brown lump of metal warming his back and a bowl of chicken flesh and skin to fill his scrawny old body? Yup! He got his wish. Mr Cat feasted on chicken, washed his face and sank gratefully on to his cat sofa (I kid you not, he has a little wicker sofa with a padded bottom as he's so old and bony) to fall asleep. I'm warm too and it's the first time I haven't had cold ankles for a week.

Well, my world may feel a little frenetic and odd, but at least the cat is happy - result!