“My doom has come upon me.”  For the last twenty odd years this has been one of my stock standard quotes that I mutter at all the normal times of stress in a woman’s life including obviously childbirth, parent teacher interviews, and bikini waxes.  However, such is the power of internet that I have just discovered that whilst I thought I was quoting the lines of Tennyson’s romantic and doomed Lady of Shalott, I was in fact quoting Hector from the Illiad, setting off for a kill or be killed moment with the Greek army – ho hum.  Well I can absolutely guarantee that if like me this Saturday night, Hector was going to have to face his friends clad in a chintz frilly outfit dating back to a long forgotten twenty years ago, he would have had no doubt that doom, not to mention ritual humiliation was on its way and that death in front of a pack of Trojans would look like an attractive alternative that would allow him to end his days with at least his reputation intact.

My mood was not improved by trying on the wretched dress this morning in the vain hope that the dry cleaning process might have caused some miracle on the attractiveness front.  I particularly liked the way the lady at the dry cleaners took one look and said firmly, “All we can guarantee is that it will be hygienically clean”—small comfort in the circumstances.  Drama Queen number three gazed at me in my now hygienically clean outfit and in a confidence boosting move asked why I didn’t go as a nun.  I must admit the idea is beginning to have some appeal apart from the fact that a nun’s outfit seems a particularly inappropriate way to celebrate twenty years of married bliss.

One of my challenges for the day is to gently hint to the manager of the bar where we are having the joint celebrations that many of the guests may be dressed a little unusually.  I’m not sure he’s mentally ready for having the place flooded with inebriated forty and fifty-year-olds clad in their nineties wedding best, and I must say I am beginning to have concerns about how many Princess Di fancy frills you can fit in one small bar.