Um...

...so, I was hanging out in a place that looked like this:

Yeah, okay, I admit that I was clearly bunking off my revision and I was looking exactly like this:

All on project plan and totally, utterly, smugly, on project schedule (or so I thought).

When I received this text from Lara:

"Hiya, were u successful with dress fitting and pickup?"

I freeze - surely that is at 10:30am tomorrow????! My plan says so. I am certain of it. To add weight to my argument, I tell myself, the shop has not phoned to demand where I am and why I have missed my appointment.

I phone Lara and tell her this. She pointed out that the alterations lady doesn't work on Saturdays and to top it all, she wrote this appointment down in her diary at the time that we made it, so she was certain.

Inside, I have that sick feeling that knows that I am wrong and that Lara is right. I now recall that the alterations lady does not work on Saturdays, so how on earth could my appointment and second fitting be on a Saturday?

At that point, I grip the nettle of reality. There is nothing that I can do about it - I am sitting in a hair salon a good 30+ minutes drive from my plastic fantastic dress and at that precise moment in time?

I realise that I look like something out of A Flock of Seagulls, with chemicals doing their caustic best to stop the top of my head from looking like a neglected, greying cowpat.

Trust me, even I know that a girl knows that when she looks like this? She ain't going anywhere fast.

So I breathe and I relax. I browse the net from my phone to obtain the shop's number. I call them, I apologise and I make the appointment to be prodded by a disapproving Russian-sounding lady for a second time, at the same time, next Tuesday.

The good news is that the hair result is okay.

Also, this afternoon? The artisan goldsmith coughed up our rings - we have them in our clammy mitts. Now our rings were made deliberately one half-size too small on the basis that the artisan could easily tap them up to the actual size we need.

The good news is that the Fella thinks that his might be okay as it is. However, I think that mine is a touch too small for comfort (it just about goes on and it's snug around my finger but it jams significantly at the knuckle joint on the way off). The goldsmith was not there when we went to collect the rings. Instead, there was this older, quite obnoxious woman who served us and declared my ring 'a perfect fit' and treated me like an idiot when I asked if it could be made a tiny bit bigger.

As you can imagine, I respond well to that kind of treatment. I am not daft. If it is made a bit bigger, I realise that I increase the risk of it flying off when my hands are wet. However, equally, I need a ring that I can get on and off easily because I cannot wear any jewellery when I am competing. I cannot risk having a ring that I cannot get off in the height of summer during a match. I tried to explain but she just, quite deliberately from the expression of 'I know better than you' on her face, did not get this at all.

I realised that I was not going to get anywhere when she suggested that if I were to leave it there to be tapped up in size (not a big job from my memory of jewellery making at university) that I would probably not get it back in time for the wedding. In fact, from her expression, I got the distinct impression that she would personally make sure that this was the case.

So I didn't really have much option other than to agree to take it away, wear it for a few weeks and then come back if I still feel that I need to have it adjusted. Anyone want to run a book or whether I will need to adjust it?! I am happy to be wrong about needing it sized up a little.

Do you know, just about everything that I have had to buy for this wedding has reinforced to me that shopping is, by and large, an abjectly miserable experience - I hate it.