Photo Diary : Date Set, Invites Sent

After 8 years of being engaged we've set a date for the wedding. On October 8th 2011 we'll have an intimate (i.e. small) gathering and tie the knot. And I couldn't be happier.

Mr & Mrs Manser

On a sunny and slightly breezy 30th May 2010, Kimberly Christa Rebecca Atkins married Sam Manser, forming what can only be described as Samberly, a visualisation & fancy dress expert with emo tendencies and a penchant for girly drinks (that's mostly Sam, to be fair). This of course means that both of my siblings have got engaged and married during Jen and I's protracted but perfect engagement.

Although they've been planning the wedding for well over a year (in typical Kim fashion, she's got through three wedding dresses in this time), the whole thing snuck up on me a little, probably because we live nowhere near any of my family and have had the luxury of avoiding involvement with what was surely lengthly and arduous planning. For this reason, the emotional weight of it all hit me randomly on the day, like a sack full of sweetly scented rocks. First was during my dad's amazing father of the bride speech and secondly was (admittedly after quite alot of drink) watching Kim and Sam dancing and holding back the man-tears. I blame Pixar's Up, before that film I hadn't openly cried since watching My Girl when I was 10.

I can only apologise that this well-intentioned post is sandwiched between reviews of 'Cannibal Man' and, in due course, 'Snuff'. As some kind of weak mitigation I came up with the following analogy: Life is generally a lot of rubbish with some wonderful moments in between. Kim and Sam's wedding was, and this is not hyperbole, perfect. Apart from everyone's inability to pronounce my sister's full name, the day couldn't of been better. Kim and Sam deserve it. It's clear how wonderful they are as both people and as a couple by the warmth of the family and friends that surround them.

One day like this a year will set me right.

Another Day, Another Website

In early September we attended to Becky & Matt's wedding at the pituresque Rushton Hall. RNIB had owned and ran the country estate as a school for the blind since 1957 but decided to sell it on in 2003. To be fair, i'm pretty sure the ornate interiors were lost on most of the students (yeah, i'm going to hell).

I've actually visited the estate before in its former guise, as part of the Montagu School Band to perform christmas carols to the kids. We were told that after our performance one child who hadn't spoken for years uttered 'more'. But my black heart just cannot believe something so beautiful and uplifting could be true. Lying bastards.

I stupidly offered to create a website such that everyone can see pictures from the day. I say stupidly, because sometimes I forget that i'm not a web designer. The term web designer is generally (and incorrectly) used for anyone who works on a website, even though the design of the site is only one part of piecing the technical jigsaw together. I'm a Web Developer or (according to my employee) a Systems Analyst Developer. I'm not a graphic designer.

Because of this I agonised over the design of the site for hours plonking things on the page with no real concept of the complete design or understanding of how colours and shapes fit together to create an aesthetically pleasing site. That's probably why the end product turned out pretty simple. Luckily I think my hours of throwing stuff on a page ended up looking ok, but I can't help but think that a professional designer could of knocked it up in 10 minutes.


Anyway, have a look yourself here - www.mrandmrsshort.com. According to my mum, I don't look good with a bow tie on. How rude.

2009, Week 12 & 13

I hope I haven't offended The Elders of the Internet by not posting a weekly ramble last week. Some stuff happened that my head is struggling to filter properly. If this was a private diary I would probably write about it, but it's not. I've always said this diary/blog was to act as a memory warm-up in years to come, and i'm pretty sure that I've said enough to bring things back. Needless to say, if God does exist, he/she/it can go fuck himself/herself/itself with a big stick.

We've got a new family on the street and they've moved into our loft. For the last two weeks we've been woken up at 6am by birds scratching on the roof of the bedroom. Banging on the roof seems to stop the scratching for a while. A few minutes later the noise promptly starts up again, just as you get to that sweet spot when your minds starts drifting into dreamy nonsense.

One Sunday we were woken at 6am and I snapped. I stalked around the bedroom in my pants (good look) trying to work out exactly where the avian arsehole was. Once I found the bastard I smaked the roof, hard. There was silence for a few seconds and then all hell broke loose, baby birds screeching and the mum going crazy. Jen's taken to hitting the roof before we go to bed, see how they like being woken up! I really hope for our sanity and our loft's hygene they go soon.

The weekend before last was dominate by weddings. Saturday was my Cousin's wedding in Great Misenden and probably the first time I've seen almost all of the extended family for years. I'm quite anti-social, generally avoiding contact with people I don't talk to much (less anti-social, more lazy-social) but I think I had a brief conversation with everyone, which is an achievement for me. I forget how cool they all are. I think I'll make more of an effort from now on.

Sunday was a wedding fayre at the now dead-cert wedding reception venue. We keep flip-flopping between having a large invite-everyone-we've-ever-met wedding and having an intimate, close family and friends wedding. It's looking likely that we're going for the later. I think it's a mistake when a wedding becomes more about making other people happy, especially when many of those other people aren't (comparatively) that important to your life and relationship. Also, there's more money to spend on the Honeymoon and as we want to get half way round the world for at least 3 weeks we need all the money we can get.

This weekend Martin & Sarah came up and we all went out for some Japanese, Cocktails and Dancing. Well, lack-lustre dancing in a pretty much deserted Echos. Going to a night club at 11pm is a really bad idea. Especially because when you're literally the first people in the place the booze fueled facade doesn't exist. I can understand the toilets looking a state at 3am once it's been assaulted by inebriated students, but it's a bit worrying when there is mud coated up one of the cubical doors when you're the first person in. And where does the mud come from? the place is in the middle of a decidedly concretey town centre. Maybe they ship it in from Manchester to complete the shitty indy club from the early 90's look. Quality establishment.

As usual my head was banging the next day. People always say don't mix your drinks, so what idiot invented cocktails?

2009, Week 7

For a few hours this week, there was a big chance that I had been horribly killed. Well, at least from my from Mum's point of view, as there was a car accident in Loughborough and she happened to hear about it. I'm not complaining, it's nice to know that someone is thinking about you. I do feel sorry for my sister who lives in South London, she must get the 'just checking you're not dead' answering machine message twice a day.

Talking of the afterlife, it turns out that our potential wedding venue, Leicester's Guild Hall, is the most haunted building in Leicester. So haunted in fact that Yvette Fielding and a bunch of morons paranormal researchers have paid it a visit (you can watch the footage on youtube, although you really must have something, anything better to do, don't you?). There's also 'The Best Paranormal Evidence' which was shot at the Guild Hall, which is essentially sped up footage of sun light moving across a floor. These ghostbusters would shit themselves if they ever saw a disco ball in full swing. Oh, and if you really do buy into most haunted, you really have to read this expose of Derek Acorah, it's hilarious.

There's a weird looking monument that we drive past everytime we goto Loughborough, and I really wanted to go check it out this weekend. It's called the 'Temple of Venus' and sits solitary on a hill next to the A512 (picture here). I know it's on the Garendon Park estate which has partly public grounds, but there are no noticable footpaths near the monument. The only useful bit of information I could find was from the knowhere guide:

the venus temple, ... the farmer. whenever u try to cross his field to get to it, he fires his fucking gun! wanker.

Unsurprisingly, I rain-checked the idea and watched The Wire instead. Me being shot dead would only upset my mum and put a real downer on the weekend.

This weekend I really wanted to fix the floorboards in the bathroom. At the moment standing on them feels like being on a ship in stormy weather. It turns out this is because they're badly fitted and dangerously thin. Basically, until I fix them we need to introduce a weight limit on the bathroom. Until normal service resumes, fatties will be redirected to the shed with a bucket. As usual though, I procrastinated upon this all weekend and got absolutely nothing done.

My little sister was annoying me with compliments this week. She'd been listening to my 6th form band demo CD and asking why I don't record songs anymore. Buoyed by her encouragement I restrung my guitar (previous strings were 4 years old) and wrote a song about how I shouldn't write songs anymore. Unintentionally, It was actually a meta-song in that the song itself proved the point of the lyrics. Nevertheless, I ordered a shiny new 88 key 'stage piano' (i.e. keyboard) to try and start learning piano again, something which I started a year ago and quickly abandoned, blaming my previous keyboard and its sticky keys.

Plan next week? Putting some good time into procrastinating about floor boards and pro-actively planning my excuse for giving up on the piano again. After all, you've got to plan if you ever want to get anything done.

CNPS: 15 (stuck)

2009, Week 5

Monday morning we woke up to the most snow we've had in 18 years. For the whole week snow kept falling, freezing, and almost causing Jen and I to have a minor car crash. On Monday we both left work early (for safety reasons, obviously) and because the snow was still novel we made a frosty guitar hero, which was soon David to the Goliath that was built by some neighbours over the road. Being cosy inside when it's freezing outside is amazingly relaxing, and thanks to flexi-time I can leave and return home early, get in a sleeping bag and watch The Wire. By Wednesday we were both fed up of the snow wishing it would get back to good old miserable rainy february.


All week The Met Office were advising people not to make non-essential journeys. What the hell is a non-essential journey? Going to work isn't strictly essential, getting out of bed isn't essential, brushing my teeth isn't essential, washing at least a week isn't essential, well, you get my point. Simon at work pointed out that all week had been like that magical time between Christmas and New Years, when the office was only half-full and it didn't feel like you have to work at full capacity (or in other words, it felt that staring out of the window cheering on minor car crashes was a legitimate use of time).

My sister met Prince Harry, Neve Cambell and Matthew Lillard this week. She meets alot of legitimately famous people working in a leading costume hire shop in central london. To be honest I think she goes on about it too much. I saw Tim Vincent at a service station 4 years ago and you don't hear me going on about that! show off.

Kim and Sam got me a Munny for Christmas. My Munny's accessory was a Baseball bat, so I decided that the Munny had to be a Droog. Here he is. Don't fuck with him, he'll break your legs.


Jen's been doing some cooking this weekend and it's been tasty. First up an 'Onion Soup au Gratin' (Soup with cheese on toast on top to you and me), sounds weird, tastes lush. Then a chocolate beetroot cake. Apparently the beetroot makes the whole thing moist. Again, sound weird, tastes lush. Here's a picture of the chocolate cake being dominated by my naked Munny:


We decided to go see a potential wedding venue on Sunday - Leicester's Guild Hall. Despite the fact that the hall is a minute walk from the Shire's shopping centre, we'd never been past it before. More to the point, it's directly opposite Leicester's Cathedral, which we'd also never been to before. The hall is wonderful. Built in the 16th Century it looks almost untouched (apart from a neat visitors centre). Assuming it doesn't cost too much (which it shouldn't, as it's owned by the council), we've pretty much settled on it as our wedding venue. Also, a lovely hotel Jen found weeks ago for the reception is a minutes walk away, how good is that?




On the way back from Leicester it started snowing again so we decided to go up Beacon Hill and take some photos, here's a few:





CNPS : 14

I'm the Best [Man]!

It was my Big Brother's weekend last week and I was fortunate enough to be asked to be his Best Man. When Neil first asked me to be his best man my not-so-well-considered response was 'oh no'. Note: This is one of those few questions where 'oh no' is a really bad response. Others include 'Will you marry me?' and 'I'm pregnant'.

Of course I was happy to be my Brother's Best Man, flattered in fact. My response was purely down to fear of giving the inevitable speech. I'm quite good at doing stuff in front of crowds. I think it's something to do with singing in a band through out school. Nothing can be more scary then singing Radiohead album tracks at bi-annual school ceremonies in front of 100's of parents whilst sporting a ginger afro (Growing my hair long did not work as expected). Regardless, I was still filled with dread, mainly because I didn't have a drummer to blame if it all went tit's up.

To make it even more difficult, I decided not to cop out and use the internet for one liners. I've seen a few best man speeches and the ones cribbed from the internet never sound quite right. The delivery is odd and blatantly not the words of the person giving the speech. So it was down to me, my memory and my sounding board (Jen).

The mainstay of any best man's speech is sentences that start with 'I remember when...', 'When X was Y...', 'X won't want me to mention this, but...' or even 'I remember when X Y'd a Z'. For this, I needed to remember stuff, which is a problem. My long term memory is great, if I have some a cue to trigger the memory. This is pretty much why I've started blogging any slightly interesting thing that happens in my life. My hope is that I can read over this in 10 years and it will be a good enough cue for the memories to come flooding back.

Thankfully I had mum on hand for memory cues, and over two weeks things came together quite nicely. To act as one of the aforementioned cues in 10 years time, here's my speech

It feel's like I've known Neil all my life. [Believe it or not, this is a joke]. Growing up with Neil I was him go through a number of phases. In one such phase Neil starting wearing nail varnish, eyeline and even a dress. OK, he was 8 and it was a fancy dress party but it was a bit worrying that he ran around shouting 'My name is Rowena and a drink Ribena'

When Neil was 16, he found his first love - himself. Honestly, he had more beauty products than the body shop. You wouldn't think it looking him at him now but he used to have a floppy fringe that he'd style for hours everyday. If it was reflective, he'd check himself out in it. I vividly remember one dinner when I looked up to see Neil mesmerized by his reflection in a spoon.

At about the same age Neil found his first life partner - Mr Wilkinson. Neil's been working for Wilkinson's now for 12 years, which coincidentally is the same age as the pick'n'mix in the Kettering branch. If Neil ever goes to a town or city that he hasn't visited before, he turns into a spy for Wilkinson's own brand MI5 checking on the competition - other Wilkinson's. I honestly stood outside the Nottingham Wilkinson's for 15 minutes while he sneaked around mocking their pitiful toilet roll display.

When Neil's not working undercover for Wilkinson's, he's fishing. What I was going to do here was say a bunch of really bad fishing puns...and I couldn't think of anything better, so here we go.

There's no trout that Neil's caught the catch of the day
Cod only knows that Neil's netted salmon special

Now I know Neil's been looking forward to his big day for years. And last December it finally came!



I was a bit worried that Neil would still be hung over from the stag do. OK, it was two weeks ago but I'd never seen him drink so much. 3 Lager shandies and a Baileys! Amazing!

In all honesty, I've spent the last two weeks trying to think of embarrassing things to say about my brother and it's been hard, because he's one of the nicest people I know, and I'm sure him and Corinne will be very happy together.

And here's a picture of me and Jen laughing at something.