A few stray thoughts…

Are you a fan of a flamboyant marriage proposal?

If you are, Channel Four’s new show, ‘Will You Marry Me?’ is the icing on your wedding cake.  It focuses on a plush ‘proposal agency’, whose staff plan and stage ostentatious question-popping scenarios for their clients.

“There are actual agencies for proposals, now?” I spluttered to my husband David, as we watched a lanky, lovestruck man in a knitted hat traipse into the agency.  He wanted them to create an ‘escape room experience’ for his girlfriend, at the university where they’d first met as students… with him waiting at the end as the final prize.

Another man wanted to propose in mid-air, just after he and his girlfriend had jumped out of a plane together.  I could help thinking about what might have happened if she’d said no… the rest of that descent would have been pretty awkward.  You might even hope for an accident at the bottom.

I thought this agency must be an quirky one-off, but no.  When I Googled “proposal agency” I was met with a dazzling array of agencies and options, most of which started at around a thousand quid a pop.  I have so many questions.  Starting with: who spends that sort of money on a proposal?  Followed by: do you get a refund if your propose-ee says no?

(David proposed to me on my birthday, with no bells or whistles.  He’d already given me my birthday present – a bobblehead of Kim Wexler from Better Call Saul, if you must know – and then he got down on one knee and said: “I’ve got one last gift for you.  Me, for the rest of your life.”  I said yes and I didn’t ask for the receipt, so it must be love.)

I’m doing NaNoWriMo

For the uninitiated, this is National Novel Writing Month, which lasts for the whole of November.  You basically have to write a 50,000-word novel in a month.

I’m using it to write by instinct only.  Take a basic story idea – such as: a menopausal woman trying to reconnect with ‘the one who got away’ – and just write it out.  No plan, no lengthy character profiles.  It’s been fun so far, mostly because I’m not writing to order.  When I feel myself getting bored with the story, I just make a character say something explosive and off it goes again.

I’ll probably dump half of what I end up writing.  But I did that with my first novel and it was worse because I cared more.  I really do recommend NaNoWriMo for anyone with a vague idea for a book and a healthy amount of stamina.

Would you come to this event?

Don’t worry, I’m not actually asking.  It’s not real.  There’s no date on it, for a start.

This is just my coaching homework from last week.  J, the coach in question, asked me to design a poster for an event at which I’d read my own writing.

She then made me read some of my own writing to her.  For reference, I read the blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago, about satisfactory sorries.  I hid my screen so I couldn’t see J’s face – way too agonising – but I heard her laugh at the Gary Barlow bit, which felt… good, actually.

I’ve got no idea if any of what I’m currently doing has legs.  But it does feel a little bit like something’s about to happen.

(BTW – in case you were wondering, the ‘audience’ bit at the bottom of that poster is watermarked because I’m too stingy to pay for Canva Pro.  I’ve also noticed – for the first time, which is awful – that there is no full-stop at the end of the sentence about me being the female David Sedaris.  Good thing this isn’t a real poster, eh?)