I have been to Florence, and returned with not a whole great deal more knowledge than before, except that I now fully realise that I really never want to go on holiday solely with my parents ever, ever again. Unfortunately I do not get a choice in the matter, so we will see how sane I am after our supposed two-week jaunt in Cuba next year to attend my brother's wedding.

The wedding itself I am really looking forward to. I have never been to a wedding before, so my only experiences of them are from sugar-coated Richard Curtis films, and from my friends' accounts which feature excruciatingly embarrasing incidents involving drunken relatives. And as a bridesmaid, I will be ideally placed to witness any such occurences. I cannot wait. While I know both the former and the latter wedding ideals will be unlikely due to the exotic location, I know it will still be pretty amazing- at least if the dear couple have not been driven to murder by his mother-in-law's attempts to hijack it and make it her wedding. Aren't families fun?

We (my brother, bride-to-be and I) went on a mission to London to uncover what kind of styles and prices we could expect from wedding attire. We did all the department stores on Oxford St (John Lewis wins the prize for being the worst designed store ever), with mixed results. Wedding dress designers, it seems, currently have a predilection for huge amounts of diamante and/or ruffles, neither of which Fliss and I are great fans of. While this was rather disheartening, we also trekked out to Oriental City- a giant warehouse filled with various shops selling Asian stuff- to check out the cheongsams which Fliss had spotted online and was rather fond of. Though dubious at first, I soon fell in sweet, cheongsam love.


LOOK, LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS. And, very rarely for a dress, it actually fits me as well as it does the mannequin. I want it. Even if Fliss's mother forbids something as horribly untraditional as a cheongsam to be worn at a wedding, I may well be forced to buy it for myself anyway. Such is the way with pretty things.

Speaking of, only a month 'til I see Patrick Wolf live!


In no way am I excited for any reason other than the brilliant and extraordinary music he creates. No way at all.

I'm going to Florence tomorrow. It will be a week of soaking in art and culture and sun, to return home, dazzling in my bronzed and beknowledged brilliance.

Or, it could rain all week and I could get horribly bored. There's only so much renaissance art and architecture I can take, after all. Who knows?

It better be sunny, at any rate, after the hardship of trying to buy a suitable piece of swimwear for wearing on the poolside. Here follows a story with an important lesson to be learned.

Foolish and naive as I am, I hadn't worried about buying a bikini up until my holiday was less than a week away. It would be something I could just nip into a shop for, I thought; something I would pick up with no trouble, a simple matter of handing-over some money before being on my merry way.

What I hadn't realised is that by the end of July, it is in fact well into the season and there is NOTHING left in the shops- none of those in Aylesbury, at least- unless you are a size 18+. I went from shop to shop, all over town, desperately trying to find something that fit me. But everywhere I went, there seemed only one solution: get really, really fat, really, really quickly.

Finding something in my size wasn't the only obstacle I had. If at all possible I wanted something that was just a bit tasteful, which counted out the rainbow-striped and gold lamé bikinis in New Look, as well as the slithery green ones in Bay Trading Co. With my field of choice already substantially narrowed by these two factors, the next would leave me practically optionless: I needed a bikini that would protect my modesty. The pretty little triangle top ones, which might look great on lollipop-people from the OC and suchlike, cannot cope with a curvy woman. Wearing one of those, I would be in extreme danger of falling out at any moment. I would look like I am basing my look on Jordan. Please no one find that an attractive prospect because it is NOT happening.

So, not only would I have to become the miracle weight-gain woman, I would also somehow have to lose all but a hint of boobs whilst doing so. Nice.

I couldn't bear to do it. Also, I don't think it's possible in the space of a few hours. I ended up in Boots, which in fact has a nice selection of holiday swimwear; unfortunately, they don't have changing rooms. I bought one bikini and was forced to scuttle over to Next to try it on, only to bring it back a few minutes later. I then found a tankini top that would do, as I was clearly not in luck bikini-wise that day, but I could not be bothered to repeat the whole buying-it-then-possibly-bringing-it-back process. So, checking that nobody was looking, I scurried down a seemingly little-used corridor and up a short flight of stairs into a photo booth, stripped to the waist and shoved it over my head, all the while fearful that either a member of staff would throw back the curtain to accuse me of shop-lifting, or else someone who really wanted a photo done would peek 'round to see why I was taking so long.

It had to do. Although it was hard to judge properly what it looked like by my reflection in the glass-pannelled screen of the booth, I was too drained of energy to find anything better. Unfortunately, as the bottoms to match it had a very high cut leg that brought to mind various lycra creations from the 80s, I was forced to buy a lower piece from BHS. This means my tankini does not match. They are both nice, and the colours are the same, but the outfit as a whole still, quite clearly, is not meant to be.

To a celebrated city of great art and culture, I will be bringing great shame :(

So, what can this tragic tale teach us? Don't leave it 'til the last minute to go bikini shopping and, if by a horrible chance you do, for the love of God don't do it in Aylesbury. Unless you are very fat.

Stupid boys who don't have to go through such trials...