The end of the beginning
I have just had a very eventful weekend! My boyfriend didn’t have to work for the first time in ages, and so we were free to do what we liked 
That was exciting enough on its own, because the past few months have tended to consist of a few snatched hours between rail replacement buses, but added to that was something else to send my excitement to life-threatening levels: we now have a car!!!
The reasons we have not had a car before are numerous and varied. For a start, I’ve never learnt to drive. My boyfriend can drive, rather well in fact, but until last Friday his car was being used by his brother. When I first met him about two years ago, he had just given it away on the grounds that he was going to emigrate to South Korea. Happily he later changed his mind, although I hasten to add that that decision had nothing whatsoever with the fact that he had just met me 
Now his brother has a new car, and so we are no longer a slave to public transport It’s rather a strange feeling. I’ve never had a boyfriend who had a car before, but it adds a whole new dimension to life
My boyfriend arrived to collect me from home on Saturday afternoon. This was rather a momentous occasion itself, because it marked the first time he had met my parents properly. He had previously met my sister for a coffee, and he had had admittedly seen my parents once before, but it was in fraught circumstances not exactly conducive to getting to know one another, so this was the first real meeting. As the time of his arrival drew near, I began to feel a little nervous about it, but in the end everything went surprisingly well. My boyfriend decided to suck up to my mother by buying her a bunch of flowers, and this went down predictably well, though I would like to point out that he has never bought me any flowers :cry: My mother managed to track down some sugar to make him a cup of tea, and there passed an hour in which he played his part so well that my parents emerged with the (erroneous!) impression that he is both charming and intelligent 
His ordeal survived, I was soon whisked away to face mine, which I think was altogether worse I was invited to attend a surprise party in honour of my boyfriend’s cousin’s 30th birthday, and this involved being introduced to vast quantities of his family members. It also, rather obviously, involved attending a party, which to me is an horrific ordeal in itself. I am struggling to think of a party which I have enjoyed since I passed the age of eight… Having picked up my boyfriend’s sister and their husband, we drove to the place we assumed was the venue. To say it looked inauspicious would be putting it mildly. It was a very rough looking social club, with a selection of rather dubious youths sitting outside on picnic benches; the sort of place where you walk into the bar and everyone just turns round and stares at you. Slightly disconcerting was the fact that even my boyfriend and his sister didn’t appear to recognise any of the handful of other guests who were arriving, but we were nevertheless assured that this was the correct venue and made our way bravely inside.
Inside it was pretty much like any other unenjoyable party I have ever been to, except obviously that I knew less people. I was introduced to a long line of similar looking uncles, all of whom were probably very nice people but had the unfortunate appearance of someone who could earn a living playing the part of hardened crim on ‘The Bill’. For a while I had to stand around like a spare part in a rather excruciating manner, but luckily halfway through the evening I managed to get a seat in a darkened corner where I could sit unnoticed with a disgustingly warm lemonade and contemplate whether I should consider extricating myself from this relationship before my boyfriend’s slight tendencies towards baldness and a pot belly become so pronounced as those of his relations 
In the end I decided that maybe I could offer to pay for his hair medication and gym membership and that this might solve the problem One of his uncles was actually lovely and spoke to me for a while about when he used to be stationed in Germany and the price of living in Amsterdam. After a while a band started to play and I passed the time feeling very sorry for them, because they were terribly enthusiastic but somewhat underappreciated by the audience. At one point there was some food, and I managed to grab some sausage rolls and crisps which prevented me from dying of hunger
About eleven, my boyfriend’s mother decided to take pity on us and said she would give my boyfriend’s sister and husband a lift home if we wanted to leave now. We both jumped at the chance to escape, and were soon heading back to his parents house where he repaid me five quid of his Slovakian debt and we half-watched a Transformers cartoon. The Transformers cartoon was a little beyond me; I found it kind of like a football match, where most of the time is spent in trying to determine who is on which side and then just as you think you’ve got it sorted, they all change, but perhaps I wasn’t paying sufficient attention.
My boyfriend’s parents were kindly letting me stay in their spare room, which is very nice apart from the fact that they live next door to a motorway, and all you can hear all night long is the ugly drone of traffic. It took me several hours to reach anything approaching sleep, as it’s a sound which makes me rather agitated. I woke up around seven, spent an hour or so trying to convince myself that I wasn’t actually awake, then gave up and text my boyfriend with a hint that he might like to find me some breakfast
Sunday was a much less stressful day than Saturday. We drove to Bradgate Park, which we had visited a few weeks ago on foot, and this time were able to climb a little hill to see a monument called Old John. My boyfriend decided he was going to show off by jogging up part of the hill, and promptly collapsed in a hyperventilating heap at the top 
The best part of the day, however, was the ducks There is a very picturesque piece of water which runs through the park, and we found a pool with quite a collection of ducks. My boyfriend busied himself taking photos whilst I proceeded to feed them; they were really goregous, and one of them in particular was so tame that he would almost have eaten the bread out of my hand! A very relaxing way to spend a Sunday morning
After that we were hungry, and stopped at the first pub we came to to refuel. It actually turned out to be a rather expensive sort of pub, but I had the largest burger I have ever seen, and very nice it was too Before we drove back to Birmingham, we stopped off at my boyfriend’s house to burn a couple of CDs, and spent the journey back listening to Michel Thomas Advanced German
All in all, it was such an enjoyable day that this morning I feel like I am coming back to work after having been on holiday! It is a big relief to know that my parents are going to get along with my boyfriend, and it is going to make such a difference from now on to have a car. It seems like things are only going to get better, and I am very much looking forward to it Hopefully this weekend will turn out to be what I would like to think of as the end of the beginning.
Tags: bradgate park, car, Ducks