96. Neck pain, aching feet, stiff arms….yup sounds like a good day of SHOPPING!

My cousin who is about to get married came to visit to buy all her accessories and decorations. First of all I’ve gotto tell you IT IS SO MUCH FUN SHOPPING WITH A BRIDE.

We only had 2 days to buy everything so we had to be fast! Of course we went to Southall ie. Mini India in England. I got to go all the fancy shops and actually buy stuff instead of just walking around dreaming and contemplating my future (with excitement but also a heavy dose of fear). Everyone was super willing to help because they knew we had big moneys to spend. Additionally Southall is one of the few places in England where you can ‘negotiate on the price’ and I swear my mum is a force of nature when it comes to bargaining. She is FIERCE! The vendors might come up with a figure of £120 and she’ll just dive in and say NO £60. Like I would be too embarrassed to even start that low… She’s clearly not though and to her credit, she’ll walk away probably paying £80 because she is BOSS.

My friends will know that I like all things shiny but my cousin really puts me to shame. She loves her bling! She wants to wear the biggest, shiniest, brightest jewellery possible. She picked out what I thought were HUGE earrings and dismissed them casually… ‘nope not big enough’. Like woah sister! Are you still hoping to have ears after this?

If she could have this, she probably would… It’s wayyyyy too much in my opinion but each to their own…

She also bought 5 inch heels. I made the mistake of trying them on and I seriously could not walk; the best I could do was an awkward shuffle and even wearing them for under a minute killed my feet. She on the other hand was strutting like a model, no problem. Talking of shoes…

Me no like

So many of the heels I saw were poor excuses for shoes. There was literally just a small strip that was supposed to hold your foot in place. I tried one of them on and my feet felt naked. Why would anyone want so much of their feet on show?! Feet aren’t even pretty. Also I don’t know why but wearing them made me feel like a stripper. I almost expected people to start throwing money. Maybe it was the clear heels I dunno. All I know is, never again.

 

 

My cousin was also very excited to buy some parandas which are things you plait into your hair. It’s essentially a decorative piece that some brides like to wear on their Mehndi. Ooh we also got her chooriya which are bangles. We went to this guy who specialises in this sorta stuff and showed him what colours she was going to wear; he rummaged around in the back for a while and came back with a lovely bangle set that was spot on in terms of colour combinations. It was expensive though!

Bangles bangles everywhere

This is what parandas look like

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This shopping trip was also a chance for me and my mum to look around and buy something for ourselves to wear. I saw this stunning blue dress thing that had lots of shiny stuff around the neck and they let me try it on. Guys, I looked good…my first thought was wow I look like a Middle Eastern princess. If I wore that to a wedding and didn’t come back with at least three marriage proposals, I would be disappointed. That was how good I looked. Howeverrr I was in danger of upstaging the bride and it was rather expensive so I didn’t buy it. In fact I didn’t buy anything which means I need to go to Southall… again!

Car Shambles

I also need to tell you guys about our car.

My dad was dropping us all off at Southall; he pulled out the driveway and drove a little way down the road when I started hearing this funny sound from the right hand side. I told my dad to stop and as soon as we got out of the car, we noticed that the back tyre was flat. Great start!

My dad keeps all sorts of tools and equipment in the car boot so we had everything we needed to change the tyre. I was in charge of jacking the car up (manually by the way- took bloody ages). My mum and my cousin were very helpfully still sitting in the car- thanks a lot for making this harder. Me and my dad undid the nuts and lugged the spare tyre out, replaced the tyre, redid the nuts…only to realise that it didn’t have enough air in it. Yup our replacement tyre was also flat! Wonderful! We had a (manual) foot pump in the car so again it was me standing there like an idiot pretty much jumping up and down to get air in the tyre. However I was failing epicly… because the foot pump had a crack and air was escaping. Eventually we borrowed an electronic air pump and got it all sorted out but my God, anything that could of have gone wrong DID go wrong….

Just another day in the life of Aliya.

Over and Out!