The online diary of Caroline Westbrook following her marriage on September 6 1998 to Leslie Bunder.
Thursday July 1 1999
Trying to get back into the old routines now that the holiday is over – we are, however, already planning our next expedition! Yup, it looks as though we will be going to New York at the end of August for a family party (any excuse really!). So we have only just got back from one trip and already we are booking another. Just the way I like it.
Friday July 2 1999
New York looks to definitely be a goer. More details as we get them. At the moment I am trying to catch up on Wimbledon, most of which I missed because I was away, but to my utmost joy it seems to be continuing into another week on account of all the rain! Hurrah! Maybe I will get to see a final after all.
Saturday July 3 1999
Stocked up on supplies (nothing in, of course, as we have been away) and spent the evening with Karen and Edward at a very nice (non-kosher) Italian restaurant in Golders Green. Coincidentally, they are off to the US – Boston to be precise – in a few days too.
To my dismay, it appears that both the Wimbledon finals are being played tomorrow – while I am at my aunt and uncle’s silver wedding party. Drat! Yes, I know there is something to be said for video recorders, but these things go on forever (tennis finals, not silver wedding parties).
Sunday July 4 1999
The silver wedding party was lovely, although the tension of not knowing what had happened in the tennis (finally the weather was wonderful) got to everybody and by mid-afternoon everybody was glued to Pete Sampras/Andre Agassi. Which turned out to be a bit of a foregone conclusion, as Sampras won it in about an hour and a half. Poor Agassi!
Monday July 5 1999
Very exciting, as today was the day we saw the South Park movie. Which, considering that the TV show has been going downhill of late, was pretty good, although it ran out of steam somewhat after its fabulous first half hour. Great songs as well, they could have come straight out of a Disney movie, were it not for the language involved.
Went to Women In Journalism summer party afterwards. Couldn’t quite remember what movie it was we had seen by the time we left. South something or other, no idea. The film has that forgettable effect on you. Great while you’re watching it, don’t expect to remember it half an hour later. Except for those songs of course, which will run around your head for days on end.
Tuesday July 6 1999
David has received the fax, but he now needs the photos so he can put the album together! Cue much rifling through pictures, serial numbers etc. Complicated stuff but I think we finally got it sorted (well, we’d better have done as they are on their way to him as we speak).
Wednesday July 7 1999
Nothing much else to report today, except to say that the weather has become increasingly hot.
Thursday July 8 1999
Spent a really top night out at the Screen International Annual Film Quiz, at which Empire enters a table. The whole shebang was at Planet Hollywood (cue inevitable cholesterol-laden-yet-delicious catering), and consisted of ten rounds worth of questions, all of which required you to watch movie clips in those funny little round television screens they have there. Anyway, we came joint fourth which was not as we had hoped but it was a big improvement on the previous year and we beat Emma Thompson’s table which left us with a certain degree of satisfaction.
No satisfaction on the raffle though – there I was all primed to win the two American Airlines tickets to anywhere in the US and someone else bagged it! Went home empty-handed (not so much as a Virgin T-shirt) The only downside of the whole evening was having to wait nearly an hour for my cab afterwards and not getting home until about 1.30 am.
Friday July 9 1999
Decided to skip screening of Wild Wild West tonight on the grounds of being far too exhausted from the previous evening’s exertions (for which read: heard it wasn’t very good so decided not to go). Sensible idea, as it turned out, the film apparently really isn’t much cop and it meant I got an earlier night anyway.
Saturday July 10 1999
Quiet Saturday night in, on the grounds that the weather is too warm to go anywhere. Went and grabbed wonderful fish and chips at The Sea Shell before heading home and flaking out.
Sunday July 11 1999
Up early to go to screening of new Disney movie Tarzan in Leicester Square. Met up with Judy, who I hadn’t seen for ages, and we had a very nice time enjoying the movie and keeping a beady eye on Tarzan’s loincloth. Headed to the gym afterwards for a huge popcorn-burning workout. And then Leslie picked me up and we headed for home. It really is beginning to get very warm and about time, after all the rain we’ve been having.
Monday July 12 1999
Was feeling all movie-d out until about 7.15 this evening when the news
came that everybody in the office is getting tickets to go to the Star Wars
premiere party on Wednesday night! I am very excited - firstly because
this is, like, the biggest movie of the year, secondly because if it's
anything like as good as the Batman And Robin premiere which boasted the biggest and best party of 1997 it will be a blast.
Looks like it's going to be black tie, and also looks as though it won't start until about 11 pm. So getting up the motivation to go having gone home and had something to eat and gotten comfy will be difficult. But hey, I'm sure I can manage it for Star Wars!
Tuesday July 13 1999
Nothing too much else to report today. Am busily dusting down the posh
frock.
Wednesday July 14 1999
The big night! The good thing about events like this is you get invited
so close to the actual day that you don't have to spend months thinking
about what you might wear, or how you might get there. As it was, the party
didn't actually start until midnight. Which left me in two minds as to whether
to go or not (particularly as Leslie didn't get an invite), as motivating
myself to leave the flat at 11.30 pm would be a tough one.
Eventually arranged to meet my colleagues at a restaurant on the South Bank a couple of hours earlier, meaning I got to leave home earlier. And it was black tie, so went home, had some dinner and got my little red number out of the wardrobe.
Met up with everybody at about 11 pm, and headed for the party, which
was in a huge tent in a field at the bottom of Tower Bridge, an hour later.
The do itself was OK, although as is usually the case at these things the real
stars were locked away in some private inner sanctum, leaving the scattering
of soap stars and people who looked as though they ought to be famous but
probably weren't, to mill about on the main floor with us lesser
mortals.
Which is fun for a while, especially when you bump into other guests
you know whom you haven't seen for ages, but it starts to get a bit boring after
a while. Once I'd walked round and gawped at all the sets, the huge
quantities of guests, the stunt folk on stilts, the ice sculpture of Jar Jar Binks
(who on earth would want to make an ice sculpture of Jar Jar Binks? I can
only assume it was a Darth Maul sculpture which melted), and the live band
(like, if I want to see a live band I'll pay £15 to see one I want to see, as
opposed to this) I was ready for home (although by this time it was 2
in the morning so who can blame me?) Finally got home about 2.30 and fell into
bed. Not the best party ever, but at least I can say I was there.
Thursday July 15 1999
Arrived at work fashionably late. I, of course, was not the only one,
everybody else having been at Star Wars the night before. Spent most of
the day feeling tired and grumpy and wanting to go to sleep. Which of
course I wasn't able to do until hours later. Call me picky, but I have to say
it was very nice to go home tonight and, well, stay there.
Friday July 16 1999
I think I have had enough excitement for one week. A quiet weekend may well be in order.
Saturday July 17 1999
Opted for (surprise!) quiet time, doing shopping, heading out to nice Chinese vegetarian in Edgware and stopping off for ice-cream at Baskin Robbins (yes, they do still exist) before heading for home. Did not go within five miles of any cinema showing Star Wars (it would only be pandemonium down there anyway). The Chinese vegetarian was very nice, lots of duck that’s not actually made out of duck but sure tastes like it.
Sunday July 18 1999
Busy week coming up. Took full advantage of it being a Sunday and took things easy. Well, as easy as can be when you have a zillion things to do.
Monday July 19 1999
Nothing of much interest to report today, except to say that it’s become deliciously warm out and we are getting used to sleeping with the windows open. Which is OK for a while, except when you take into account the inter-city train line that runs past our window and plays host to mammoth diesel trains in the middle of the night. I have lost count of the number of times, since we started leaving the windows open, that I have been woken at about four in the morning by crashing sounds and honestly thought the world was coming to an end before realising it was just another bloody train…
Tuesday July 20 1999
The photographs have, to the best of my knowledge, now arrived in the US and are being put together in some order by David as I write. Trying to decide when we’ll be going out to NY in November to pick ‘em up.
Wednesday July 21 1999
Another pretty quiet day, got home late after staff screening. No let-up in the weather.
Thursday July 22 1999
I am toying with the idea of actually doing some classes at the gym, rather than just exercising at my own pace. Much as I like doing that (to say nothing of watching MTV while I’m doing it) a class would certainly give me some idea of how fit I really am. Have to do it with a colleague though. There’s something about those classes, that even the ones marked ‘beginner’ are populated with absolute fitness experts, the kind who probably have aerobic diplomas littering their walls. At least if I go with someone we can stand at the back and be crap together.
Friday July 23 1999
Wedding at the weekend – Leslie’s old Teletext boss Graham is getting hitched to long-term partner Karen. It’ll make a change to go to a non-Jewish wedding, this one is at St.Bride’s Church in Fleet Street, a popular journalistic haven, it seems. Tried to get them a present off their much depleted wedding list this week, only to discover that tea towels were the only thing left on the list! And by the time I phoned back to place my order (which turned out to be gift vouchers in the end) even those had been snapped up.
Saturday July 24 1999
Great wedding! Got in v.late after staying till nearly midnight to capture the whole event on camcorder (Graham didn’t hire a videographer so Leslie did the whole thing). There is, of course, only so much you can film of people standing around the reception room talking, but I think we captured a good overall flavour of the day.
Service was interesting (great choir!), and then afterwards we were all coached off to the party at the Berkely, dead posh hotel in Knightsbridge. Wound up on the table with a bunch of Leslie’s ex-colleagues, my brother’s boss, a bloke who mysteriously vanished after the asparagus salad, and the founder of the London Missing Persons Bureau (who naturally was rather worried when this happened). It was all a lot of fun (to say nothing of rather marvellous food – more orange and ginger tiramisu in this direction pur-lease!), and was rounded off with the inevitably round of speeches and music from the Cavern Beatles (yup, tribute band with the mop tops and everything) followed by the good old reliable ‘disco’.
Footage of me doing the Macarena is indeed available on the wedding tape, but it ain’t half as much fun as watching all the neat special effects Leslie came up with while people were dancing to the Cavern Beatles.
Sunday July 25 1999
The wedding video looks great! Watched it this morning, Leslie’s special effects and all, and we are hugely impressed. Amazing what you can do with a camcorder, isn’t it?
Finally got around to watching The Blair Witch Project, something I have been meaning to do for the past week since the tape was slipped in my direction. It’s a low-budget horror movie that’s been causing a sensation in the US since it was filmed entirely by the actors (who were sent off into the woods to make the movie themselves), and centres on a bunch of students who go missing while shooting a documentary about a local witch. It is, apparently, one of the most frightening films ever made, even though it has no discernible special effects, gory murders etc.
Thus far, however, I have seen little to get excited about. Half the dialogue is inaudible and it’s full of irrelevant things that anyone filming a serious documentary for a college project really wouldn’t want on tape. Yeah, like I’m really scared of continuous shots of leaves and twigs. Right.
Monday July 26 1999
I have been reliably informed that I should watch The Blair Witch Project in one go, seeing as it works better that way. I am beginning to wonder whether I should just watch it in a cinema for full effect, instead of in the safety of my own home, with the curtains open and the late evening sunlight streaming through the window.
Opted for a properly shot movie in a proper cinema tonight – mock beauty contest documentary Drop Dead Gorgeous. This film rocks! It is a long time since I have laughed this hard at a movie. Did nothing in the US, which frankly I can’t understand – why on earth wouldn’t smalltown Americans appreciate a movie which invites them to laugh at, ahem, smalltown Americans. This is one sick movie. But it is so worth it.
Tuesday July 27 1999
I have completely changed my mind about Blair Witch – watched the end this morning, and of course it turns out that I switched it off just at the point where it started to get good. Imagine that you’re stuck in a forest for days on end, don’t know the way out, run out of food and suddenly find you’re being stalked in the dark by something you can’t actually see. Pretty damned scary huh? Well, yes, this is the set-up of Blair Witch and it does work, although personally it didn’t scare me. I think the fault is in me though, as I don’t scare at movies that easily, although it has to be said the second half is very unnverving.
Will definitely need to see it in a cinema. I have a number of theories about what’s really going on in this movie, which leaves most of its happenings to your imagination (i.e what you don’t see is far worse), most of which will either make a mockery of the whole thing or spoil the ending, so I had best keep them to myself.
Wednesday July 28 1999
No films tonight, which makes a change. May well go see Austin Powers at the weekend again, however.
Thursday July 29 1999
Sick to death of people going on about Blair Witch. This could rival Star Wars if it is allowed to get out of hand.
Friday July 30 1999
Cannot believe it is nearly the end of July already. Been a bit of an eventful month, although August, what with the impending eclipse, both our birthdays and the trip to New York, should be even busier.
Saturday July 31 1999
Samara and Richard, whom we saw tonight, opted against seeing Austin Powers, so we took ourselves off to see it in the afternoon. Kinda disappointing the second time you see it (interestingly, the audience were strangely muted while the journalists I saw it with all roared with laughter – you’d kind of expect it to be the other way round). Still, the Mini-Me character is an inspired creation and there are some very neat gags in there, but I couldn’t help thinking the funniest thing I saw was the trailer for South Park, a movie which does get better the more you think about it.
With that in mind, we went for fish and chips at the Sea Shell with Samara and Richard, followed by coffee at Borders Bookstore, seemingly the only place in London (aside from Bar Italia) where you can get a steamy beverage after 10 o’clock at night, something I always find hard to believe. Like, no-one wants coffee late at night?
