This weekend should have felt significant, and exciting. This weekend should have marked ten weeks until Rhys and I say ‘I do’. Instead, we hit that magic 63-weeks-to-go marker. Brilliant. We now have more time left to plan our ‘big day’ than we had when we first got engaged and set our sights on July 4th, 2020.

I mentioned in my earlier post that I’m pleased that we have the time to plan an even better day. Nevertheless, I feel frustrated. True, I was beginning to fret about the bridesmaid dresses but I was far from panicking that things hadn’t been done. I had deliberately made sure that the majority was sourced and secured over the winter, while my neck was too badly injured to ride and before the show season started in earnest. The steady planning was part of the fun. We now have almost a year before we need to rekindle the anticipation.

The planned site is not helping matters. With the sun’s kiss, the past month has seen the farm come alive with fresh growth and spring’s luscious abundance. My favourite tree is returning to it’s summertime splendour and I can’t help but imagine how perfect it will look in a few weeks, just in time to welcome our guests to party beneath its branches. Frankly, it’s all looking sickeningly marvelous.

In fact, it looks so marvelous and abundant that we turned out two of Dad’s dry cows out onto the carefully fenced off section intended for the reception. Hannah – she was born during storm Hannah – and her friend can enjoy waddling around it to mark the last of their maternity leave.

In the meantime, I have passed the weekend thoroughly engrossed in some trivial activity or other, most significantly, the egg-sugar-shot challenge that has been circulating Facebook.

I had thought that Maggie – my little sister and sidekick – and I had escaped nomination and was watching with amusement as people failed to complete the challenge. It seems that raw egg is not for some. A spoonful of sugar is not for others. I was so convinced that I had bypassed nomination that I missed my name in the video the first time and had to rewatch it, my stomach already knotted.

When the time came, I was convinced that I would vomit. Chicken in some form or other has often had the blame for my dodgy stomach; though granted: it’s usually fried chicken I find to blame, and at circa 3am on a Sunday morning, and in the back of a taxi.

I didn’t vomit. Maggie didn’t either despite a dislike for eggs, even when they’re cooked through and even when they’re made of chocolate! Instead, I found it all something of an anticlimax and am now wondering what frivolous project I will pursue next.

When the Covid crisis first reared its ugly head, I obsessed over the news, watching every update. I listened intently to expert viewpoints on Radio Coronavirus-Four. I checked and rechecked for updates online. And I drove myself a little crazy.

I have busied myself with a series of little and large projects. Sorting through the tack-room shelves and reviving my plants have thus far been my most productive efforts in the long term. The most meaningful effort was Maggie and my effort to organise a surprise baby shower for our good friend Gemma via Zoom.

Less purposeful distractions include co-ordinating and editing a ‘loo roll challenge’ for the Welsh Pony and Cob Society involving members from Scotland to Essex to Ireland, and this weekend’s foray into willingly risking salmonella.

Still, I can’t help thinking that all of these daft challenges and cringeworthy TikTok videos are actually quite brilliant. They have provided temporary escape from an otherwise pretty grim reality beyond the front gate. What’s more, they provide a giggle. One of my favourite clips sent to me from members for the loo-roll challenge came from one of the society’s stalwarts. It’s not because the clip itself is particularly brilliant, but because the gentleman involved is laughing, and even better, you can hear his grand-daughters giggling in the back ground. (Is there a better sound in the world that children laughing?) Laughter won’t be the best medicine for those infected with Covid-19. But for the rest of us, affected even as we wait in our homes, it is most certainly a tonic.

So with wedding-planning filed away for now, I wonder what the next project will be? The sillier the better, please.