The proper weekend –style thing we chose to do was a trip to The Midlands to visit The Ageds. This was a short-notice trip, hastily arranged when we realised that we had a child-free weekend in prospect – CS2 and CS3 were away with their dad, and CS1 was stewarding at a local rock festival (more on that later). We went up Thursday evening, after a meeting with our wedding coordinator (sound posh but really she’s the function manager for the reception venue and is only coordinating the reception side of things, not the whole caboodle) (more on that later too).

The Ageds were as well as ever – as usual, the phrases “healthy diet” and “moderate portion size” seem to have escaped them. The Future Mrs Barefoot has an app on her phone that records your calorie intake and calculates various statistics on them. The analysis of one day at The Ageds was “if you continue eating like this, in five weeks you will put on 18 pounds”. I suppose they would argue that at their age, it’s a bit late for healthy lifestyles.

The Future Mrs Barefoot and Mrs The Aged went wedding dress shopping on Friday, leaving The Aged and I to sit in the park, or wait in the car. I think they were just under an hour in the first shop and just over an hour in the second. The wait didn’t bother me – I know that it’s not just any dress, but one that The Future Mrs Barefoot will be wearing all day, and that everyone will be looking at, so it has to be just right, not almost right.

Saturday we visited The Coventry Music Museum. This is a museum dedicated to music that originated in Coventry – mostly 70s and 80s 2-tone and New Wave, but going further back to Frank Ifield (I remember him) and further forward to bands I’ve never heard of, but apparently are quite popular. It was a small museum, but well-presented and packed with information and memorabilia. What really made it for me was the friendliness and enthusiasm of the staff. Obviously, I was mostly interested in the 2-tone and New Wave stuff, but even The Ageds enjoyed it, despite it not really being their music scene.

We played pub legs on the journey. If you’ve not heard of pub legs, you get points for the number of legs in the pub names that you pass: The King George gives 2; The Dog and Duck gives 6; the King’s Arms gives 0; The Coach and Horses starts an argument over whether it is 2 or 4 horses; and The Fox and Hounds trumps everything. People on the left of the car get the pubs on the left and people on the right get those on the right. Anyway, on the way back, The Aged took a 3-mile detour so we wouldn’t pass The Flying Horse.

We came back home on Saturday evening as The Future Mrs Barefoot had to collect CS1 from the rock festival on Sunday (the festival didn’t finish till Monday, but she had done all her shifts). “I’ll be in the car park” she (CS1) said. Well, that was a lot of use as there were six car parks, with a 20-minute road trip between them. Once they worked out that they were both in the same car park, CS1 sent through a photo of what she could see from where she was. Surprisingly enough, this was a row of parked cars – about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It took them over an hour to find each other.

I suppose it is a facet of over-reliance on technology and refusal to consider anything else. People have a phone that they communicate with so don’t consider that sometimes old-fashioned techniques (like standing next to a prominent landmark) might be more effective.

Wedding preparations are in full swing. We (as you probably guessed by my earlier comment) have a venue for the reception, and for the ceremony – and we have set the date. At the weekend we did our first-cut of the guest list. It has come in at about 50% more than the venue will hold, so we need to do a bit of pruning. We’ve also decided on the song for the first dance, so can start practising that.

When we were at The Ageds, Mrs The Aged pulled out their wedding album to show The Future Mrs Barefoot. The Future Mrs Barefoot was very tactful and didn’t mention that Mrs The Aged showed it to her last time we visited.