Latest news with #MissHavisham
Telegraph
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
I had to cancel my £21k wedding but I don't know what to do with the dress
As I unzip the garment bag that has been keeping my wedding dress hidden from view for five years, I await the rush of emotion I expect its unshrouding to provoke in me. Inside, the dress hangs, ghostly and still, suspended in time, the opposite of Miss Havisham's. The beads, intricately sewn onto the delicate fabric, catch my eye as I reach inside to touch the gown I chose back in December 2018, freshly engaged and drunk on the prospect of the white wedding we'd planned for summer 2020. The bag falls away, landing in a soft heap on the floor, and the dress, perfectly preserved, is revealed in all its glittering glory, for the first time in half a decade. While most wedding dresses, five years on from their big days, divulge telltale signs of a party well partied – a rip, a stain, a train trampled with mud – mine has none of that. It appears to be as it always was: untouched, unseen, unworn. The perfect dress for my dream wedding Stuart and I met in 2016 at a housewarming party and, a year and half later, I moved from London to live with him in his house in Cambridge. We got engaged later that year. Life – or, more accurately, a global pandemic – got in the way of our wedding. I last tried on my dress – a £1,300 gown bought from a small bridal shop in Cambridge the day after we got engaged (I was overexcited) – in February 2020. I had planned to collect it from the dress shop that May to take it to a seamstress for alterations: it needed taking up, delicate work that the shop itself couldn't do. That never happened. Instead, in March 2020, we were forced to postpone the wedding – a £21,000 DIY affair with a marquee in a field, a barbecue, and a band – until the following summer. Then, nearly a year later, we cancelled it altogether when life really did get in the way and I fell pregnant with our first child: nothing sharpens the mind or the available budget quite like an impending baby. But, while my life moved on – we bought a house together in a village just outside Cambridge; had a baby, Fabian, in November 2021; and then a second, Inigo, in May 2024 – my dress didn't. It stayed secreted away in its bag like an unkissed bride behind a veil at the dress shop – scene of its giddy purchase – for two years and then in a wardrobe at my sister's house for a further three after the boutique owner begged me to collect it. I felt unable to have it – this pretty, precious thing – in my house, a home now full of dirty nappies and smears of crusted Weetabix. The two chapters of my life – the wedding that wasn't and the motherhood that is now viscerally real – felt so profoundly at odds that it was hard to compute they both belonged to me. Sometimes, deep in the trenches of mothering, I longed to be a bride again: carefree, romantic, naive. And then my son would slip his tiny, sticky hand into mine and I'd pity the girl who thought her wedding dress had to be perfect. The woman I am, five years on Inevitably, the half-decade in storage has imbued the dress with a weighty significance: it's a shimmering embodiment of the person I used to be; an almost mystical artefact from a life I no longer lead. The person who bought this dress still lived in her partner's house; had left journalism behind – she thought forever – to pursue a teaching career; could go out dancing on a whim (and tolerate the hangover that followed); and had never, ever changed a nappy. While I have largely ignored the dress for five years, the memory of it – almost ethereal – has burrowed its way into my subconscious mind, its beauty jarring with the chaos of my life five years on. I don't know what made me want to look at it again; when curiosity finally trumped the fear I might burst into tears upon seeing it, the physical release of emotions that have been in storage for as long as the dress. Perhaps it was the birth of my second baby a year ago, a further stretching of the now taut line between my former and current selves. Perhaps it was the growing sense of guilt about the dress taking up space in my sister's wardrobe, a maid of honour duty she performed gladly but didn't sign up for. Perhaps it was simply because wedding season was coming down the aisle. We choose a Monday, when the children are in childcare, and my sister treats the moment with the reverence it deserves, hanging the dress, cloaked in its covering, on the back of her wardrobe. She speaks in hushed tones, like a doctor breaking bad news. I'm grateful she's taking it seriously, this slightly frivolous reopening of the past. Taking the dress out of its bag, I note, with surprise, the emotional paralysis I feel upon seeing it: not sad, not happy, just nothingness. The dress feels both familiar and foreign, like an ex-partner I once loved but haven't seen for years. It is, objectively, beautiful; its intricate beading, the cut of its bodice, the buttons that snake sensuously down its back. As I trace a finger down these buttons, the numbness begins to dissipate and I observe the tangle of emotions – joy, anger, excitement, grief – now woven into the gown. It's both special and not; both my wedding dress and not. My first dress – and my second Because we did have a wedding, in the end: a simple ceremony 16 months after the birth of our first son with close friends only and a party at a pub. It cost us just £850 all in. And I chose another dress to wear for that day, deeming my original too bridal for the occasion. My first dress was – still is, of course – traditional: the colour of champagne with a demure neckline, delicate embellishments and a train that puddled prettily on the floor. It was also a tiny size six. My second dress, meanwhile, was crimson, low-cut and aggressively sequinned with a slit from floor to upper-thigh. It – a size 12, incidentally – was vibrant and bold and, I think, spoke of the life lived in the years since choosing the first gown. If my first dress was virginal, my second screamed the opposite: it was the colour of life, of longing and of a mother newly blooded. It was also rented: with one dress already in storage, I chose an outfit I could send back. It cost me £85. Back in the room, my sister – doing a job she's waited more than half a decade to do – helps me into the dress. Only half the buttons do up. As I gaze at my reflection in the mirror, I realise the dress is ill-fitting in more ways than one. It doesn't fit my body any more but nor, I see, does it fit me. The me that prefers secondhand to brand new, favours an oversized silhouette to a figure-hugging one, and is too time-poor, exhausted and overstimulated to faff around with that many tiny buttons. I have changed, forever altered by the last five years, while the dress, which never made it to its alterations, has not. I take the dress off, place it back on its hanger. As I do so, I notice a seam at one shoulder has come apart, a small rip in the tulle that frays at the edges. Was it always like this? Is this one of the alterations I was hoping the seamstress might fix? I reach into the dark recesses of my brain but I can't remember: that information has been wiped and replaced with the correct Calpol dosage for a one-year-old. Maybe, I ponder, it's a new tear, evidence that, in fact, my dress was not frozen in time but aged with me inside the closet. Either way, I rather like this flaw. Marriage, after all, isn't about one perfect day in one perfect dress. Like delicate fabric, it can snag when put under pressure and be repaired with love and attention. And mending, of course, is how you make things stronger. What to do: sell, donate or keep? I take the dress home: it's time. What comes next, I don't know. Beautiful as it is, the frock rubs up awkwardly against my new life – my now life – a reality made flesh when, in order to get it home, I have to drape it across two children's car seats, both of them infested with toy cars, dried orange peel and breadstick crumbs. I have three options: sell, donate or keep. A scan of resale sites tells me wedding dresses, like cars, depreciate in value as soon as they're taken off the bridal forecourt: even ones that are only test driven, it seems, don't sell for anywhere near retail value. Meanwhile, the allure of donating the dress is appealing, in line as it is with the sustainable values that have sprouted in me over the last five years; a way of offsetting, perhaps, the fact I didn't choose a preloved dress in the first place. Keeping it would be a ludicrous choice, of course. The dress is awkward to store and of little – nay, no – use to me: I have sons and, if I did have a daughter, I'd never expect her to wear a dress even I didn't don. But, when I finally get it home, I spot an inscription written in cursive on the garment bag: ' When I fall in love it will be forever... ' A cloying epigraph designed to woo brides-to-be, sure. But I did fall in love, in a bridal boutique days before Christmas 2018, and, well, till death do us part.
Spectator
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Excruciating: Sirens reviewed
You had a narrow escape this week. I was about to urge you to watch Sirens, the latest iteration of that fashionable genre Ultra-Rich Lifestyle Porn, currently trending on Netflix. But luckily for you I watched it right to the end and got to witness the whole edifice collapsing like a speeded up version of Miss Havisham's wedding cake. Normally, this doesn't happen. Like most critics I have neither the time nor the work ethic to view a TV series in its entirety before putting in my tuppenny-ha'penny's worth. I just assume that if something starts well or badly it's going to continue that way. Not Sirens, though. It's as if, about halfway through, a promising set up with a cast of well-drawn characters, a luscious location and an enticing plot line suddenly got hijacked by a madman with an axe screaming: 'Must destroy!' Since Sirens began life as a stage play (Elemeno Pea), since it was adapted for TV by its creator, and since most of its problems are tonal and structural, I think we can safely lay much of the blame at the door of the author, Molly Smith Metzler. Her play does not seem to have had much impact, at least not on the stage, since it came out in 2011 as part of the '35th anniversary of the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky'. By the end of the TV adaptation you might well be able to guess why. Frothy, satirical and witty, it starts out as farce; then mutates, unexpectedly and almost deftly, into a haunting potential murder mystery in the manner of Rebecca; then, suddenly, decides to do what I can only describe as 'totally lose its shit' and metastasise into a psychologically implausible, grotesquely cringey, excruciatingly unsatisfying melodrama.
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Herbert Pocket is far from a minor character in Great Expectations
Well, Zoe Williams, I have heard of Herbert and so has anyone else who's read Great Expectations (Think you know a lot about Dickens? Then who's this Herbert character?, 28 May). Herbert Pocket is a relative of Miss Havisham who fights Pip and is beaten by him. When Pip comes into money, he lives with the Pocket family, aiming to acquire the manners and knowledge of a gentleman. Pip and Herbert share chambers as young men, and so Herbert becomes aware of the Magwitch secret. He helps Pip with the failed escape. Dickens' books teem with characters, but among the crowd Herbert stands out. As does a close friendship between young men to which teenagers can relate. Jane LindenDarsham, Suffolk Herbert Pocket is not a minor character in Great Expectations. We first meet him as a boy on one of Pip's visits to Miss Havisham, where Pip fights with, and defeats, Herbert, which delights Estella, who says to Pip: 'You may kiss me if you like.' Later, when Pip acquires wealth and goes to London, Herbert lodges with him and becomes his guide to behaviour suited to his new station in life: 'It isn't usual to eat peas with a knife.' Anyone who thinks he is a minor character has not read the book properly or only in summary – a practice that I believe is becoming more RobertsManosque, France As a lifelong admirer of Great Expectations, I was puzzled that Zoe Williams could see so little in the character of Herbert Pocket. He is the 'pale young gentleman' who fights with Pip near the beginning of the story. He later becomes Pip's closest friend and shares all his experiences throughout the rest of the book. Pip confides in him about his unrequited love for Estella, and Herbert is able to explain the reason for Miss Havisham's obsessive resentments. Together they respond to the shock of the convict Magwitch's return from transportation and join in the desperate attempt to spirit him to safety. Of all the things that Pip does with his inherited fortune, the only one that he does not regret is setting Herbert up in business. I don't know the wording of the GCSE question about Herbert, but I should think he understands Pip better than any other character. His take on Pip's life story would be kind and sympathetic, but searching and perceptive as well. He seems a very good choice for students to write RigbyOldham, Greater Manchester Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Irish Examiner
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Wish List: Eight ideas for home and outdoor living this summer
Cushion covers In company, I do love to proclaim loudly how much I love the sea. What I fail to acknowledge is how much distance there needs to be between me and the sea to admire it from afar (cue: plenty). As a defiant toddler, I refused to learn how to swim but I like to think in another life I'm a sea swimmer, with ruddy cheeks and sea salted hair and a dry robe I wear even to the shops. Alas, why should I dream of being anyone but myself? A creature of comfort surrounded by the jauntiest cushions of waves and surfers. These unbleached linen cushions from BTS Concept Store, €68.95, are now my entire personality. Starlight Remember the glow-in-the-dark, stick-on stars you begged your mum for as a teenager? Brace your inner child: I may have found the grown-up equivalent. The Paulina sculptural lamp, approximately €453.59, is the brainchild of celebrated Belgian designer Anita Le Grelle. A constellation of tiny, indiscernible holes in the lamp shade produces a shimmering starlight effect that twinkles throughout your room. Shop this and more unique vintage and modern finds at LNV Home in Belfast or online at A clock of ages Literature fans, listen up. Close your eyes and recall the first time you read about Miss Havisham; the clocks frozen in time at Satis House, and all around her, decay. Or the 'low, dull, quick sound' of the ticking timepiece in Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. Now replace the clocks with a mobile phone and see if the impact is the same. Analogue clocks aren't just anachronistic windows to our past, they have the potential to become family heirlooms. The Otto floor clock by Formae, €747.95, is the perfect antidote to digital disconnectivity. A decorative winding key and pendulum hark to old-world charm while inbuilt shelving offers a unique update. As an investment item or a character in your memoirs, this freestanding clock can be purchased from Mirror, mirror Originating in the 17th century, bobbin furniture is having its very own renaissance (a bobbinaissance?). With a subtle nod to nostalgia, the forest green Ruan mirror, €149, from Foy & Company packs a punch without overpowering. An aesthetically pleasing mirror won't perfect the art of applying winged eyeliner, but hey, at least it looks good in your selfies. With two brick-and-mortar locations in Letterkenny and Ballybofey, Foy & Company is a family-run business with a wide choice of stellar homeware brands. Shop this mirror online at or pick it up in one of the stores. Chunky flower pot Home of the mirror that launched a thousand replicas, and now, the bed for throuples, Gustaf Westman is the designer every interiors enthusiast worth her salt is obsessed with. From the cult curvy mirror to the puzzle shelves and spiralling book stands, Westman's fresh, playful approach to furniture-making defies norms and sets a new standard for innovation in design. Is he the enfant terrible of the furniture world? If redefining intimacy as an interactive bed for three and creating complementary pieces like the 'One Night Stand' shocks you, then yes. Don't judge, though — he's not all form, no function. Take the chunky cup and saucer, for example. Designed to minimise spillage for those of us who love to have tea in bed (me!), it's a stroke of genius. From just €210, the glazed ceramic 'Chunky' flower pot is the ideal starter piece for Westman fans, available at selected retailers like SSense and on Pot of gold While the ginger jar was originally utilitarian, its craftsmanship soon cemented its status as a highly coveted decorative object. A testament to China's strong track record of artistry, especially when it comes to porcelain making, the high shoulders and domed lid make it ideal for showcasing fresh or dried floral arrangements or storing tea, spices, or bath salts. Interior designer Cormac Rowell handpicked this striking yellow piece — find it in his store in Dublin and check out his website at for more design inspiration. Garden chic Outdoor dining has come a long way since banana sandwiches on mattresses in the back garden and a light sprinkling under the hose (just me?). Want to elevate your backyard cookouts so entertaining guests gets a chef's kiss every time? Dutch outdoor furniture brand Weltevree makes design-forward stoves, chairs, hot tubs and the niftiest outdoor waterworks with a sink, storage space and worktop to boot. Unlike a traditional indoor set-up, there are no wrong answers — imbibe a signature summer mocktail, showcase your plants or simply pose and pretend to do the above for a selfie. The Waterworks, €395, available at comes with a powder green-hued outdoor sink and water station with worktop, perforated wall and a place to hang your garden tools. Top of the table You know you take your tablescaping seriously when you anthropomorphise the accoutrements. Nobody wants to see their table scantily clad in a skimpy leg-skimming tablecloth, right? Dressing the table intentionally is a delight, and one of my favourite artists working with linen is Jennifer Slattery. Laying the table for your garden party with the forest green, ivory or earthy stripes sets the scene for the night ahead — it's giving luxury, abundance and homegrown. Order yours from €210 at Read More Wish List: Seven super home buys that are hot on the scent of summer
