Right, now that I’ve said all that, I can move onto the real subject of this article and sound a little less like I’m being paid for what I’m about to say (I’m not…honestly).  You see, I want to do a little tribute to my favourite class of them all: Sing and Sign.  There are many baby signing franchises out there, and I’m sure they’re all excellent, but Sing and Sign is the original, and I’m convinced it’s the best.  We have only six weeks of Sing and Sign left ever (children take the class for four terms in total, with each term running for ten weeks), and it is certain that I’ll end our last session by breaking down in tears, holding onto our class leader (the wonderful Shannon)’s leg, and flat refusing to leave.  Sing and Sign is special to our family because it was the first class I went to while suffering from postnatal depression…a huge step for me.  That was over a year ago now, and while it was originally just me and Lily attending the classes, we moved to a Saturday class in our second term so that my husband could come as well.  It’s the highlight of our week, and by far Lily’s favourite of all her classes.

So, what is Sing and Sign?  It’s basically about teaching babies to communicate before they can talk.  If you’ve ever seen Something Special on CBeebies (and if not, why not?), you’ll know the concept of Makaton signing; it’s simpler than full sign language and is designed to support spoken language rather than replace it.  Sing and Sign teaches Makaton with the aid of songs (just about all of which relate to a baby’s daily life and education), games, musical instruments, and everybody’s favourite cuddly toy, Jessie…and trust me on this: you have never seen anything like the anticipation created by a group of one year olds at the sight of the Jessie Cat box.  Intense is not the word.  According to the experts, there are many reasons why signing with your baby is beneficial: it helps build confidence, it’s stimulating, encourages communication and enhances their early vocabulary.  I can vouch for the fact that all these things are true.  Lily is a slow talker.  She started walking at ten months, was playing football by twelve months, and she can eat a bowl of cereal without spilling a drop, but talking?  No, thank you.  She’s just not interested.  Her complete unwillingness to say a word would stress me out massively, except thanks to Sing and Sign, I have complete confidence that she is not lacking in the vocabulary department.  She understands absolutely everything, can point to pictures ranging from astronauts to helicopters to queens, and if you even mention the name of an animal in passing, it’ll be a split second before she’s acting out the related sign.  She can get up in the morning, look out of the window and do the sign for rain.  By around nine months old, she was able to tell me when she wanted something to eat, when she was finished and when she wanted more, all by using Makaton signs.  I’m convinced that her vocabulary and comprehension have been helped massively by the fact she has been signing from six months old, and it’s a relief to know that if she doesn’t want to talk, we have a back-up to keep us going for the next few months.  Through the classes we’ve learnt over 100 signs, and thanks to keeping many of them in regular use at home, we have a very reliable method of communicating should we need it.

Sadly, unless you all move up to Newcastle (you should.  It’s bloody brilliant here), you won’t get to experience the joys of learning to sign with Shannon, who is the absolute best class leader we could ever wish to have.  I’m sure that your local Sing and Sign classes will be almost as good though, so you should give them a go anyway.  If you don’t have a Sing and Sign franchise near you, then other baby signing classes in the UK include Tiny Talk, Baby Signers and Sunny Signers.  Have a go, and I’m convinced you won’t regret it.

As you glide past like you’re on wheels, your ex boyfriend and his obese new girlfriend are sitting in one of the pews. He leans towards you to say “I never should have left you, you look stunning”. You carry on in a whisper of antique lace. You reach the aisle, and the vicar is waiting and smiling in a way that suggests “I’ve seen so many, many brides. But none were even half as beautiful as you.” Your groom turns towards you, handsome in his dark suit. He could be anyone you want him to be. You read your vows in a voice more resonant and emotive than Patrick Stewart, your now husband leans down and kisses you firmly on the mouth. Doves erupt from the ceiling; the whole church bursts into delighted clapping.

Now is about the time I’d wake up screaming. I hate weddings.

I should explain a little more about my unusual situation. Me and C got engaged because we felt like it. I chose the ring, we went together to get it and he proposed there and then in our 1999 rusty Ford KA. My ring is very understated- exactly my kind of thing. A beautiful square-cut diamond on a slender band of platinum. Not wanting him to feel left out, I bought him a ring too, made of tungsten and an unusual burnished grey, which he loves.

We drove home smiling and had pizza. Some might be whittling their wrists over the lack of romance in that but it was exactly what I wanted. Me and C don’t really do romance in that sense. I ran him a bath and filled the bathroom with candles after his mud-encrusted training weekend with the Territorial Army. On my birthday he left me a trail of presents with clues leading to each one. He goes shopping for me and buys hair removal cream and bubble bath without so much as a grunt. I pretend I care about cars, watches, Xbox games and all manner of other boy’s toys. He pretends he cares about eyeliner, my haircut, and why I can’t seem to find the perfect pair of black boots. We make each other laugh. No-one knows us as well as we know each other. He has two scars on the back of his hand where apropos of nothing, his cat bit clean through his hand, whereupon it puffed up like a cheesy wotsit. He knows I have a scar above my left eyebrow from walking into a door when I was 9. He knows I eat brown sauce with white meat and ketchup with red meat. His favourite colour is blue, he likes a glass of milk for breakfast and anything sour- I once saw him eat a lemon like other people eat oranges. He sits with a grin as fixed as a Cheshire cat when every Christmas, my Mum gives me a barrel of her homemade triple strength pickled shallots- each one potent enough to knock out an elephant. The brine is highly explosive; I think it might be banned in some countries. Pregnant women and babies cannot be in the same room as them. Even the smell makes C turn as green as the brine but he watches me as I nosh my way through a tub in 5 seconds flat, never once complaining. He has a scar on his knee from a motorcycle accident, he knows I like waiting at the field down the road from my parents until all the tiny wild rabbits stick their little ears out from the broken flower pots in the field. We know what makes each other laugh, cry, get angry, be lonely and be daft.

As silly as the above may sound, you can only know someone inside out and back to front like that when you really adore them. The little domestic exchanges “beans or no beans?” are the language of love. I already know I want to spend the rest of my life with him. There simply couldn’t be anyone else. I don’t need a band of gold, a stupid puffy dress or one our Uncles getting drunk and embarrassing everyone. I know he loves me. I can just tell. I don’t know if we’ll ever get married, and I don’t mind. Our fate is already sealed- this is forever.

Seeing as this is more of an essay than a story- I’m going to approach it in a structured fashion to avoid rambling. I hope. This is entirely only my perspective and I wish no offence to anyone.

Why I don’t want to get married

1. It makes me feel old

I’m only 24, but being a Mrs would make me feel a lot older. I already do feel old. I’m still 17 with a face full of more metal than a medieval battle working part-time in a shop in my head, not a 24-year-old full-time worker with a sensible haircut, a mortgage and a dependent (a rat, but still.)

2. I hate having my photo taken

My parent’s house looks like a spooky shrine to me as if I died age 11. I don’t appear in any photos after that. Being as I look like a cross between Velma in Scooby Doo and Kelly Osborne, only with worse fashion sense, why would I want to get dressed up and look like a tank in a net curtain to have 5,000 deeply unflattering photos taken of me and sniggered at by the local branch of Boots? No thank you. If I could wear a balaclava, I think I would.

3. I’d be a rubbish wife

I know this isn’t the 1950’s and there is a lot more to women now than how bouncy your sponge is and how crisp your meringues are but I have absolutely nada housewife skills. I can’t cook- in fact I hate cooking- I find it dull and oppressive. I love cooking shows however and eating, just not the bit before the eating comes. I can cook 4 things- a roast, lasagne, a sponge cake and soup. That’s it. I can’t sew, I hate cleaning and have a slapdash approach to it-remove mess from the visible areas and place where it cannot be seen. My well-meaning mother in law tried to tell me how I could get my windows really sparkling and I yawned in her face. I don’t care. It isn’t that C expects me to do these things (he once said to me “I’m hungry” so I threw a bag of crisps at his face and went back to reading) but I feel like I should. I earn merely pennies so can’t contribute on that front. Seeing as C works all weekend every weekend almost, as well as absurd shifts throughout the week, I feel he deserves to come home to me serving roast beef in high heels (me in heels, not the beef) and windows that gleam. Instead, he finds me slumped on the sofa reading a trashy novel in baggy cotton trousers so old they have holes in the knees, surrounded by the detritus of the day, or sitting at my computer furiously typing- wearing my enormous glasses and a bizarre grey smock I found in a charity shop because I think it makes me look “creative.” Poor boy.

4. We don’t want any children

Of course you don’t have to be married to have children, but most people I know intend to get married before they do. We never planned on having any, and we found out 2 years ago I can’t (it’s a long story.) Not a huge issue for us as the thought had never crossed our minds. Me and C are precisely the same when it comes to babies- both having yelled at a colleague waving a tiny thing in a pastel coloured jumpsuit at us “Get that thing away from me!”

5. We’re both really antisocial

I have my friends and C has his- we are not friends with any other couples and I point-blank refuse to be. If we ever become the kind of couple who goes for lunch with “David and Julia”, if C takes up golf or squash and I start going to pottery or cake icing classes with “the girls”, I’m aiming the car for the biggest cliff I can find. Both me and C are far too nasty, cynical and rude to be popular with people- and I’m never happier than when I’m lying on his chest in my rubbish pyjamas (note: C always used to be dressed at home, but I helped him discover his inner slob and now the second we walk through the door the clothing comes off and the ratty pyjamas go on.) If we do go out- very rarely as a couple- our faces settle from one uncomfortable position to another and our clasped hands start to get sweaty. We both know we’d rather be with each other, at home, with the TV remote and a glass of coke. I do venture to pubs with my friends occasionally, but seeing as I don’t drink alcohol except on special occasions, I’m usually home by 10.30pm. Generally, my friends come over to my house for tea and biscuits or lemonade and pizza, while C lies in our bedroom watching gangster films.

6. We can’t afford it

Like most couples I assume. We have bills, we have a mortgage. We simply don’t have the cash to put aside for a wedding- and we both come from enormous families who seem to breed incessantly, meaning it can’t be a polite sit down meal for 20 people and is more like to turn into a 250 person rave up that will cost more than our yearly budget for food.

7. Our families have never met before

We’ve been together for nearly 8 years. We’ve crossed the polite threshold. At the risk of offending anyone in my family or his, I’ll leave this one here.

It is rather odd I’m so anti-marriage. My parents have been married happily for just over 35 years. They have a great relationship as far as I know, if there are any arguments I’ve never been aware of them. My Mum taught me the ideals of a long-term relationships- at the very core of it, my parents are friends. This may sound slightly insane but I have a male friend who incessantly dates girls he fancies but has absolutely zero connection with. My Mum finds my Dad hilarious and my Dad loves my Mum as much as the day they married. They take an equal load in life- the money, the house, the jobs, the children; they work together around the house and with me and my brothers. They have a similar outlook and approach to life- whilst also having enough interests separate from each other to keep a relationship healthy. They’re a walking advert for marriage- how happy it can make a couple.

Two of my colleagues are in their mid-thirties and are literally talking as I write about their lack of marriage, as if it is somehow a crime to not be married by their very young age. I think too much emphasis is put on the wedding itself- I find it horrifying that some women envision their wedding down to the colour of the napkins whilst the groom remains a faceless entity. It really isn’t about the day of the wedding itself, it is about the life you will have afterwards. You are going to be spending the rest of your life with that person, and you have to be sure it’s what you both want. I have seen men and women who have been cajoled, pushed and bullied towards the aisle and I often wonder if it’s what they really want. Unlike a certain lady in the tabloids- I take marriage very seriously. I think when you go through with it; there should be every intention for it to be forever. Of course, marriages and relationships break down sometimes- it isn’t always someone’s fault, you just simply fall out of love with one another.

For some couples, getting married is the best thing they ever did. I’m not saying it cannot lead to happiness nor do I think that everyone has a rather callous attitude towards it- this is simply not true. But I often wonder about people who get married for the day, the dress, the status. I wonder how happy they can really be.

I want to get married in Vegas. I’ve seen a drive in chapel I’m really taken by. Just me, C and a drop-top Mustang. That’s my kind of wedding!

As much as I am against romance and other sticky-sweet things, I could never be against love. As Nat King Cole sang “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return.”

Finally, to lift an edited quote from the show Skins which is one of the most moving passages I’ve ever heard and sums up love better than I ever could: -

“You made my life complete. And actually, rather wonderful. People who make us happy are never the ones we expect, so when you find someone, you’ve got to cherish it.”

This wasn’t particularly easy to write. 1001 movies are jostling in my head for priority. They’re cavorting lasciviously. If they wore clothes, they’d have taken them off. But anyway, in no particular order, here are my 5 favourite movies.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

I was devastated when John Hughes died. He was an amazing man who had a hand in writing or producing nearly 50 movies. I hate to think what many a young girl’s adolescence would have been like were it not for him and his wistful brand of teenage movies.

The Breakfast Club starred “Brat Pack” faces Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Michael Anthony Hall and Ally Sheedy. I first saw this film when I was 15 during an insomniac night on MTV and totally fell in love. With all of them. Particularly with Judd Nelson and that haircut. Anyway.

The Breakfast Club is a seminal movie and I have serious doubts about anyone who hasn’t seen it. You wouldn’t think a movie about 5 kids in detention on a Saturday could be interesting, clever and moving, but it is. A real “coming of age” splendour with 5 very good actors. The famous “why I’m in detention scene” was actually ad-libbed- which is incredible when you think that the oldest actor in the scene is only 24 years old.

Fabulous soundtrack too- “Don’t You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds and “Fire In the Twilight” by Wang Chung. Yes please.

Donnie Darko (2001)

When I heard about the premise of this film, I scoffed and said it sounded like a pile of rubbish. On paper, this film is insane. “There’s this kid right, and he sees a giant bunny, something to do with time travel…” What?

However, despite any misgivings I may have had, this film is executed absolutely perfectly and with style. The Gyllenhaals (Jake and Maggie) were a superb choice for brother and sister, and every single other role was chosen with care and acted expertly. It is a heartbreakingly good performance from Patrick Swayze- I think I forgot how wonderful he was as I’m used to seeing him trot about in dance shoes. He was a fabulous actor, and a very sad loss to the world of films.

Donnie Darko is moving and slightly dark- the trailer made it look like a horror film which it really isn’t. It’s actually very funny in some places; one of my favourite lines is “Donnie Darko? What the hell kind of name is that? Sounds like some sort of superhero or something.” “What makes you think I’m not?”

A brilliant film, gripping from start to finish. Another amazing soundtrack with Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears and Duran Duran. I think I’m in heaven!

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

I saw this film in the cinema. I’d gone with a hot dog sandwich in my handbag (I don’t know why either) and the projector broke down and we were brought free popcorn and moved to the deluxe screen with its armchair like seats and giant screen. Needless to say, I was in a good mood already. Having seen this film, I pretty much skipped out of the cinema.

Wes Anderson is a genius- in every sense of the word. He wears brown corduroy suits, he’s friends with Jarvis Cocker and he likes Nico. The man is a wonder. I’ve seen every movie he’s made and there isn’t one I don’t like.

The cast is unusual for an indie-style movie- Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, the Wilson brothers, yet they show a side I didn’t know they had. Gwyneth was a perfect choice for glacial Margot, Stiller for maniacal Chas, Owen and Luke Wilson for tumultuous Eli and lonely Richie. This film plucks gently on the heartstrings as Royal (played by Gene Hackman at his absolute finest) realises how much he has missed being away from his family.

Another film that is also oddly funny, with lines such as “How long have you been a smoker?” “22 years” “Well, I think you should quit” and “I’m very sorry for your loss, your Mother was a terribly attractive woman.”

As a final note on this little gem, it’s got Bill Murray in it. That should be all you need, seeing as I love Bill Murray more than life itself.

Hot Rod (2007)

When the boys from Lonely Island and the producer of South Park get together for a film, you’d better be sure you’re going to laugh until you get tummy ache. This film is so funny it’s ridiculous.

Rod wants to be a stuntman. When he finds out his step dad Frank (played by Ian McShane, that’s right people, freaking Lovejoy is in the movie) needs an operation, he decides to do his stunts for money, and raise enough to make Frank better.

I like Andy Samberg anyway, and I do like Lonely Island, and Andy and Jorma Taccone play awkward brothers Rod Kimble and Kevin Powell beautifully. They are ably assisted by Bill Hader as Dave and Danny McBride as Rico- who are hilarious in their own right- and a brilliant performance by the adorable Isla Fisher. She’s so sweet you just want to keep her in a little basket.

I could sit here all day quoting hilarious lines at you but that would basically be me typing out the whole movie. Here is a small selection- “Why you do call yourself Voltron, Dave?” “I dunno, maybe because it’s *super* bad-ass?” and “ I needed to think about last night. So I galloped into a wooden glen, and after punch-dancing out my rage and suffering an extremely long and painful fall, I realised what has to be done.”

A directorial debut from the final member of Lonely Island, Akiva Schaffer, this film is precisely my kind of humour, and I love it.

The Commitments (1991)

Like any music obsessed wally, I’m keen for anything about bands and music. This film, set in Dublin, is right up my street.

Jimmy wants to manage a band- a great band. He decides soul music is the way to go and puts together a band with whomever he can find. They rehearse and tour, and learn a lot along the way.

A sterling performance from every actor and actress on screen, The Commitments is a very amusing film which catapults together a group of boys and girls who otherwise wouldn’t be friends. I love Colm Meaney and he’s a star turn as Jimmy’s Dad, owner of the great line, when Joey pulls up on his moped – “What did Evel Knievel want?” “God sent him” “What?” “God sent him” “On a f******* Suzuki?”

Humour can often be found in the strangest places, and Jimmy tries to have faith in what he does. A perfect film for any young person with pie-in-the-sky dreams and great taste in music.

Another outstanding soundtrack- “Mustang Sally” “At The Dark End of the Street” and “Try a Little Tenderness”. I’d recommend this to anyone.

“Dekko the bus conductor, is that top dekko or bottom dekko?” Outstanding.