Being nice is overrated and underappreciated

When I was a tweenager an aunt overheard me being bitchy about someone.

“You used to be such a nice little girl, Jennie,” she said. I was burned.

Nice is the holy grail, especially for females. Her words stayed with me all these years.

Believe it or not, being nice is my default even when I’m boiling inside.

I don’t beep in traffic, I’ve never been short with a waiter, I don’t jump queues, and I always ask for things with an apology: “Sorry, excuse me, I don’t mean to disturb you, would you mind terribly, would you be so good as to,” et cetera.

Thus we reach the age of 50, where I now stand – 51 if we’re dealing in technicalities – and a week from today I will have been married for two nights, unless Himself makes good on his threats to run away to Panama before Saturday.

I’m getting married, I’m getting stressed, and you know what? Being nice isn’t helping.

Nice is the reason the wedding hotel forgot about our food tasting, leaving us standing there, drenched by rain, hungry for lunch that never happened.

Nice is the reason we don’t have the wines we wanted, because we said: “If it’s not too much trouble, if you don’t mind.”

Nice is the reason my wedding dress doesn’t fit, because it was badly measured and incorrectly ordered, and yet did I have a bridezilla fit? I did not.

Instead I ended up apologising, offering to show them my weight graph so they knew it wasn’t me turning into a porker.

Nice is the reason I’ll be bandaging up my chest with tape for the wedding because the dress is too tight for a bra.

Nice is the reason I have nine house guests in the run up to the wedding, nine extra people who need beds, laundry, meals, conversation, and wine, nine people who’re on holiday while I’m the host.

Nice is the reason I cried in the car. Right now, I’m sick of being nice. I’m sick of saying yes when I want to say no.

But there’s just one more yes to say, at the altar. Then we’re off on a nice honeymoon, just we two… And The Citizen has given me a fortnight off, which is really nice.

See you in two weeks!