Packing it in

The suitcase is open on the spare bedroom floor and enough stuff - clothes, shoes, accessories, books - for three months is spread across the bed and table. I'm going away for three weeks so much of this will be left behind. This is my preferred method of packing.

I always hate the way people pack in movies - striding about their bedrooms, whipping open drawers and cupboards, flinging things blindly into cases. They're usually upset when they do this - due to a marital infidelity, a pursuing serial killer or a determined police officer - but really, their new life isn't going to be any better for having taken a load of unwearable items and overlooked the one or two that would pull the rest together.

I've no such excuse and I want to get it right. I'm going to China for son J's wedding then on to Vietnam.

It's my fourth visit to China. I first went for the weekend in 1987. I was in Hong Kong for work and, instead of doing whatever it was we were meant to be doing, the photographer and I bunked off to Guangzhou. I didn't go back to until 2007, when J was living in Urumqi. (You can read about that trip here.)
J and S were living in Kunming when I returned in January this year and still are. Technically, they're already married, having registered in Urumqi, so this is the after-match function. It will be held in Dali, a charming old town we visited in January. This was the view from the hotel entrance.

This time, of course, there's the question of what the mother of the groom will wear. The odd (very odd) faithful reader might recall my account of a Skype conversation with J on this subject. I'd just bought a black Karen Walker cheongsam-inspired dress, which for a while I pretended to myself would be just the thing. But it's not - you don't wear black to Chinese weddings. I'd look like the Angel of Marital Death. So I have something else. More of which another day.  Meantime, here are some wonderful images of what I won't be looking like.

Then there's the Vietnam leg. It will be hot, and since the plan is to drive to the border and walk across, we shall have to pack light. Each time I travel I think I can do this and each time it turns out that I can't. Yet I still have this fantasy of stepping lightly off a plane in the middle of nowhere with just a carry-on. I was going to say that at least I won't have to take tango shoes and dresses, but that's hardly a plus.

Wedding wear

My son and his fiancee are getting married in October in Kunming, and, as luck would have it, the day J told me was also the day I bought a wondrously elegant black (yes, black again - and raspberries to you, Trinny and Susannah) Karen Walker dress. Second-hand of course. From Soup, off Courtenay Place.

This second-hand bent seems the most obvious point of difference between Plain Jane and The Thoughtful Dresser. Linda Grant has the means, opportunity and - just as importantly - the will to spend big money on fashion (and I use the term broadly to cover anything appearance-related rather than merely what's hot). Please understand this is no judgment on her character: I'm very well aware how relative these things are, and to a person living with several kids on a benefit in South Auckland, let alone in a third-world country, the amount I spend would be just as unimagineable. So there'll be no fingers pointed from this corner.

I don't have huge amounts of money, and the disposable income I do have must also stretch to tango-related expenses, travel and the usual books-movies-and-eating-out items. Plus, and this is crucial - I love a bargain. Love locating it and seeing how it looks on, and walking out of the shop feeling lucky to have got there first.

So back to the Karen Walker dress. The photograph I took doesn't do it justice. It's an elegant column of heavy crepe-like fabric (the care label has been cut off so I don't know exactly what it is, but it's certainly man-made). Sleeveless, with a high cross-over neck, discreetly asymmetrical with a side split. Cheong-sam inspired, in other words. A definite for the right tango occasion, and in style, if not in colour, surely perfect for a Chinese wedding. I asked J to check with S if black was acceptable wedding wear. And I could cheer it up by wearing red shoes and my flashy little red velvet jacket from Sydney. Which the afore-mentioned Trinny and Susannah would regard as the last straw. Under no circumstances will there be a hat.