The ring

Since my fiance popped the big question almost a month ago I've had a succession of not-quite-right rings adorning my left hand, one of which actually broke, leaving me panicing about "signs" and bad luck. But yesterday we finally got around to heading out to chose the final, big-budget version, an upgrade to my current Accessorise rock, THE ring itself.

My fiance's mum is a bastion of useful local knowledge and she didn't let us down on this one, sending us to a friend of hers who deals in diamonds as a "hobby". Diana was exactly what we expected, loud, ebullient and keen to show off a succession of the too-big and too-bling. I've had a clear as carat picture of my ideal ring in my head for some time now and it wasn't any of these. I explained what I wanted to Diana and despite the word "plain" appearing to pain her, she thankfully caught on that what I had in mind was basically one big hunk of diamond with nothing to detract or distract from it.

Fortunately Diana knew the perfect diamond and was immediately on the phone getting hold of it; unfortunately said diamond is currently set as a pendant in a bezel setting. This means that it has a thick band of white gold around it and I can only really guess at what it will look like as a ring. With my limited diamond knowledge I examined it, pretending to know what I was looking at through the magnifying eye-glass and declared that I think it's going to be perfect. Here's hoping...