Saturday 14th August

It feels like it's been an incredibly hectic couple of weeks – but that's mainly because we haven't really had a proper weekend at home. Weekends away are fun and a bit of a change, but I do tend to miss weekend days spent pottering around London and heading to the pub whenever that gets boring. It is also, more importantly than anything, the opening day of the Premier League season. Inevitably, in one of our first major cliché moments as an engaged couple, this is also the Saturday we have set aside to spend properly researching wedding venues. We're going to Dorset on Wednesday for K's dad's Big Show, allowing us a handy day to spend going to visit potential spots to hold the ceremony. Today, therefore, we start by sitting side by side in the kitchen, each in front a computer, furiously Googling “wedding venues North Dorset” and the like, grabbing phone numbers and email addresses and working out how far from the reception venue each of them are. I only get into trouble once – when K takes a look at my laptop screen and sees that I have in fact got the BBC live text coverage of Tottenham v Man City, the 12.45 curtain-raiser, open as one of my Firefox tabs. Whoops.

We do make headway, though, and soon K has fired off our form request email to ten-or-so venues, two of which we really like the look of. Around lunchtime we head out to Wood Green to do a smallish food shop, seeing as we're only at home for a couple of days this week, and when we get back I steal a few minutes in front of Soccer Saturday. It's great to have it back – and as the day's 3pm kick-offs get underway, it all comes flooding home. Even in this memorable World Cup year, international football is instantly forgotten, especially as the day's first big shock result comes through. Starting their season away at Wigan, play-off winners Blackpool are possibly the least-fancied of side promoted to the Premier League in recent years, sitting in most pundit's lists of relegation candidates ahead of kick-off (not least mine, as evidenced by yesterday's Premier League preview post on twofootedtackle.com). Amazingly, though, some atrocious defending by Wigan sees them 3-0 to the visitors by half time, with the orange-clad men adding an amazing fourth in the second half. By 5pm, Blackpool are top of the Premier League, albeit with Chelsea yet to play.

With Chelsea specifically in mind, I finally leave the house at 5 and head to The World's End in Finsbury Park – very much the football-watching pub of 2009, when we lived around there – to meet Will. Typically Will is running around 45 minutes late, so I get a beer and a decent seat while I wait for him to arrive. The game starts with Chelsea in full control, West Brom looking every inch the slightly-overawed newly-promoted side. Barely six minutes in, Florent Malouda taps in John Obi Mikel's fluffed rebound to open the scoring for the champions (and does that feel nice to write!), before Drogba makes it two from a long-range free kick. Two more from Drogba, and a nice one from Frank Lampard later, and Chelsea start the 2010-11 season much as they ended the 2009-10 season – with a thumping victory. Just as the final score of 6-0 is confirmed by Malouda in stoppage time, K arrives with her sister Lucy in tow, along with the rest of the usual gang. Will and I join them for a drink.

Later on we head down to a new “pop-up venue” near Finsbury Park station, and this time it's my turn to be a few pints ahead of everyone else. After a couple in here and the live bands start, I'm completely trollied, and filled with dread after Will buys me another drink that I never asked for. I dutifully force it down, though it is to be my last memorable act of the evening. K, thankfully, is on hand to assist me to the tube – and even orders a Domino's pizza off the internet when we get home. Less thankfully, she pays for it with a tenner lifted straight from my wallet. As is often the case in these situations, the pizza tastes like heaven itself – neither of us caring a jot for the inevitable salty dehydration of the morning.