Warning - contains spoilers.
Last night I was sitting on the couch with Keith and Charlii. The sun had set, and the rain poured down as the "Beast from the East" had passed over. I had just poured myself a gin and tonic after the exertions of all the filling-up of beakers. And I felt an infinite scream pass through all nature.
Turned out it was a hundred thousand vicars, all watching Cormoran Strike on telly. And simultaneously tweeting, shouting, swearing and seething "you don't say 'I do' at a Church of England wedding!"
We've checked the astral plane. And Cormoran Strike has had much the same effect that a Cormorant Strike would have on a sea plane coming in to land in the Outer Hebrides. Just loads of vicar-shaped holes torn through the fabric of spiritual space-time as every Anglican minister in the country found themselves struck - well, not dumb - they're rarely speechless - more in a state of incoherence at the thought of the wrong form of words at a wedding.
Thing is, it's a matter of risk with the words in Occasional Offices. Get a few words in the funeral wrong and they're still dead. But get a wedding wrong and you might end up as an ad-libbed joke in a JB Priestley production.
So there's not so many thin places around today. But quite a few ripped ones. If you see a vicar this week, be nice to them. What with Cormoran Strike and Call the Midwife, they've had an emotional time.
The vicar, however, was a real Anglican vicar, they were probably following the script! He’s also The Old Peculiar, which real ale aficionados will understand...
ReplyDeleteMaybe they had to say “I do” otherwise they might have committed bigamy?
That's interesting. Although not an anglican I have been to a few weddings in the past in anglican churches and thought that 'I do' were the words used. What do the happy couple say then?
ReplyDeleteI wasn't even watching it, and I felt that rend in the fabric of the universe...
ReplyDelete