Marriage Rehearsal

A terrible administrative slip-up today. I thought I'd been asked to take a "wedding rehearsal". In fact it was a "marriage rehearsal". Two hours of sitting tensely and not speaking, interrupted by the occasional blazing row. They've decided it's not for them. So I suppose that at least in that respect it was a success.

A good weeding

I do love a good weeding. There's nothing like getting down on your knees in front of the Almighty, next to the one you love, and giving some clear, long-lasting commitment to the process. That way, you can get some serious growing done, though you need to keep working at it together, or things can start getting neglected, and then you're in real trouble. If that happens, you may need to bring in an expert third party to get things under control and help sort things out: there's no shame in that.

Although some might disagree, I also think that a couple of cats are useful in this regard, as they can keep the number of uninvited guests down to minimum (it can sometimes be difficult to control the birds, in my experience, as they can be _very_ persistent_ around bedding time).

On a completely different note, I'm told by those in the know that there's a big wedding going on today in London town. I'd not noticed any coverage myself, and was due to take a turn in the Doily Mines today, but apparently it's a Bank Holiday, so I've declined. The Archdruid, who's a bit grumpy about the whole thing, tried to insist that as it's "volunteer work", there should be no time off, but, taking my life (and my shins) in my hands, I have over-ruled her, declaring the day a Community Holiday.

The Archdruid, you understand, isn't a big fan of weddings, but Mrs Hnaef and I coming up for our 16th wedding anniversary, and we're very happy. No, really. We take time together, we take time to ourselves (the entirety of Lent, this year, as it happens), and we wouldn't be without each other. And the wedding was the start of that. We did the "big thing": partly for us, partly for friends and family. I mean, you only get married once, right? Well, that's our plan, and we invited all of those we love, and those who love us (of whom several of the latter, including my father, who was conducting the ceremony, kept asking my bride-to-be questions such as "are you really, really sure?", and giving her helpful advice like "it's not to late to change your mind, you know"). The future Mrs Hnaef started on the champagne at breakfast (that's _real_ breakfast, at 8 o'clock, not the one after the wedding), but I was too scared to have more than a half of stout before the service. But we both went through with it, she nearly gave my grandfather (the one who thought eating ice-cubes gives you leprosy) a heart attack when he thought she winked at him, the choir sang, the organ played, the preacher (my previous director of studies) gave a _terrible_ and theologically very suspect sermon, and we said our vows in front of the assembled multitude. And I was the happiest man in the world. As was the new Mrs Hnaef. Well, woman, anyway: it was a Church of England wedding, and they aren't putting up with that sort of thing then, though I'm sure they're entirely happy about it these days.

Even my mother-in-law was happy - not a phrase you'll hear me utter very often - and not just because she'd also been on the champagne (and possibly gin) from breakfast time. Happiest of all, possibly, were some of Mrs Hnaef's Liverpool-based cousins who my father mistook for porters and tipped for carrying some bags. Aunt Amy (a Liverpool aunt) lost her handbag and a high-heeled shoe in the flowerbeds, but found them in the morning, and one of the afore-mentioned cousins slept in a bath on a college staircase somewhere, so what more could we all have hoped for?

And in the morning, Mrs Hnaef and I headed off to a little cottage in the Cotswolds for the week of rare breeds farms, hawking, torrential rain, powercuts, cribbage and being forced to read my favourite science fiction novel ("If I'd known it was this rubbish, I wouldn't have married you: is it too early for a divorce?") that would characterise the rest of our marriage.

Was the wedding a big hoo-har? Yes. Was it a nightmare to arrange? Yes. Was it expensive? Yes. But I've never regretted it for a moment, and, I suspect, despite her protestations, that the same goes for my lovely bride. Who never did say "obey", in the end.

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Marjorie

When I saw her getting  off the bus, it  seemed to wipe away the years. Her face was older, just a little rough - but her eyes were still so clear.
Marjorie has returned to me, and I am indescribably happy! It was so important that the household knew a woman's touch.
And she left no time in applying that woman's touch to the house. The front lounge is now already laminated, I've painted the back parlour, and she has ordered new tiles for the bathroom. My back is in agony, my fingers pierced with splinters of laminate - and yet I am so incredibly happy.

A letter

I've received a letter from Marjorie.

"Dear Drayton

I've been wondering where you got to since we - or I should say - I moved house.  So I am delighted and surprised to have found out your new address.  I can't understand how I managed to lose you in the move, but I'd like to reassure you that it wasn't just you - I also managed to mislay the second-best napkin rings - you remember, the silver ones?  You haven't got them, have you?

In the time that we have been married, I've always considered that your neediness, expressed as an anxiety for everybody to love you, has been matched only by your poor organisation skills and your need to push people around.  I'm therefore delighted that, by obtaining a job as a church leader, you've probably found something that matches your personality

 Since I discover that you are living in a house provided by the church, I reckon I can make some money by renting out my - I mean our - primary residence. I will therefore be arriving in Leicestershire with you shortly. Can you get the spare room ready.

Sincerely

Marjorie"

I can't express my joy. That my new calling in life should be supplemented by the return of the one I love! I am unsurprised by the apparently cool tone on the surface of her letter - Marjorie was never one to let great emotion show, except a certain amusement that day I trapped my hand in the car door.

Melancholia

It's been a sad morning.

Normally, the day is not long enough for all the good I would want to do. I want to be preaching the Good News in season, out of season and close season. Carrying other's burdens. Shouldering my cross. Generally fighting the good fight.

But I decided that it was better for my physical and spiritual health to take a day off. After all, I have two deacons, and Oswald and  Basil can do any emergency pastoral work that does not need the official minister. And the need for Sabbath - especially when one works on the Sabbath, as I suppose technically I do - is built deep into Man.

And so I am going to take Thursdays off.

So this morning I rose at 5.30 am. I felt a lie-in would be a good start. Then an hour's prayer in my spare room, and then an hour of singing Psalms in the garden, until the neighbours asked me to desist. Indeed, Prov 27:14 has it about right, at least in Sandy Lane. So I spent a couple of hours in quiet contemplation of the Good Book, and then sorted through the post.

A couple of leaflets from various Baptist Missionary projects. A gas bill. A letter which seems to have been delayed, asking me to sign a petition against a slurry pond at Willow farm. A Next Directory addressed to my predecessor.

It must have been seeing the young couple yesterday that put me into a melancholic mood. They obviously, despite their sinful jumping of the nuptial gun, loved each other dearly.  I fell to musing about Marjorie, and how I lost her.

Surely it was just a terrible misunderstanding. We'd put our house in Milton Keynes on the market, planning to buy somewhere smaller now the children had moved out. I was called away on business - a week-long Underarm Deodorant Industry conference at the NEC.  When I came back, the house's new owners had moved in and of Marjorie there was no sign. We'd not even exchanged contracts when I left on the Monday morning.

I'm sure she must have left a message for me, but somehow it was lost. And maybe her mobile phone memory was wiped so she couldn't find my number.  And she'd never taken much notice of my job, so maybe she just didn't know exactly where I worked.   And it could have been just a misunderstanding that led the buyers to think she was single.

And so I had been musing for a while there in the kitchen, thinking about Marjorie.  Then I realised I had  absently-mindedly flipped my way through the Next catalogue, drawing lines across the legs of all the female models to indicate the length their hemlines should have been to preserve the appropriate amount of modesty.

God is a help in trouble, our refuge in ages past.  The Spirit is my guide.  But I'm really missing Marjorie.

Wedding Preparation

It's been a lovely evening, with young Agnes - the lady who phoned me up last week - and Robert, her fiancé.

They're not chapel-goers, but they told me that Agnes' mother is very keen they not be married at St Swithin's. Not least because the vicar is a woman. Agnes' mother thinks that women ministers are wrong - I felt myself to be warming to the lady, absent as she was.  But then Agnes said,
"In fact, she thinks even a Baptist is better than a woman vicar."
I collected myself, However you look at it, this wedding is the chance, next summer, for a great witness to the families of these two young people.

I'll be honest, this will be my first wedding - or at least the first I've conducted, I've been to loads.  So I really wanted to make the preparation thorough. I covered off the Scriptural basis - Adam and Eve, Jesus' commandments on divorce - and then I went on to the details of the promises and the ceremony itself.

It was when I moved on - tentatively, and sensitively - to the matter of the wedding night, and the activities associated with it.  I obviously wasn't going to draw any diagrams, or any detailed description of the - for want of a better word - obligations  of the marriage bed. But I felt it was my Christian duty to set the scene, so to speak.
So imagine my surprise when they made it quite clear that they were fully familiar with all the activities of the bridal suite, before the event.
I wasn't sure what to do. That the young couple before me were heinous sinners was quite clear. And yet I am the one able to set them on the path to redemption. But inspiration fell upon me, as the dews upon Hermon.

The young couple agreed that a period of repentance and abstinence was necessary, before next year's nuptials. Moving back in with their parents is apparently out of the question, in the interim - who would have thought that both their families have had to seal off their rooms due to anthrax infestation?  But they have agreed that they shall inhabit separate bedrooms until they are united, legally and in the eyes of God. I don't like the compromise, fearing that temptation will be in their way, but if they can overcome that temptation they will be equal to the strength of many.

Before they left I offered to pray for Robert's healing from what seems to be a nasty affliction. He developed, later in our conversation, a tendency to wink repeatedly and apparently in the direction of his betrothed. I suspect it may have been merely the nervousness and guilt associated with the disclosure of their situation, and he assures me that he's sure it will clear up once he's sufficiently forgiven.

Marriage Rites

Now I understand. After a kind reader emailed me a suggestion, I watched a few back-episodes of Vicar of Dibley and realised the misunderstanding I had had with the young caller yesterday. So when her mother phoned me today, it took me almost no time to understand her request. With the result that I only accused her of offering her daughter around like a piece of meat once, then quickly recalled how it works. The young lady and her husband-to-be are coming to visit next week. They're hoping to hold the wedding next August, they've booked the Crown and Cushion for the reception, so it looks like the job's a good one.

Marriage Rights

I received a phone call today. A young lady asking if I would marry her. I said that was very sweet of her, but I hardly know her and in fact I'm already married. I went on to explain that while I can't discover my wife Marjorie's current whereabouts, we're very much still married and as soon as the Private Detective gets back to me with her location I'm sure we'll be back together again. But then the young lady told me that she didn't want to become wedded to me, she actually wanted to be married to her boyfriend, who wasn't me.

Well of course I didn't take this personally. After all, I'm already married. And, by the sound of it, old enough to be her father. But I'm in a position of moral authority. So I told her that she shouldn't go phoning up pastors in the evenings making these kind of propositions, dangling proposals and then letting them down. All I could hear was silence at her end of the line after I said this. So I wished her good night and hung up.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. The same girl. Saying I didn't understand - she wanted me to marry her and her boyfriend. I informed her that, even after the previous 13 years of ungodly New Labour rule, polyandry was still illegal. I thought it was highly immoral and had no Biblical precedent. Once again, silence at the other end. So again I wished her "God bless" and hung up.

I hope I don't have a stalker.