Silver Light

We attended a silver wedding event this evening for some friends, who also happen to be neighbours. One of the nicest families you could hope to meet, so it was an honour and a privilege to help them celebrate 25 years together, and a laugh to see all the old photos projected on the wall of the function room. That hair! That suit! That moustache! Etc. Well, it was 1985, and the eighties weren't exactly renowned for their fashions.

It occurred to me as we sat at the table and the conversation flowed around and through us, occasionally stopping to pick up some words and move on, like a verbal tram with an unpredictable timetable and a driver who may well have been R.P.McMurphy, that 1985 was also coincidentally the year I got married for the second time. Which means that, had I stuck it out, we too would be celebrating our silver wedding next month. Of course it's also true that, had I stuck it out, I would probably have been driving that tram, assuming I could have escaped the funny farm, so I think it's safe to say things have turned out for the best.

Our hosts being (reasonably) devout, we were "treated" to a blessing from "the father" at one point. Far be it from me to impose my beliefs and prejudices on anyone (although I hear fellow heretics shouting from the back "it never stops them!!"), but I could have happily done without hearing the message that the success of their marriage was actually nothing to do with their own efforts, but largely down to the beneficence of The Lord, who smiled down upon them from on high, probably on account of their having attended His Place of Worship on a regular basis.

Thankfully this drivel didn't go on for too long, as I was on the verge of converting to Dawkinism. I did wonder though, and not for the first time, exactly what credentials one requires to be a priest. Beyond the obvious predilection for... well... you know what I mean. By the look of the guy he must have been priesting for easily as long as our hosts have been married, and it wouldn't have surprised me to learn that he'd been at it twice that long. Yet in all that time he never found the time to actually learn the words of the blessing he delivered to the happy couple. Only a short passage, at most half the length of my introduction to this year's hotpot, which I learned in two weeks and delivered word-perfect on three occasions, and with many fewer polysyllabic utterances, but his years under the cloth had not provided sufficient opportunity to commit the simple homily to memory. He read it, falteringly it has to be said, from The Book, in a bored monotone utterly lacking in charisma or even any apparent interest. Apologies to Woody Allen but it made me think "those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. And those that can't teach, join the church."