Holy apologies.

I must apologise.

The day before yesterday I said that yesterday I would tell you about the day I met Satan, and I didn’t because I haven’t.

I just posted a picture of me and him.

I apologise.

(I appologise for my grammar as well.)

(And my spelling.)

It was a blatant attempt to build literary expectation, and a convenient way to end a rambling narrative.

I apologise again.

Finding that snappy ending is one of the difficult things in writing – along with the interesting beginning. The middle is pretty tricky too.

God knows why one bothers really.

Talking about God, which makes a timely change from Satan, the picture that graces this post (and I use the word deliberately) shows Eric, my uncle-in-law, standing in front of the cathedral in the nearby town of Albi.

I think you will agree that the magnificence of the cathedral is matched, if not surpassed, by the grin on Eric’s face. His neighbour’s, his daughter, is pretty impressive too!

Clearly they are both very happy and I would like to think that this reflects the fact that they were staying with me on the day the photo was taken, and that I had made an extra effort to send them of with a good breakfast in their holy tums.

And Holy tums they are – Eric is a vicar, albeit ex, and his daughter must get some holiness by default surely?

When I got married I wanted to make it special – I know, I know, it WAS special, but you have to realise that this was my second marriage – hey we can all make mistakes – and I wanted the ceremony to be special, to stand out from the first time.

So we asked Eric.

He wasn’t an ex-vicar at the time but a …, a… what does one say? A practicing vicar? I hope not, I hope he was perfect.

We found a church – I know there are lots but this one was in my future wife’s grandma’s village and it was pretty, ancient and very much nicer than the municipal registry office where I had drifted into the previous time.

Eric agreed to officiate and asked us to procure permission from The Archbishop’s office- permission which would allow him, a vicar from the S.W. to vicar ( I offer that as a verb now) in the S. E.

They sent us the forms.

We started to fill them in.

We stopped at question 10 – “have either of you been married before?”

I rang Eric.

“Er, Eric , I don’t know if you know this, but I was married once before and there’s a question on this form… is that a problem?”

“Well, it’s not a problem for the Archbishop, but it’s a problem for me.”

“?”

“ I can’t marry you if you have been divorced.”

I felt like saying, “no, you misunderstand, I want to marry your niece, not you”, but I sensed this was not the moment.

Eric was honest about his deeply held beliefs, and I respect that.

So I hope he respects what I am about to write if he reads this.

He continued – “I wouldn’t even marry my own daughter if she was a divorcee”

It’s a surprise she is still smiling in that photo then, eh?