Sheep worrying: the death of an institution

When I married Tony in 1980, we both thought such a move a little passé like most institutions, but there was something irreconcilably romantic about it. I honestly thought that ours would be the last wedding – that that was the end of it – people have been marrying for so long, I thought it would just die out. I imagined future people as partners, like in law firms. Of course I kept my name, as many lawyers do, but also because Booth is my name and a nicer shape. When you pour water, there is sonority in displacement, as travelling volume meets still volume, and picture the magic of ‘oo’ against the plainness of ‘air’. Well, I have been to so many weddings in the last few years and I was beginning to get a little mystified as to what was happening – so many young women metaphorically spontaneously combust as their fathers give them away like dowry cattle and then they are robbed of their monikers. How refreshing then, that in the Czech Republic I recently glimpsed how transgressive a union can still be. When the registrar, already a fish out of water, or a bureaucrat in a hippy commune if you prefer, made the mistake of introducing the new Mr and Mrs His Name. Well both bride and groom baa-d like sheep and I was reminded of the White Queen. I am sure you recall the chapter in Through the Looking Glass where, in pursuit of her shawl, the queen finds herself at the counter of a shop and begins to bleat, 'that’s bee-tter, beeee-tter’. Alice must buy something from the sheep’s shop, but given knitting needles she finds they turn into oars. There is something ‘queer’ about the water, and when back in the shop, the egg which she has decided to buy retreats from her grasp. The registrar seemed a masala of retreating egg, caught crab, and wool. Perhaps all there is left to do is spontaneously combust.