Bear blog

A couple of weeks ago, due to honest Christian family values and a latent desire for a bit of one-upmanship, my niece got christened. And due to my natural, unaffected love for her I dressed up like a girl n'that. 

 

 

 

But it was alright cause so did everyone else. Including Reb. They got her all trussed up like Little Bo Peep when really you could tell she wanted to be rolling around in the mud and eating pocket fluff. She was very good about the whole thing though.

 

The priest was a fantastic doddery old man with no sense of occasion. We piled into the church and got comfy (apparently you're not supposed to put your feet on those floor cushion thingies) and whilst we were waiting for a bit of music to start or for someone to clear their throat and ask everyone to turn to page 9, the priest sauntered out to the front and started chatting in a mumbly, rambling sort of fashion. So we sort of carried on chatting, thinking he was going to start the ceremony in a minute. Any minute now...or maybe not. Cause then he started pointing out all the Jesus paraphanalia he had around the place. There was a big bastard candle, which symbolised something or other. A glass of water with a napkin over the top of it for splashing purposes. And some essential oils.

 

Not called oil though. No. Called Chrism.

 

As in the jism of Christ. Fantastic. My niece (who incidentally, should be very bloody grateful that her mother loves her enough to step in half way through the ceremony to inform the priest that her name was Rebecca and not, in fact, Vanessa) has been annointed in Jesus' name and all that and will not be going to purgatory on the basis of having been rubbed with Christ's willy juice.

 

I couldn't have wished for more, really. But then we went to a fancy pub and I met four beautiful cuddly dog-dogs (who Barnesy would have loved) and ate poncy fish and chips from the buffet and sat outside while everyone did the family socialising thing.

 

What a lovely day.