Love and Marriage

Right back in the blogging saddle after my 3 weeks off wandering around Europe and at one point getting married.

Yes I have done the deed and after 18 years of being the unofficial Mrs Dragon, Mrs Dragon is now the official Mrs Dragon and we have a green piece of paper shoved in the back of a drawer to prove it.

But dear sweet banjo picking Jesus what a bloody fuss. Look if it were down to me this would have been done weeks ago when we both had to go and fill in the official forms with the registrar in the civil version of "Reading the Banns" which I blogged about here. After all they have all the information they need, we spoke individually and together to a registrar, surely that would be enough? All they would need to do is put the notices up and if nobody objects in three weeks you get your chitty, kind of like a planning application.

No chance. You have to hire the venue (fifty quid if you get the early bird version and turn up for the 10am slot) and have some council numpty read a bunch of words and before that another council numpty fills in your form using EXACTLY the same information that she had in front of her but we actually have to tell her the information all over again. I mean talk about feather-bedding and waste in local government.

After the round of form filling we are allowed to enter the official registry room where you have to go because if they read the magic words in the car park it doesn't count for some reason, maybe it's a magic spell and the Tennyson Room at Ely registry office is some sort of Hogwarts annexe. The special effects are not as good as Hogwarts mind as the first thing I see was a load of plastic flowers with a string of LED fairy lights wrapped round them and a cheap HiFi playing a bit from The Four Seasons and my brother in law's arse in the air as he fiddles about with the volume control - really classy.

And I mean is it really necessary for the registrar to wear her huge plastic name badge with "Ms. Important McOfficial - Cambridgeshire County Council" on it through the proceedings? Look it's galling enough that I have to abase myself before local sodding government without you rubbing my nose in it. I'm surprised she didn't insist on wearing a fluorescent green tabard with "WEDDING OFFICER" emblazoned on the back to make the point.

I then get told I'm stood on the wrong side of the future Mrs Dragon and that I need to be to her right "so as her knight I can draw my sword to defend her." I dragonfully* apply some tact under the circumstances and refrain from advising Ms Important McOffical that any knights drawing any swords in my presence are going to get both nostrils set to "roast at gas mark 8 for 2 hours".

Fortunately we had the shortest form of marriage blurb but that still went on for a good 10 minutes worth of "These lovely lovely people who are lovely and starting their new lovely life of love together and we'll pretend that they haven't been all over each other like wyverns in heat for the past 18 years" sickly sweet yuk from Ms McOfficial who had resorted to that Princess Diana coy head on her shoulder stance complete with stapled on smile before we get to take a few pics and bugger off back home for a very sun not yet above the yardarm champers

I'm definitely staying married to the new official Mrs Dragon. If that's the hassle you have to go through to get wed I dread to even think about what divorce is like.


* like "manfully", only done by a dragon.

If you follow my Twitter feed you'll know I'm gallivanting around Europe at the moment and in a couple of weeks I'm getting married so blogging will be light to non-existent for the next two or three weeks. 

So here are some horse pictures from the Bundeschampionate held at Warendorf, Germany over the week... if you're into horses prepare to drool (and no, you can't afford them)

And just for giggles:

Claudia Hat 'nen Video Spiele

17 years after its release Germany has "unbanned" the famous first person shooter game "Doom". The funniest thing reading about this was becoming re-acquainted with the German government ministry that originally did the banning, the fabulously named Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien literally "Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons"

Germany actually has this organisation that goes beyond rating media like games and films but can actually completely ban an item from sale or distribution if it is deemed "Harmful to Minors" which they define as:

Objects are considered harmful or dangerous to minors if they tend to endanger their process of developing a socially responsible and self-reliant personality.

What actually happened in practice was that items on the "index" were only available through certain outlets like sex shops.

I first came upon this "Won't somebody think of the chiiiiildren!" nightmare organisation some years ago through a German punk outfit "Die Ärtze" (The Doctors) who had one of their songs banned by the blue noses at the BPjM; it was a lovely little ditty about a girl called Claudia and her German Shepherd dog, went something like this...

Claudia hat nen Schäferhund
und den hat sie nicht ohne Grund,
Abends springt er in ihr Bett
und dann geht es rund!

Yes, it's rather rude but it really does beggar belief that some serious, educated people sat around in a room and went "Yes this song will encourage our young women to experiment with bestiality, better ban it."

So as a result of the ban Die Ärtze were forbidden to sing this song at their concerts. 

But as technically only the lyrics were banned what they used to do was play the song as an instrumental.  The audience used to sing it.

I can just imagine some Mary Whitehouse type watching thousands of teenagers singing..

Claudia mag keine Jungs
Und sie ist auch nicht lesbisch,
am allerliebsten mag sie es,
mit ihrem Hundchen untern Esstisch!

... at the tops of their voices as she slowly turned purple with impotent rage.

Dura lex sed lex

So the Dale Farm do-what-you-likey-pikeys are about to recieve a little visit from Mr and Mrs Bulldozer and their son Master Wreckingball.

Good. Although they seemed quite happy to resort to the law to keep their illegally built eyesore the have been handed their arses on a plate and found out that the law works both ways and it really doesn't matter if you don't think that the law applies to you or you should be allowed to do whatever the fuck you like with land you own, the law says it does apply to you and you can't. Dura lex sed lex; the law is hard but it is the law.

Look I'm no great fan of the state and many planning laws are just bloody stupid - for example when building my stable block I had to prepare and submit a flood evacuation plan, for a horse, on land that last flooded when it was a swamp back in the eighteenth century. However I would posit that the planning rules serve a purpose to stop selfish bastards doing what the hell they like with no thought for the misery it causes other people If I'd wanted to build an open air nightclub with a gigawatt sound system then it would only be right and proper that my neighbours would have the right to make representation to a planning body of the harm such an action would cause to their lives and freedoms and for that body to weigh the evidence and maybe decide that my freedom to party does not outweigh my neighbours freedom to get a decent night's kip and so no you can't have your nightclub.

And I differ from my more extreme libertarians on this notion that if you own something then it is yours to do with as you wish. For example as many of my readers know I own horses and there are various things I can't do with them, for example use certain kinds of harness or shock collars for training or, coming back to our friends in the "travelling community", take it into a river in Appleby and drown the poor beast. This is because we, as a society through our elected representatives, have decided that to do so is not acceptable and because we know some callous git would do these things we make laws and erect a system of justice to ensure people are held to those laws.

And whilst the law is hard it is moveable. Remember bottysex used to be illegal and now it isn't? The law can be changed by people agitating and petitioning the lawmakers for a change. The residents of Dale Farm and their fellows are perfectly at liberty to make their case to change the law and, if by some miracle and in a parallel universe where your average traveller is a nice, polite, honest person who actually gives a shit about other people, they get opinion on their side then the law will eventually change.

It's not a perfect system by any means as there are always those, usually with money and power, who will subvert the law, or set themselves up above the law, but given the nature of human beings it's probably the best we can do. You can always break the law, or ignore it, but you have to be aware that there will be consequences.

And in this case the consequences are large, yellow and have "JCB" written on the side.