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.

Broken Doors

On the train to work this morning one of the doors is broken. If you push the button to open the door it just clicks and hisses at you like an irritated snake and refuses to budge.

How do I know this? Because at absolutely every bastard stop from King's Lynn to Cambridge some numpty, often several numpties, have pushed the door open button despite there being not one but two signs on the door with a pictogram depicting a train door with a big red line through it which even Slime Beasts of the Planet Zod could work out means "These doors are broken". Presumably it's this international wordless sign so we don't upset any uppity immigrants who would then sue for "distress and anxiety" because the train company didn't write "Out of Order" in their fucking language

OK so the brain dead trolls employed by National Distress East Anglia have stuck the signs on upside down but the meaning is still, I would posit, pretty clear.

Ah, another station, Whittlesford Parkway... Proper commuter belt now, maybe it was just the webbed fingered bog dwellers of the fens who are too dense to work out that when the sign says "Broken door" there is a fighting chance that said door won't open.

Click... Hisssssss... Click... Hisssssss....

Audley End maybe?

Click... Hisssssss... Click... Hisssssss....

Fucking hell I despair.

Want Product! Sell Me Product!

So I nip into WH Smiths to pick up my copy of "Leather Joy-Boys and Donkey Bondage Monthly" (this month they have an article entitled - "Never mind about the casino thing Blackpool, our readers have voted your beach donkies the 7th sexiest in the UK!")

I go up to pay, because I am an honest dragon.

Till Numpty: "You get a half price bar of chocolate with a magazine sir."

Dragon: "I don't want any chocolate thanks, I don't eat it, it sticks to my fangs"

Till Numpty: "If you buy a copy of the Independent you get a free bottle of water"

Dragon: "I'm not thirsty and anyway I read the Indy online edition at lunchtime"

Till Numpty: "Well how about 27% off a Terry's Chocolate Orange when you take out a subscription to 'What Ocelot'?

Dragon: "JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SELL ME MY MAGAZINE YOU STUPID FUCKING FUCK!"

And people wonder why online shopping is so popular.

Cough

The muslims are at it again and this time on my home turf. Mind you what I find really amusing (unlike this story (hat-tip to Frank Chalk) which had me spitting blood) is that this particular hijab wielding numpty does not even know what her own religion says on the subject of tobacco (hint - "nothing"). Take a wander around any major metropolitan centre in an islamic country and the blokes in the dishrag hats will be puffing away on the woodbines like it's going out of fashion. What with lack of ale, shagging and pretty much anything else that might possibly be fun there's precious little else left to do unless you have a fondness for camels.

And what about those nice fruity flavoured baccies that they make for the shisha pipes? I'm not even a smoker but during my sojurns in the middle east, Lebanon in particular, I rather enjoyed those with one of those minty teas they do - almost made up for the lack of decent beer and the Syrian army trying to shoot me (it's a long story - don't ask)

Mind you this could be a really good way for Tony's cronies to crack down on the binge drinking culture. Imagine the scene in a typical ghastly city centre pub on a friday night.

Chav: "Ere mate, give us three pints of snakebite and an absinthe and passion fruit alcopop for me bird"

Barman: "No kuffir I will not. Alcohol is haraam!"

[Exeunt with alarums and excursions and fisticuffs and the summoning of the rozzers]