Tag Archives: youtube

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On wedding vows

Betty has a frightful cold in her throat, and so she is sitting up in bed drafting out her wedding service. The one that the minister gave to Betty and the boy person fiance needed a small amount of tweaking, not least because the couple whose service the minister used as a reference said their vows in Dutch after giving them in English, which would seem a little odd in this case, given that the boy person fiance (pleasing though he is) is not a Dutchman. Betty, therefore, has been googling the Book of Common Prayer with abandon (a more difficult task than one would think — the top hits always belong to a Jane Austen fan site, which, while it seems to have the wording pat, does not sit well with Betty’s instincts about reputable referencing).

So Betty took a short break to investigate one of the obligatory YouTube links: the wedding of Frederik and Mary of Denmark. Betty had forgotten how lovely the Danish language is — apart from reminding her of Garrison Keillor (always a heartwarming thing), it simply has a beautiful sound. What Betty did not know is the way this language simplifies even the stateliest of wedding ceremonies to its absolute essence:

Priest:

[in Danish] Do you, Frederik André Henrik Christian, burble burble burble?

Frederik:

Jah.

And not an overwrought, royal “Jah”, but the clipped “Jah” of an amenable small boy; sort of a Danish “Yup”. Quite beautiful.

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Adventures in Burtonland

The first trailer that Betty saw for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movie was, sad to say, a little underwhelming. Though he has gone to town with the visual lunacy for which he is justly famous, there were distinct hints of lazy Disney remix syndrome going on. With this longer and more revealing trailer, however, Betty begins to feel that there may still be something there. Please, Mr Burton, please let there be something there…

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Katie Melua is most pleasing on the eardrums

This song plays on cable a lot when Betty is at work (this is the job at which Betty sits a lot and watches cable, readers understand). It is reminiscent of C. S. Lewis’s poetry, in the following way: on first hearing, it struck Betty as being cerebral and poncy to the point of awkwardness. This impression was quite wrong. On repeated listenings, just as it is when one repeatedly reads one of Lewis’s poems — “Love’s as Warm as Tears”, let’s say, or the devastatingly lovely “Footnote to All Prayers” — the piece is revealed to be strikingly simple, sufficiently but not ostentatiously complex, beautifully shaped: and integrated, shaped by its own structure, not decorated or embellished. The best words in the best order, as another poet used to say, and he was right.