At least you’re marrying for love...
start, a meal on the terrace restaurant usually involved a visit from a couple of huge iguanas who’d scrabble in, all claws and scales and whipping tails, from the adjoining rain forest.
All right, I knew they wouldn’t attack anyone but having a reptile that looks like a descendant of T-rex eyeballing you as you try CAN you marry yourself? Yes, you can, actually. To my astonishment I read this week about the growing trend for women – some men but mostly women – to stand solemnly before the dearly beloved (family and friends) and pledge themselves to, er, themselves, for as long as they, um, alone, shall live.
There’s actually a word for it: sologamy. It has some literary heritage too. When shepherd Gabriel Oak proposes to Bathsheba Everdene in Far From The Madding Crowd, she to eat your lunch is a bit unnerving.
You’d think room service would be safer but no. Our hotel asked us to put our steel-domed dinner dishes on the porch outside our room for collection but if they were there for any longer than 10 minutes you’d hear an ominous clanging as creatures of the night worked says she’d enjoy a grand wedding if only she could have one without a husband.
“Since a woman can’t show herself off in that way by herself I shan’t marry,” she explains.
A bemused Oak tells her that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. So it’s a good job he’s not around in the 21st century.
In Europe, Japan, America and Canada self-marriage is a growing trend. Brighton recently saw Sophie Tanner wed herself. The bride wore white and she had 20 bridesmaids, who heard her promise to “love thyself,
the beasts of the field should Jolly well stay in the field
the heavy metal covers free and went to work on the leftovers. “Oh look, it’s a tapir,” Richard said unconvincingly one night.
“It’s a huge bloody rat,” I replied, withdrawing sharply into the bedroom.
Then there were the kick-boxing crows. If the rats – sorry, tapirs – weren’t there first, huge black-and-white cherish thyself and pleasure thyself”.
Sophie later said: “Some guys get really angry. They say that’s ridiculous, you can’t marry yourself, that’s like having your cake and eating it!”
The 37-year-old says she sees the ceremony as a symbolic and feminist act. “There are now so many ways to have a relationship and be happy. I just wanted to celebrate that.” Well, each to their own, on their own. Anniversaries might be tricky, though. How do you give a surprise present to yourself? crows would dive down, extending their clawed feet at the last moment and bashing the covers away. If you slid the screen door back to try to frighten them off they’d simply flap their wings and snap their beaks at you. Totally unafraid. I suppose you have to hand it to them. They know a pathetic Pom when they see one.