We've set the date

...and it's Valentine's Day, February 14, 2006. After a day minching around Central London, going to the Barbican Centre for an exhibition, and then having a princely lunch at Subway, we took the number 12 bus to Camberwell and kept our appointment with the registrar. The building is a Grade II listed structure (I suppose it might have been St. Giles's Rectory or something of the sort, but I can't say for certain) but the waiting room is so modern that the registrar has to come out with the hand-held chip and pin machine because the slots in the glass window at reception are too small to pass the machine through.

We saw the registrar, first together, then separately, while she took down our details. The notices will be up for the next two weeks, and then we'll be free to form our Civil Partnership. We won't be having a ceremony, just signing the register, but we'll take our witnesses out to lunch afterwards. And that will be that!

Wish us luck!

A hymn for today

...got this in Integrity Lightspeed, and wanted to share.

O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
A wall is laid where tourists stayed,
And people can't go by.
And in thy dark streets shineth
No cheerful Christmas light;
The grief and fears of five sad years
Are met in thee tonight.

How silently, how silently
The world regards it all,
As now thy heart is torn apart
By Israel's ghetto wall.
They terrorise a people -
A war crime and a sin;
Their winding "fence" can make no sense;
Revenge can still get in.

O ye who now rule Bethlehem,
Cast down the iron cage,
The walls of hate that separate
And harden and enrage;
The land grab and apartheid -
This violence must cease,
If there's to be a land that's free,
A Bethlehem at peace.

You'll never think of Bing in relation to "White Christmas" again

...especially if you listen to this.

An incredibly moving story

You may have heard that the first same-sex couple to form a civil partnership in England will not be Elton John and David Furnish, but was a couple one of whom was terminally ill and who died the next day; their ceremony was advanced because of his illness. Here is their story.