Oh God.

So I thought we were having a civil ceremony, and that meant the church had nothing to do with it – right?

Oh no. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Because the church essentially decides what a civil ceremony is. In fact, the church are so massively paranoid about civil ceremonies that they can’t get enough of them – or enough out of them.

So what is their problem? Well, something like this…

If people are allowed to get married outside the church, people will leave the church, because there aren’t really that many believers left, and they need that 28% to boost their political influence. If civil ceremonies allow people to express their personal beliefs, personalise their ceremonies and don’t have to conform to the rigid doctrine of their particular denomination, then people will stop having church weddings and follow their OWN beliefs. This would be awful, because the church would no longer be controlling these people. Not to mention many people’s only interaction with the church is through weddings, christenings and funerals…

So the church dictates what can and cannot happen in a civil ceremony. Originally, it was reduced just to the legal basis, and has since expanded and become more ceremonial, but it’s still restricted. As it were, it’s a cripple, but we now have a wheelchair and crutches.

We’ve just come up against a brick wall again with our registrars. They are very nice and helpful people, so we know it isn’t their fault, but they have changed their minds to our annoyance and expense. This is our problem: eating and drinking has religious connotations. Yes, the church OWN eating and drinking. You cannot eat, drink, or pretend to eat or drink in a civil ceremony in England.

We were originally told we couldn’t have our quaich ceremony because we couldn’t eat or drink. We were sad. We had wanted to share this with everyone. But we gave it up and decided to have a “dry” quaich. We sent the registrars an updated version of our ceremony plan, and they said it was okay. Today we called and begged to be able to speak to our registrar, as she was now allotted. During the call, she told us the quaich was a no-go. Ah! But we updated it! we said. We removed the drink, as we were told to. No, apparently a quaich ceremony is a no-go because eating and drinking at a wedding is religious. Even if there isn’t really any food or drink, and you tell everybody that fact.

She’s going to call back at 3.

The thing that bothers me is that we’re the last people to want a religious ceremony. We’ve personalised our writing about the quaich to be symbolic of what we

Symbolism in fact, seems to be the church’s problem. If it’s not about god, how dare we have symbolism, how dare we express deeper meanings? Most church-goers probably think this is as silly as I do. Of course their is depth and meaning in non-religious things – take love, for example – but the church authorities seem either to believe there isn’t, or fear that people will work out that there is. Facepalm truly is the appropriate word.

Their paranoia is getting to me too. It makes me wonder – what else isn’t allowed in civil ceremonies because it’s nearly churchy? What about “hymn style” singing – i.e. everyone standing up and joining in. Maybe that’s forbidden. Maybe that’s why they suggest readings? I’ve never heard of it in a civil ceremony myself.

It’s All About the Green Tea

Whilst chatting with the Lovely Ladies, someone brought up green tea, and how amazingly good it’s supposed to be for you, providing lots of valuable vitamins, minerals and aiding weight loss (this is why they were so interested). Now I’ve heard all this before, and wasn’t very interested, but it’s amazing what getting married in 4 months can do to you, eh? So I suddenly remember that I had an awful lot of green tea and hadn’t had any for a while, and I like it, and we’d see what it did to me.

I drank two small pots ~2-3 cups per pot, and found my mind was clear, I was more alert, I concentrated better at work, and had a LOT of energy. In fact, two pots was too much, I wouldn’t sleep, wasn’t tired the next day and remained hyperactive until the following lunch.

Despite a lot of cheesy food, I also found I was looking slimmer. I wasn’t losing weight, but I wasn’t gaining it when eating irresponsibly and was averaging something lower than I normally do (all this is done with a mirror, not the scales…). So I decided green tea did work and was good for me.

But I’ve found this varies from tea to tea. The chua mee I have was very powerful, the sencha less so. Today, I have gone through my collection of sachets of tea and found all the green tea versions and brought them into labs so I can enjoy it there. I have green tea and lemon and green tea and cranberry, by twinings. Frankly, I prefer variations on just green tea, but I don’t want to drag the whole set of paraphanalia into labs. That’d just be silly.

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I’ve also discovered this little gem after a little googling on the green tea topic. You shouldn’t make green tea with boiling water. At 100 degrees, lots of the molecules which are good for you are deactivated, and can no longer help. This is similar to what happens when you boil vegetables and the goodness is leached into the water and poured away, leaving you only with flavoured stodge. Except in the case of green tea, it isn’t merely leaching, but the deformation or breakdown of fragile organic compounds. If, like me, you’re sensitive to caffeine, brewing repeatedly with one bag or one set of leaves is also a goody – the caffeine level drops dramatically every time you brew the same leaves. And since you’re not using boiling water, there should be a few brews in it.

Personally, I find that if you brew green tea too long in the same pot ittakes on a metallic, tinny flavour, which is most unpleasant, so I’m always careful not to brew it for too long. Diluting it after overbrewing doesn’t help. It simply makes the tinny flavour weaker.