Daphne Does Derby

I’ve been thinking about it, lately.

I’m pretty into the idea of marriage. Once, in one of those upscale novelty candy stores, I saw this really old couple shuffling through. They wore oversized cardigans and looked bewildered by all the bright colours and noise, as if they’d been cryogenically frozen and now woken up in the future.

the huge, ridiculous jelly bean bull we have in Birmingham’s Selfridges store probably looked like a neo-pagan god

The husband picked up one of those novelty candy fans and shoved it in his wife’s face. She shoved back, hit him on the arm and started scolding him in a practiced, familiar way.

This is basically my idea of married bliss.

However, I think the methods of getting married are too complicated. You have the western way, with the meeting and the dating and the relationshipness and the introducing and the moving in-ing and then finally, the proposing and the wedding.

There is also the Indian way, which is his aunt sees the girl, talks to her mum, her mum talks to his mum, his mum talks to him, her mum talks to her, his aunt talks to her, his mum talks to her, and all that before the meeting, proposing and wedding.

I’ve come up with a streamlined process, combining the connection so sought in western society, and the resignation that is behind the higher success rates of Indian marriages.

When people want to get married, they choose an object to represent them. It can be anything: it could be their favourite book, it could be a bottle of oven cleaner, or a poem they wrote when they were thirteen.

People then go through these items and choose the one they relate to best. This is the connection. Next is the resignation: whoever the item that you choose belongs to, you are stuck with them, unless they do something horrific. Or if they turn out to be a dog person.

I suspect this is the way that things will go in the future when people don’t have time for courting. Instead, they’ll browse an online catalog of these items - probably named soulsearching.com or something similarly whimsical - and select the one they want, wait for a confirmation email before putting a deposit down on a house and move in together by the end of the week.

I’d probably choose a candy fan. If nothing else, we can use it when we’re old.