Beware Of The Clergy

Years ago I spent a lot of my time working as a wedding photographer. It never ceased to amaze me the type of things that you get to see at weddings when you are neatly hidden away behind the camera. One of the things that never stopped amusing me was the observations I made on all the various and different types of clergy.

It really didn’t matter if the wedding was Protestant, Catholic or Jewish, clergy are clergy and you know what, no two individuals are exactly alike but there’s something about them that makes them immediately recognizable as part of a very idiosyncratic community of poeple.

To me the clergy fall into three main categories. The first one, and probably the funniest is the excentric type. Its about my discoveries concerning a member of this category that I want to tell you about.

Excentric clergy, in general, are those who, among other things, overcome their sense of self conciousness by grossly overcompensating in all situations. For some reason they always seem to feel competely and utterly out of place.

This results in some extremly comical dialog that’s accompanied by the wierdest arm and hand movements immaginable. Most of the time it appeared to me like they are flagging the fleet.

But this type are far from being the worst because there is, in matter of fact a far more seriously afflicted group of poor, sad individuals. It is a rare sub group of the excentric lot which I call the ‘pathologically excentric’.

One vicar, who must have been in his mid thirties, used to perform wedding ceremonies clad only in his cassock, ankle boots and black knee socks. Yup, you got it, absolutely as stark naked as the day he was born under those holy robes.

I discovered this strange fact one day when I decided to use the self timer on my camera. The reason for this was because of the film speed I was using. I had put a highly sensitive film in the camera to compensate for the poor lighting conditions of the churchyard and, consequently, I had to put the camer on the tripod and to use the self timer to eliminate camera shake.

Having already arranged the family and guests in the exact order that I wanted them to stand I stood away from the camera and started to count down the seconds. Right then something hit the vicar on the back of the head causing him to turn around to look in the general direction of the assault.

Low and behold at that very same moment there was an almighty gust of wind that not only raised all the ladies skirts but blew the vicars cassock up over his head as well.

Well, You never saw such a fiasco in all your life. All the ladies screamed and hurriedly flattened the front of their skirts, their husbands doing their best to protect their wives modesty, did their best to flatten the back of their wives frocks but the poor vicar’s cassock was blown so high that he couldn’t get it back down in time before the camera took the picture.

Everybody’s attention was diverted.

That is, exept for two young children, a boy and a girl, who’s attention was cought by the sight of the black parachute that was once the vicars only screen from complete ridicule being blown right over the top his head.

You never saw a vicar turn around so fast in your life!

The two youngsters, who’s necks were stretched right out looking to the left wore wide mouthed expressions of total astonishment, shock and disbelief for what they were seeing. All I can remember thinking at the time was the sheer injustice of the situation the kids would be in.

I howled with laughter.

Who would believe them?

When family and friends saw the official picture they all commented about how red the vicars cheeks looked. It must have been due to the cold day. If they could only see the cheeks in MY filing cabinet!