I don’t know how the year’s unfolding for you, but for me it’s been quite strange.

You know when the things you plan end up being not important in the bigger picture?

Perhaps the plan goes according to plan, or maybe it comes off the rails entirely, but the fact is it doesn’t matter because something larger and wholly unexpected rendered that entire line of thought redundant anyway, such was its significance.

This will be making no sense to you whatsoever without context, so let me give you some.

Despite having no prior knowledge as we approached 2022, so far I’ve ended up writing and reading a eulogy at a funeral (which, I wish for all the world there had been no requirement for me to do), and officiating at a wedding.

That one I did have an inkling of – although it started out as, “Uncle John, would you mind being the MC at our wedding?” then gravitated towards, “Uncle John, will you actually be able to marry us?” when, totally unexpectedly, and I think uniquely, the minister who had been booked to conduct the ceremony had to cancel because his wife had double-booked the date with a holiday!

Let me tell you what those words (Uncle John, will you actually be able to marry us?”) meant to me.

The inability to submit an invoice.

I’m kidding.

Words alone are incapable of doing justice to my feelings regarding that request.

As an only child, I grew up never imagining for an instant I would marry into a situation where I’d become an Uncle to six wonderful nieces, but here I am.

Every single one of them is beautiful and accomplished, engaged with the world and ready to make their dent in it, but my first nieces, the ones I met before the others, had a unique set of circumstances, which, in that moment, meant we spent a lot of time with them in their formative years.

I couldn’t be prouder of them if they were our own.

Often they feel to us like they are.

So to be asked by one of them to marry her and her partner, Ally, was quite overwhelming for me.

I could never say no, but was almost crushed by the desire to deliver exactly what they wanted, having never done anything like it before.

In both cases (the funeral and the wedding), I wanted for nothing more than to not let anybody down.

I hope and think I did OK for both.

What I got from it though was entirely unexpected and a revelation to me.

When I say, I’ve never done anything like this before, that’s not entirely true.

My every day is about writing and delivering scripts with a microphone to an audience, whether in the same room as me or not – the concept is well within my wheelhouse.

And technically speaking, this wasn’t my first rodeo so far as delivering a eulogy was concerned. I’d done this for my Father, some ten years before, and knew I was able to exist within the moment without crumbling.

In many ways, I think the requirement to retain an almost work like zen at the ceremony allowed me to be present in the moment, but within a responsibility framework which demanded I control my emotions to a degree that I was able to deliver the task in hand, and ‘not let anybody down’.

I use that phrase a lot when it comes to these types of event.

I think I was more comfortable with the weight of that responsibility than the feeling of helplessness that can present at a funeral where your eyes dart about the room, witnessing your family wilt and crumple and being entirely unable to do anything about it in the moment.

Like a series of fires spontaneously combusting, you’d attempt to put one out, knowing another would spring up in its place no sooner than you had, and in the end the entire process would prove utterly and traumatically futile.

No, this way was better. To take on the responsibility of attempting to help all my family through this moment gifted me the chance to actually do that.

It also presented the opportunity to fail spectacularly in that role.

Those were the odds I was prepared to take on.

At least if I failed they’d be able to unite in blaming me, and maybe then, they’d forget their sorrow, at least for a moment, to pile in and let me know.

I thought long and hard about all the possible outcomes and ploughed on instinctively feeling this was the right thing to do.

What surprised me most was what I got from it.

When I work on the radio, often people will very kindly take the time to let me know if I’ve made them laugh, or cry or think twice about something or someone and change their mind as a result of something I’ve said.

I get feedback, and I appreciate it.

The gift though of actually being able to see it and hear it in people’s faces and words in the moment is astonishing.

I work in front of crowds on a regular basis too, whether that’s at football matches or gigs.

The thing with those scenarios is that nobody there has turned up to see me. I’m a cog in the wheel of the function of the event in question.

The voice which reads out the team lines and the scores, or introduces the next act to take the stage.

When you stand in front of those crowds you don’t really see the whites of their eyes or their reaction to the words you’re saying.

In my very limited experience, funerals and weddings are the exact opposite of that.

The response is instantaneous, and real, unguarded in the moment.

That’s enormous.

The desire to deliver exactly on the wishes of those you’re serving , matched by a reaction which tells you, broadly speaking, you have, is rewarding in a way I’ve never previously known.

It’s a privilege to be asked to take on the role of helping family and friends mourn a loss or celebrate a union.

And the manner in which this all crept up on me meant my own expectation was less and realisation of it all the more profound.

One of the associative aspects of these events this year is that by virtue of them, my family has been thrown together twice in a short period of time in a small piece of real estate.

OK, our house isn’t exactly small, but it’s no sprawling countryside mansion either.

As a terraced townhouse it’s Tardis like in its delivery of indoor space, but even at that we struggled, happily, to accommodate family members in the moment as all families must.

On the two occasions we were hosting at least 12-15, somehow, but we did, and despite stepping on each other’s toes, at times literally, and given the circumstances and pressures weddings and funerals uniquely present, we revelled in having all our family around us, flying in from various locations around the world.

These moments are fleeting, often overwhelmingly emotional, yet at times beautiful and fulfilling and life affirming.

The celebration of a full and varied life which touched and influenced so many others.

The realisation that, although departed physically from this world, the ripple like connections are there for all to see and hear, in language through the use of catchphrases and family jokes told so often they’re recited more than delivered. In songs penned, or at least sung, if no physical rendering of their existence was ever committed to paper.

In calamity fuelled trips, bumps, bangs and clatters. Broken glasses, spilt drinks, soiled tablecloths, all only deliverable through bloodline or osmosis from being seated at the same dinner table thousands of times over the years.

In talents passed on, traits inherited (whether wanted or not), and in so many other ways the gathering of family presented all these beautiful instances which would have been so much more difficult to witness had we been disparate and geographically apart.

And to a wedding a few short weeks later.

The chance to witness, in my case, ‘ring’-side, the little girl who’d been one of our flower girls blossom into a bride, marrying her sweetheart at the third or fourth time of asking. No-one was really counting at this point, we all just knew the reason had been Covid.

The postponement of so many weddings because of the pandemic, I hope, over time, will result in so many couples appreciating even more how precious the day was when it finally arrived.

In our case, that meant the guy who would undoubtedly have been the loudest in the room, wasn’t there.

So we felt honour bound to unite and make it as though he was.

I’m happy to report we carried off that task with aplomb.

To the week after and a trip to the Borders once again for the family to unite with the addition of a couple of friends, Ashley and his wife Julie.

Ashley had been friends with the kids of the family when he was younger and they’ve all stayed in touch over the years.

He and Julie basically are family, and so we had another weekend of celebrating and rejoicing and revelling in the wonder of what those can offer, often in the most pressured environments.

So the year so far has been at times unexpected and often emotional, but if I didn’t also recognise the joyous gifts that journey has presented us as a direct result of these occasions, I’d be lying.

Something else too.

That feeling of privilege. Of helping a family.

The fulfilment of it.

It stuck with me.

I wonder if it’s something I could replicate, or was I just able to because it was my own family?

In reality I’ve had years to write in my head the elements of a wedding I’d conduct for my niece, or a eulogy I’d deliver for my father in law.

My own lived experiences form a lot of those pages of script.

Could I really do it for someone I’ve never met, entering into an environment of their family’s personal grief?

Surely that’s an entirely different matter altogether?

And the fact I’ve done a couple of eulogies and officiated at one wedding does not make me a qualified authority on either.

It does however make me curious on the issue.

I’ll be honest, I’ve looked before at the idea of becoming a celebrant.

My knowledge and investigation of it previously took me to the door of Humanism.

That didn’t sit well with me because I was born and raised a Christian.

I am a Christian.

So, in order to become a Humanist Celebrant I’d have to renounce my beliefs and I simply couldn’t. I’d be starting on a path with a lie to myself.

Incidentally, just because I have my beliefs does not put me at odds in any way with the idea of Humanism. If that’s how you wish to live your life, then do.

You do you. I’ll do me. And we can all get by quite happily in tandem.

When you investigate further the idea of becoming a celebrant, you realise, actually, it’s the Wild West out there.

It’s not regulated by one definitive body from what I can tell.

In fact, so far as conducting a funeral is concerned, you don’t need any formal qualifications.

The same is true of a wedding, except for the fact one has to be certified to legally marry a couple in the UK.

There are others who’d argue you’d have to be certified to get married in the first place but that’s another argument for another day at a Bernard Manning Convention.

So, as a celebrant, you can’t actually marry a couple unless you also happen to be a registrar, for example.

If you’re not, then the couple in question has to conduct the legal aspect elsewhere beforehand, and then you can perform a ceremony of any kind knowing that legal requirement has been fulfilled.

So, technically, there’s nothing stopping you from just going out there, saying you’re a Celebrant and getting started in the field.

Equally, there’s nothing preventing you from saying you’re a plasterer even though you’ve only sealed a couple of cracks at home.

So, here’s where I am.

I have a desire to explore this world further. I have a limited hope I might be OK at it, going on my limited experience to date.

I’ve wrestled with my own personal beliefs and found a way to reconcile them and still go ahead and look at this some more.

I may be a Christian, but not everybody is. Why shouldn’t those people be able to work with a professional to construct a bespoke service for them as opposed to having to settle for something generated by a body in which they have no belief, and take no comfort from?

I won’t enter into it haphazardly without some kind of professional training.

But I think I want to do it.

What do you reckon?