Arts journalism, like crime, doesn’t pay. So I’ve been thinking of getting a side hustle. ‘You know about books and stuff,’ say friends who are getting married. ‘What should we have for our readings?’ If I can advise friends, why not strangers? By the laws of wedding economics — pick a number and add some noughts — I could make a marital mint.
We’d start with a couple’s questionnaire. No good my offering Rainer Maria Rilke if they’re more of a Purple Ronnie pair. Then a consultation over Zoom, before proposing something old, something new, something sonnet, something haiku.
It is, tentatively, wedding season again. Boris and Carrie kicked us off last weekend. I wonder what they went for? Catullus for him, Rachel Carson for her? When my husband Andy and I were married two years ago, we worried more about the readings than just about anything else.
The Bible bit was easy.
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