Since her recent christening in a village in the north of England, a baby of my acquaintance has a brand new set of fairy godfathers, a couple I will call Mr and Mr Bling. They might not have wings or wands, but these two are the genuine article. Living, breathing, Kenzo-suit-wearing fairies. She is a bit too young to appreciate it yet, but she is a very lucky girl.
We arrived in the village a few hours before the Blings and were charmed by the pristine bed and breakfast we had booked into, a place where every inch of sideboard or window sill in the sitting room was covered with delicate china figurines. There was a full crystal decanter of sherry on the coffee table - full when we arrived at any rate - and an Aga in the kitchen. The beds were as soft as marshmallows, the linen top-quality and the video collection for use in the room more than adequate, if a bit heavy on Ewan McGregor movies. This industrious landlady had thought of everything. Well, almost everything as it turned out.
It hadn't occurred to us to alert her. "Will the other couple be arriving later?" she had asked, and we said yes, they would. Did proper etiquette dictate that we should have added: "Oh and they are homosexuals, so please make the relevant preparations. Judy Garland records? That kind of thing." Perhaps. But we were too busy watching Harry Potter and snuggling under the old fashioned bedspread for an afternoon nap to worry about their welcoming party.
We met them in the pub later, where a newly-purchased candy pink Paul Smith scarf (next season, I was assured) was causing quite a stir with the locals. It turned out the godfathers-to-be were the only gays in the village. The only gays who had ever been in the village, possibly. Or maybe not. Charles Dickens had done a bit of research there once, and according to local legend he sometimes acted a bit queer.
Mrs Landlady had greeted them earlier with questioning eyes. "Are you the people I am expecting?" she had asked. Mr and Mr Bling were in no mood for niceties, what with the flight from Amsterdam and the drive from the airport and the puffiness that one of them imagined he was developing under his eyes - and him with a starring role in a christening the following morning! Before they were barely over the threshold, one of them took the bull - a rather inoffensive looking northern English woman with a china fetish - by the horns. "Yes, we are gay," he said. "Yes, we will be sleeping together. In. The. Same. Bed."
"But, nobody told me, nobody told me," was all she could stutter as she led them to their room.
The next morning, I was put in charge of making the christening video. I held my breath and pointed the camera as the priest quizzed Mr and Mr Bling about their faith. He was an old-fashioned man of the cloth who liked his Latin Mass and opposed the modernisation of the Church. One of the Blings is a Catholic; the other is not. They both passed muster. I wondered what would have happened had they declared their sexuality. I wondered whether this church which says practising homosexuals are sinners would have turned a blind eye, as they do to so many things, and allowed them to be godfathers anyway. Because they were good people. Because they would do their best. Would it be enough?
We'd talked earlier about their reservations. Not being practising Catholics themselves, the parents were having a church ceremony because they wanted the devoutly Catholic grandparents to feel secure about the baby's spiritual start in the world. But despite this, one of the Blings confessed that when he was asked to be a godparent, he worried his lack of a living faith would mean the christening was a sham.
I told him what I believed, being a bit of a fairy godmother myself. That his contract was with the baby's parents, rather than the Catholic Church. And that if a contract with God did exist, it was implicit in their promise to the parents to always guide and support and love their godchild. That there's an inevitable spiritual dimension in that kind of care.
It's difficult to take baptism seriously, given that it requires a belief that box-fresh babies need the stain of the devil removed from their souls. As the priest himself said, the congregations at baptisms are more in need of intense spiritual spring cleaning than the baby. I looked through a lens at that small being crying at the font and knew this to be true.
At breakfast the next morning, we awoke to the sound of one of the Blings charming the twinset and pearls off Mrs Landlady. She'd laughed off our pre-dinner demolition of her decanter of sherry and said we definitely weren't the worst group she had ever encountered. The Blings went back to Amsterdam. We returned to Dublin. And everyone agreed that all things considered, we'd had a gay old time.