Well, fortunately for me, the whole christening-in-Porto thing has migrated across denominations, obviating the need for me to "Fetch a Priest" after all. So I’m off to Porto at the end of October to become, weirdly, a Godfather.

I’m not really sure how the thing morphed from being a Catholic christening to being whatever-it’s-going-to-be-now, but I do really hope it wasn’t anything directly to do with me. I mean, it might have been, I suppose, but there must have been other reasons not to do it the Holy Roman way. After all, my friend married a catholic, from a catholic country, in a catholic church, in another catholic country, and now lives in that original catholic country, but his wife (I count her a friend too, you understand) is not now having her first-born christened a catholic.

I won’t pretend to understand it, as I don’t know the imperatives behind it, and I don’t even know what it’s going to be now… But it seems like it will be Anglican, just because in a Google Talk chat my friend (doing his Professer Farnsworth) said

good news. Anglicanism seems promising.

Whatever. Flights booked, time off work booked and a few nights in a hotel pretty near to Pete’s house (see the picture he sent me from Google Earth), also booked. I just need to work out how to get my self there with my christening outfit intact, whilst still keeping my luggage down to a comfortable size. Christ, I hate hauling suitcases around, particularly as I’ll be coming back via Stansted and a train journey from there via Euston to Bare is in the offing. Last time I went over there (Porto, not Bare) I got away with 1 small piece of hand-luggage. This time I’ll also need to carry a suit, a tie, and probably a warm jumper, since it’ll be November in Portugal, and quite possibly in England, too.

But the catholic thing is a whole new world – it will be a catholic christening in a catholic country (Portugal) and, until today, I just assumed me being a god father just wasn’t going to happen, and that would have been OK, and I’d have gone over anyway and would still take an interest in the child and care about his upbringing and buy him presents at christmas and birthdays and generally look out for him, so actually being a god father officially, like, wouldn’t really matter. I got to assuming all this because it seemed that, to qualify, I must be a catholic and have taken (done? eaten?) my (the?) sacraments and have one of those big gold things with incense billowing out and, you know, believe in God and stuff. Today, though, I’ve found out that I don’t need to be all that (unlike Rachael Leigh Cook) – all I need is a simple letter from my ‘local’ catholic priest to say that I’m a reliable person. And that’s the main point of this post, really:

How am I going to get one of those?

I’m expecting this to go all sitcom on me.