In which I arrange a marriage

A stirrup, yesterday.

Today the firewall goes up on the Times, and I am celebrating the day on my STILL FREE blog by launching yet another of my doomed attempts to blog more often than once a week and about more than Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing. We shall see.

Anyway, it seems apt to begin this doomed attempt - what do you mean, "self-fulfilling prophecy?" - by commenting on something I read in yesterday's Times, which I bought specifically for the Eureka magazine inside, and which did not actually come with a Eureka magazine inside, and if I want to read the Eureka magazine online I now have to pay to do so. Anyway. No point linking to the piece as it is NO LONGER FREE, but it was their write-up of the case about whether troops still have human rights in war zones. (Apparently they do not.)

I'm sure that I am not the first to mention the glorious name of the outgoing Chief of the Defense Staff, Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup. There are simply not enough people on this planet called things like Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup and I fear those that are left will soon die out. Unless - UNLESS - Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup were to marry the lawyer representing the complainant in this case, the admirably named Jocelyn Cockburn. Yes, people: *they were involved in the same case*. Their eyes will have met across a crowded courtroom, he on one side, she, literally and figuratively on the other, and yet joined by the force of nomenclature that no man can tear asunder...

Surely love must follow. And as we all know from our close study of the Bard, first comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes the baby in the baby carriage. Surely the world deserves nothing less than Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup-Cockburn and Lady Jocelyn Stirrup-Cockburn and their children The Honourable Jack and Alfred "Hitchcock" Stirrup-Cockburn.

You know, I think my dad might have been one of the judges on this case. I'm going to MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Hang on. Would Cockburn-Stirrup be better?