Everyone exhales, the groom unclenches his fists, and the best man gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Tears start to every eye as the bride floats down the aisle like a cherry blossom on a stream on the arm of her father, who is to give her away for the first and, we all fervently hope, the last time, and the six little bridesmaids stumble behind her like geishas styled by Kate Greenaway, in ivory slippers, clutching their wands trailing ivy and wreaths of fragrant sweet pea sitting athwart their bobbing baby curls.

But the relief and the delight at the scene, designed to melt even the most hardened matron and confirmed bachelor’s stony hearts, does not last long. Just as the couple are about to exchange their vows, a figure makes an entrance at the back of the church and gives everyone, as Mrs Hitchens repeated ad nauseam in the village shop to whoever would listen, ‘the shock of their lives’. Mrs Hitchens repeated this with all the certainty of a Crown witness even though, as we all know, Mrs Hitchens was at her usual perch in Honeyborne Post Office and Stores. (Cath Cobb worked off the village with vintage Champagne and sumptuous nibbles a few days ago, at what Ralph termed the ‘serf and turf’ party, knowing that while the spoilt rich groan inwardly at the prospect of yet more foie gras and rivers of Krug, one must always be seen to push the boat out for staff).

Proceedings have just reached that spine-chilling bit where the reverend gets to ask if there are any persons there present who know of any lawful impediment why the bride and groom should not be joined in holy matrimony. We’re all enjoying the musical sound of that archaic trope, and then – something happens to remind us all that, despite the expensive timbre of the uptown occasion, there are still tumescent buds waving outside the stained-glass windows and that, despite the showboating second homes, the chalets in the Alps, the châteaux in France, the villas in Tuscany and the bastides in Provence, this is Wessex, where maids will always give birth to love-children in bothies, Wessex, where simple stable lads will always push each other grunting down wells.

‘… Speak now, or forever hold your peace,’ intones the vicar, the Revd Wyldbore-Smith, his mobile red lips working in his prayerful sing-song in a way that is somehow difficult to watch, and right on cue there’s a commotion at the back of the church, and a ripple of shock and a crackle of electricity shudder through the pews as everyone turns to look.

And this time, for once – as if it were a special treat, laid on to amuse in case of boredom, like the addition of plasma screens to London buses – someone actually does.