Please, people! If you go to a wedding ceremony at which live musicians are performing, please have the courtesy not to talk over them.

I have just conducted the choir at a wedding, and the congregation was unusually disrespectful. It isn't that we were bad or anything - and the music (Cantique de Jean Racine) had been specially requested - it is just that people seem to confuse live performance with TV. They seem to have forgotten how to behave in public, transferring their domestic behaviour into the public domain.

It reminded me of an incident at the same church some years ago - it was a baptism then, on a Sunday morning, and the sideswomen were walking respectfully down the aisle, ushering those who wished communion to make their way to the altar rail. In response to their polite invitation, one stranger replied with "Do you mind, I'm talking." (You would have to say this with an air of indignation to get the full effect!)

It beggars belief.