V is for Vicar

Because I want to tell you an an amusing story.

This is not the church from the story,
but it is only a few streets away.

When I first moved to Scotland, I would see the word "vicar" around, but for some reason never caught the pronunciation. I told you once before about my difficulty with new words and how I inevitably pronounce things so horribly, laughably wrong that I should probably just stick to words I know and never try to increase my word power (many apologies, Reader's Digest). So one day, I was waiting with a friend to pick up her daughter after school. We were standing outside a church across the street from the school, and there was a large notice board outside with the usual things you see on church notice boards: Sermon title, Jumble Sale, etc., and at the bottom it read, Vicar Whatever His Name Was.

So, seeing an opportunity to find out what this mysterious word meant, I asked my friend, "What's a vie-car?" She almost fell over from laughing (I'm not kidding-- I was worried for a second), and once she recovered, she explained that it's pronounced vick-er, and it's the Church of Scotland word for minister. Mystery solved.

And this is probably as close as I'll get to blogging about that little event happening across the pond on Friday (of course, it's an Archbishop, not a vicar, doing the honours that day). And since I'm sure you're all dying to know: Yes, I'll probably get up and watch. It's a bit far south in the country for me, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Are you going to be watching TV Friday morning? Do you have an amusing story of a time when you pronounced something badly? Are you a vicar?