But I have a friend whose calls are always laconic, and being laconic, are ergo witty as well as brief, and she phoned not long after the lady from Mumbai (at 7:45 our time, actually, or 00:45 Mumbai time), and she had mirth in her voice, for she had a tale to tell of Dickens's England, so recognisable still in Knotty-End-on-Sea, and if you thought that Jardine v. Jardine was long since over, forget it. Bumbledom, it would appear, is alive and well and flourishing in 21stC England!
My friend's story was this.
Her daughter, in the course of seeking CRB clearance, was advised (by an Official, what else?) that there were incongruities in Official Records, inasmuch as her birth was registered a few days before it actually occurred. Well, registrars are only human, aren't they, and can easily mistake an 8 for a 3 (though not the one who registered my dad's death, because it inconvenienced her greatly when she had thought she could slope off early to a Christmas Party, and her nastiness and sneering superiority had my mum in tears when mum was already a bit upset anyway, having just lost her husband, and that is the only time in my life that I have come close to smacking a woman in the gob, but luckily for her my brother was holding on to both my arms. She was not human. She was a job occupant. A nine-till-fiver. The sort of official that [and markedly I do not say 'who'] makes you a) more sympathetic to anarchists and b) start reading Dostoyevsky. In the original Russian.)
Anyway, back to my friend's daughter and her Gilbertian origins.
Before said daughter's guarantee of a criminality-free life-so-far could be issued, one or two matters had to be tidied up - like, was she actually born? And if so, where and when? And could she prove it? I don't want to get onto Kafka again, but do you get the idea? How can you prove to a suspicious public official that you were actually born, when the records don't agree? If the records say you don't exist, then to Bumbledom you are invisible, whether you had an appointment or not.
And It seems that your flesh-and-blood presence is not enough -you need your mum there as well, for, believe it or not, the process of proof required my friend to affirm, to the local registrar, that she was present at the birth of her daughter.
My howls of merriment must have been audible all the way to Mumbai. Nothing I write could be as hilarious and as barmy as this. Officials who deny your existence ask you to make another appointment, with your mum there as well, so they can give you the form-of-words that will suddenly bring you to life. It reminds me of the local authority I once worked for that had all its advisory leaflets rendered into Braille, including the one on how to pass your driving test. Officials, like the Co-op horse of old, wear blinkers. They are not allowed peripheral vision. They can only see ahead, in straight lines. Their understanding of logic has not yet advanced to the stage of realisation that division by zero = nonsense.
Oh come, surely there must be an official form Mum could have filled in instead of having to write a letter? It would save so much time and public money
Something like this:
I DO HEREBY SOLEMNLY AFFIRM AND SWEAR
THAT I, [enter full name] .......................................................................,
BEING OF SOUND MIND, AND BEING ALSO THE
NATURAL MOTHER OF [enter child's name].............................
..........................................................................................................................,
WAS PRESENT AT THE BIRTH OF SAID CHILD.
SIGNED ............................................................................
DATE.................................................................................
Please return the completed form to your local Register
Office. Please do not send a copy to the Daily Mail,
Private Eye or Reader's Digest. Being a Registrar is a
very difficult job, and we're only human, well, most of us,
and we hate it when people make fun of us. Also we,
being Registrars, can make life extremely unpleasant
for your heirs, so just you jolly well remember that.
No comments:
Post a Comment