God save our gracious Queen….
Well, today I became a British citizen!
The last stage in the long, long process (well to be honest once I was allowed to put my application in that only took five weeks, it was just getting through the qualifying period that took so long, especially as they kept changing the rules) was a ceremony at one of the local council offices where you do your swearing and collect the all important citizenship certificate.
I was even slightly nervous waiting for my ceremony, though I’m still not sure why? I even managed to convince Mike to come with me. Actually I didn’t have to do that much convincing as he thought it was a good idea that someone could bring a camera along and take photo’s to mark the event.
It’s an interesting little event. There was a huge mixture of people from different cultures. I feel sorry for the Registrar trying to correctly pronounce all the names (she did a pretty good job though)… Especially as mine and only one other person’s were basic English names (there were about 25 of us).
So after we listened to some councillor talk about joining the local family and also about the local community or something, off I went to swear allegiance to the Queen. Then after some photo’s with the councillor and Mike (who (the councillor, not Mike) was quite particular about where you placed your hands when holding your certificate) that was pretty much it .
So now I am officially a British citizen.
You may be wondering why there is no picture with this post as that was pretty much what Mike came along for? Well that’s because Mike left the memory card for the camera sitting attached to the PC after taking the shots of the swimmers this morning… hee hee hee!!!