Citizen S.

The Texan pulled her finger out and got her British citizenship application sorted. Now she's a dual national. (I keep meaning to do this...)

In the old days, you just paid your money, swore fealty to the Queen, her heirs and successors and you were citizen. These days it's a lot more like the American system where a big deal is made of citizenship and the process of becoming a citizen. I think that's a good thing. There's a test and a ceremony.

The Vol-in-Law and I attended the Texan's citizenship ceremony this week. It was held in the registrar's office of her local borough - LB Merton. I've had occasion to visit the Merton's Civic Centre (Town Hall). It's crap. It's a hideous building. It deserves to get placed on a list of Britain's ugliest buildings. (Although that accolade actually goes to another building in the borough nearer me, so perhaps the powers that be didn't want Merton hogging all the limelight). So I was surprised and pleased to find that Merton's Register office is actually a very nice building. A lot of British couples get married in register offices and they're generally well appointed, so not a bad place for a citizenship ceremony.


The Citizenship set-up

The Texan paid extra and opted for a private ceremony. Which meant that it was just her, the two character references on her citizenship application (not required, just a nice touch) and me, and not a load of other foreign riff-raff. The Vol-in-Law was one of the two Brits the Texan managed to ply with enough whiskey to sign off on her good character. We headed down there in what we thought was good time and got caught in a snarl of traffic making us late, but we beat the Texan to her own do.

The ceremony itself was pretty nice - and if I described it to you, it would sound cheesy, but it was actually very well done. I was a bit worried when the first thing the officiant said to the Texan was "How will you be paying for this?" - and she replied "By credit card." But somehow we all managed to recover the tone. There was a bit of guff about the obligations of citizenship, being British means being tolerant, then an oath and a complicated, ornate choral arrangement of God Save the Queen was played on CD.

Being a bad sort, if we're at home and God Save the Queen comes on I usually sing "My Country Tis of Thee" over the top of it. It drives my husband bonkers. This might be the equivalent of singing the original lyrics over the top of the The Star Spangled Banner. But I didn't do any such thing at the ceremony and only sang them quietly in my head.

I have to commend the officiant. She did it all very seriously and well - and was really helpful identifying camera angles for me and told me I could get up and move around to take pictures and even took a group shot of us all. She had just the right touch of levity, though to, and we all had a jolly laugh. Taking on citizenship is solemn and sacred, yes, but shouldn't be dire. It's not a funeral, it's more like a wedding.

At the end, after Citizen S. (the Texan) swore her oath and got her certificate. But that wasn't all...no, we filed down to the administrative guts of the building to watch Citizen S. pay for the ceremony - all details complete.



The Merton registrar waits for Citizen S.'s receipt.