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Citoyen
I became a UK dual citizen Wednesday. Several people, including the officiants at the time, have congratulated me on this, which feels weird. I’ve lived here my entire adult life, almost as long as I lived in America. Nothing changes due to this, I just get a degree of insurance in terms of retaining custody of my house and son in the event of an emergency (and the ability to vote myself instead of just doing the research and telling Katy who and what we’re voting for). Even citizenship is imperfect: revocable, as the Begum case taught us, at the pleasure of MI5 or whoever the fuck finds you inconvenient. Over £1k, this cost, on top of indefinite leave to remain and the over a decade of visas that preceded that. I have spent something like a year’s good wages, all told, on simply staying in this country. I have avoided even going near any protest that might get violent to avoid giving the UK any just reason to deport me, including my own union demos (after the cops started catch and release kettling, it wasn’t safe to go to big ones: any police record is a police record). I have lived over a decade of my life in pointless suspense, and the state has chiefly been to me a threat and action of restriction and violence rather than a mechanism by which to enact community. I can’t uwu that shit.
Of course the ceremony includes a Tory civic mayor in fur and gold chain who claims to be called Tony but is unequivocally one of nature’s Pumblechooks. A good room—Morris paper up to the dado line. Some nice tiling and decorative moulding. Appropriate paint choice on the green door. You naturally have to swear an oath of loyalty on Almighty God to King Charles and his heirs in a collective Pledge of Allegiance mumble, and then google the lyrics to ‘God Save The King’ on your phone. Thankfully, you are only asked to favour the company with the first verse thereof. Katy reminded me that I could choose the God-Free version of the oath, but I am too gay to turn down an opportunity for high camp just to Is Pepsi Okay? a situation. If I’m swearing loyalty to the Royal Family in perpetuity I’m chewing some scenery, this will be an Ainley!Master sort of performance.
A Tory minister’s deathmask of a face grimaces a welcome at you from a flier full of vacuous bullshit. Brown she may be, but that hasn’t stopped her from giving fascism a good whirl. She patently wishes everyone here dead, so fuck her too. The ceremony comes with free orange juice, apple juice or water. Only the water is not from concentrate, and only because no one has yet managed to concentrate it. Katy thinks they could have sprung for Prosecco; I am shocked they offered anything at all. The officials gave, Katy observed, the impression of never having done this before despite having done it literally an hour earlier, and presumably on many other occasions.
You can’t take the piss too much—despite being told we can only have two guests people bring huge families, every mate they have. A professional photographer takes photos of the handshake while his assistant successfully amuses children with a stuffed toy, giving the performance his all. We’ve all been through nasty, expensive and demeaning processes to be here, and to me this ceremony is nothing, almost insulting to have to do. To some of them it’s evidently little girls in the Muslim equivalent of Quinceañera dresses levels of important. If you lose this ceremonial certificate it will cost you over £200 to order a new one. Typical.
William slept through the whole thing in a sling. No one but me wore a Covid mask in the crowded, enclosed space, not even Tony the Pumblechook, the guy shaking 50 hands twice daily on a Wednesday.
Of course the ceremony includes a Tory civic mayor in fur and gold chain who claims to be called Tony but is unequivocally one of nature’s Pumblechooks. A good room—Morris paper up to the dado line. Some nice tiling and decorative moulding. Appropriate paint choice on the green door. You naturally have to swear an oath of loyalty on Almighty God to King Charles and his heirs in a collective Pledge of Allegiance mumble, and then google the lyrics to ‘God Save The King’ on your phone. Thankfully, you are only asked to favour the company with the first verse thereof. Katy reminded me that I could choose the God-Free version of the oath, but I am too gay to turn down an opportunity for high camp just to Is Pepsi Okay? a situation. If I’m swearing loyalty to the Royal Family in perpetuity I’m chewing some scenery, this will be an Ainley!Master sort of performance.
A Tory minister’s deathmask of a face grimaces a welcome at you from a flier full of vacuous bullshit. Brown she may be, but that hasn’t stopped her from giving fascism a good whirl. She patently wishes everyone here dead, so fuck her too. The ceremony comes with free orange juice, apple juice or water. Only the water is not from concentrate, and only because no one has yet managed to concentrate it. Katy thinks they could have sprung for Prosecco; I am shocked they offered anything at all. The officials gave, Katy observed, the impression of never having done this before despite having done it literally an hour earlier, and presumably on many other occasions.
You can’t take the piss too much—despite being told we can only have two guests people bring huge families, every mate they have. A professional photographer takes photos of the handshake while his assistant successfully amuses children with a stuffed toy, giving the performance his all. We’ve all been through nasty, expensive and demeaning processes to be here, and to me this ceremony is nothing, almost insulting to have to do. To some of them it’s evidently little girls in the Muslim equivalent of Quinceañera dresses levels of important. If you lose this ceremonial certificate it will cost you over £200 to order a new one. Typical.
William slept through the whole thing in a sling. No one but me wore a Covid mask in the crowded, enclosed space, not even Tony the Pumblechook, the guy shaking 50 hands twice daily on a Wednesday.
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It's probably a good idea in this day and age for people to get the extra citizenship if they can.
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