A Story of How, If You Are Going to Be a Lazy, Careless Slut, It Is a Good Thing to Be THOROUGH about It.
One of the minor bureaucratic buttbiters about living in Britain is that they check the register of voters EVERY year. You get these red-stamped robot letters in the post threatening you with diabolical tortures if you don’t return the form or if you return it WRONG. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve been saying . . . for quite a while. I have a novel to finish. Catch me later. This may have been going on a couple of months. I have kind of a lot of letters. They keep sending them, and there starts to be more red printing on them. . . .
Whatever.
Then they start sending people around in PERSON and you come home to these postcards through your door. Blah blah blah. It may be one of those things you have to grow up with. I grew up with Velveeta cheese*. The British grow up with yearly electoral roll checks. It irritates me that they do it every dranglefabbing year.** So in this week off I’m giving myself that I’m not HAVING because I keep DOING STUFF I figured I’d better get round to registering before the Red Letter Brigade takes over and turns off my electricity or cancels my membership of the CCCBR*** or stamps my front door(s) with a scarlet letter or whatever it is they do to noncompliers.
So I have this selection of these letters, particularly because there are two houses involved. (Twice the fun in all kinds of ways.) So I picked up a couple of them on my way down to the mews the other day, one per house. You can do the deed on line if you’re not changing your info and yes, I’m still the same person I was last year.† Shock. Amazement. I signed on and did Third House without a lot of bother. Picked up the letter for the cottage and discovered . . . that the security code boxes are BLANK. You can’t do it on line without your security code. FRELL FRELL FRELL FRELL FRELL. My suspicion is that after you’ve failed to answer their first 1,000 letters they start getting suspicious of you and leave the codes out. So I think, hmmmm, I bet I’ve still got some of the older letters at the bottom of a pile somewhere. So when I took hellhounds for a hurtle from the mews we went back to the cottage and delved. And, lo and behold! Because I am a Lazy, Careless Slut who never gets round to throwing anything out, I found a register letter for the cottage WITH THE SECURITY CODES!!!!
Thus being a lazy slut is a good thing, so long as you are thorough about it.
And that was where the story was going to end.
But this is NOT the end of the story.
It wouldn’t go through. ‘Either the security code or the post code is wrong. Please check and try again.’ OH FAECAL MATTER. They’ve cancelled it or disallowed it or voided it or something because I’m so frelling LATE. But . . . in that case, why did Third House go through? It’s just as late. So I looked carefully at the original form.
THEY’VE GOT MY UNGLEBLARGING POST CODE WRONG. THE CITY COUNCIL HAS GOT MY POST CODE WRONG. So I changed it to what THEY have it as . . . and it went through.
Did I mention that they fine your ass big time if you submit incorrect info?
I wrote them a polite little note inquiring if my post code had been changed. . . .
And rather anticlimactically, although at least this means I can maybe sleep tonight††, TODAY I got a nice note from a city council person who appears to have a name like a real human being and everything, thanking me for bringing the disparity to her attention, assuring me that my post code remains unchanged, and that she has corrected the council data base.
No Kafka here. Nooooooooo.
* * *
* Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger.^
^ Which IS APPROXIMATELY THE BIGGEST PIECE OF BULL EXCRETA OUT THERE RUNNING AROUND LOOSE. What the dranglefab? There’s LOTS of stuff that doesn’t kill you that does not make you stronger. Being run over by a truck slightly. Being waterboarded briefly. A mild case of tuberculosis. Being half heartedly sliced up by the neighbourhood axe murderer. And too much Velveeta cheese in my youth may explain all kinds of things about me.
** I didn’t go through this every year in Maine. I mentioned this to an American friend who replied: ‘ . . . The voter registry here in North Dustpan had the prior owner listed at my house for years after he sold me the place—they had me, too, presumably they just assumed I let him continue living in the garage^ after I moved all my stuff in. . . .’
^ But the social worker did come around to check that the garage was wired and insulated and had adequate sanitary facilities.
*** The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers. Hey, it’s Friday, you didn’t think you’d entirely get away without an update on either piano or bells, did you? Well, the piano was pretty bad.^ I’m seriously short of sleep, thanks to dancing on the ceiling post-Steeleye for a very long time last night.^^ So this afternoon after crawling out of my piano lesson whimpering I was not filled with confidence about bell practise. And then it was okay, for some reason. Not only did I cruise through an evil touch of Stedman doubles where I had to do a horrible scary Coat Hanger Single and remembered how, but I was one of those frantically holding on to order and keeping my head when all about me were losing theirs^^^ for several other attempts at modestly risky things like Kent and Grandsire. Given that my view of bell ringing is about the lower-end practicalities of getting service rings of whatever variety rung and not about questing after fabulous peals of methods I haven’t even heard of yet there’s something very satisfying about being a hod-carrier who doesn’t drop any bricks.
^ Although I did take my Finzi in and ask Oisin to play it for me.+ I’m seriously frelled: Fear no more the heat o’ the sun doesn’t seem to be performed on YouTube or anywhere else. I can figure out my line, but as I’ve said here before (grimly) merely learning the frelling tune is pretty much the least of it. As it happens Oisin is quite the fan of Let Garlands Bring and played through the rest of them as well, and I may have a go, just for laughs, at It Was a Lover and His Lass.++ Might as well for a sheep as a lamb, speaking of idiot axioms.
+ Of course I didn’t sing. Don’t be ridiculous.
++ No, not only because there’s a YouTube of it.#
# Wait! Wait! I’ve just found a YouTube of Fear No More!~ Great. Excellent. But reading it over Oisin’s shoulder as he played was probably more useful. Then I don’t have to ignore the luscious baritone. Sigh.
~ Why it didn’t frelling turn up the other night when I was looking for it is one of those little mysteries. Arrrgh.
^^ On the other hand probably the only thing that is keeping me upright at all is the inspirational value of wearing my 40th anniversary tour Steeleye Span t shirt. So, yesterday I was determined to wear my birthday cardie despite the fact that it was much too warm. Today I was determined to wear the t shirt and . . . well, I haven’t exactly been freezing to death, but I’m a little chilly.
^^^ Although I’ll miss out on the being a man, if it’s all right with you. http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
† Why don’t you check your &^%$£”!!!! tax records? I pay frelling dragon-hoard-rate council taxes every year too.
†† Barring other excitements. It’s getting a little late for going to any concerts.
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