Next month will see me going to Barcelona for an allegedly ‘free’ appointment that I had to pay 100€ to get, as all normal attempts to get one on line are next to impossible.
The appointment is to renew my NIA my Número de Identificación de Extranjero is a very important card with my unique identification number. I show this card when I leave the country and, most importantly, when I return, as that means that my passport is not stamped, as I have a permanent right to reside in Spain. The number, if not the actual physical card, is often asked for, for example when packages arrive. And I haveofficaldome, padrón, tea, used it so often in Spanish, that I consciously have to translate the numbers into English when I need to use them myself on forms.
Spanish bureaucracy is notoriously photocopy-heavy: officials like you to have copies of everything and anything to give them, and they reciprocate by giving you a wodge of photocopies in return, usually on odd coloured recycled paper, which gives the impression that they are always thinking of the environment. You never, of course, look at these photocopies ever again, and they have no function but to exist.
So, as I was doing my morning write, after my well-deserved post-swim cup of tea, I mused to myself about what I should take to the appointment. You are obviously told what to bring, documents like the old card and your passport, but they do not tell you that they might require lasting proof that they had seen them – you’ve guessed it, a photocopy of the documents.
One time, with one official department I was dealing with, I was told that I needed to supply photocopies of the documents that I had bought, and I told them that I didn’t have photocopies, perhaps they could make them if they needed them. “We are not a photocopy shop!” I was told. I had to leave the office and my appointment, for which I had queued for over half an hour. Find a photocopy shop. Get the photocopies done, return and queue again to continue the appointment. The second wait was not as long as the first, but the seething rage that I barely controlled made it seem like an eternity.
So, this time, you consider not only what they have asked for, but also what they might ask for. There was a television sketch show here in Spain where one skit showed someone waiting in a queue to get some official business done: He eventually reached the window and the official asked for identity card, passport, then asked for blood group, followed by favourite film – all of which needed documentation and, in the case of the film a VHS Cassette of it, and so it went one, with ever more bizarre demands, with the guy showing that he had anticipated all of these outré requests. At the point where he appeared to have satisfied all demands, the official informed him that he was in the wrong queue and the window that he needed had closed. I may have made up the ending to the skit, but the guy did not get what he wanted!
To most Spaniards the skit is not comedy but documentary as everyone will have stories of bureaucracy gone mad – or normality as it is more generally known.
I have decided to pay a visit to the local city hall and get an updated copy of my padrón, which is a certificate that shows my address is registered with the local authority. It is not necessary, but it is official and officials like adding it to the bundle of papers that make their lives worth living. And it costs nothing.
The key concept is Be Prepared – or at least as prepared as you possibly can be. And that two word phrase made me think of the organization with which is it most usually associated, The Scouts.
I am a failed Scout. I was a Wolf Cub and even carried the flag in our official processions through our local streets when we went to attend Church once a month, but in the move from Cathays to Rumney to a new area, I did not continue my participation in the Cubs, and therefore never became a Boy Scout.
“Be prepared” was the motto of the scout organization, but we had an oath that we recited at the start of each of our meetings. “I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to keep the Law of the Wolf Cub Pack, and to do a good turn for somebody every day.” My mind then wondered if that oath had changed over the years. So, I looked it up. The ‘Oath’ is now called ‘The Cub Promise’: “I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and to The King, to help other people and to keep the Cub Scout Law.” There are versions for Cubs who are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and for Atheist or of no faith background.
Rather like the Anglican Creed, that I found myself not saying parts of as I grew older, feeling that the truth of what it contained needed to be rather more nuanced to accommodate my changing beliefs, so with the Oath or Promise.
When I was a Cub I was a Christian, so the ‘duty to God’ would not have been a problem, but as a life-long, and I mean for as long as I can remember, I have been a republican, so ‘my duty to the Queen’ would have been problematical even for the child that I was. There again, both God and The Queen seemed to be somewhat above my paygrade, and as we had never been personally introduced, I knew about them only via intermediaries, The immediacy was so slight that the actual ‘duty’ could be taken as read, if one kept to the rest of the oath.
Then my drifting mind turned to the National Anthem. Obviously, we in Wales have our own anthem, and we tend to regard God Save the King (how odd it feels to be typing that as someone who has grown up with the Queen as the central figure) as the English national anthem. Just as the Union Flag has no part of it representing Wales, so we feel that God Save the King is, at best, ‘other’.
And then I ran through the lyrics in my head. You must understand that I never sing God Save the King. Never. And haven’t done for years. I stand when the so-called National Anthem is played and I show respect, but frankly I feel none to the subject of the song. But strangely, as I sang through the lyric in my head. I got stuck at line 4. And the line would not come. No matter how hard I tried.
I knew the words of the second verse (unlike so many members of that performative group of idiots in Reform) as a direct result of being in the Cubs, we had to learn the second verse as part of some badge or other. But that line that I had heard, god knows how many times, remained hidden.
Although I am writing about it, and checking all the verses of the national anthem is but a click away, I prefer to remain in darkness. After all, even if it does come back to me, I have zero intention of ever singing it!
I thought that this piece of writing was going to be how different the Oath that I took and the Promise that modern Cubs take were. But they are basically the same, and there is something rather splendid in the simple and direct injunction to “help other people”.
Isn’t all human decency encapsulated in that phrase?
