Census & Sensibility

What joy; today's the day we're all required once again to divulge our personal information to the organ of an oppressive state our friendly National Statistics Centre. And I don't know about you, but I've been having fun with mine. Though I don't think I'll quite manage to top my efforts on the 2001 census, where (amongst other things) I listed my ethnicity as "Morlock", I may as well have a go. It practically begs to be done, with "questions" as idiotic as the one above.

I know there are people out there who take the census very seriously as a historical document; it's a little-known fact that John Denver was actually very passionate about it, even going so far as to pen a song about people who are particularly inept at completing theirs:

You fill out my Census
Like a hyperactive gibbon
Like a strange inbred mule-child
Like a Tory MP

Like a sub-normal Wolves fan
Like someone from Yorkshire
How hard can a Census
Possible be?

Sadly, he later decided to change these prophetic lyrics to something more commercially viable, and the rest is history. But to John and all those like him, all I can say is, why not take the opportunity to play silly buggers when it's handed to you on a plate? Important historical document it may be, but there's nothing more important to know about me than the fact that I'm a cantankerous bastard who doesn't like people in authority poking around in his business. Let that be my legacy in a hundred years, when my descendants come to read about their great-great-grandfather Octavius Sandwich Toaster the Third, waffle-farmer by trade, and devout Plasterfarian.