on grid

When we were told we'd have to book an appointment at the registrar for the wingpiglet's official Edgarisation I thought it was perhaps because the registry office was overrun by a constant flow of people getting their new weans stamped. As it was one of these sort-of-bank-holidays the need for an appointment was perhaps because there were only two registrars on registranting-duty but no other customers when we arrived, leaving the building nice and light and quiet and airy and lending an air of dignity to the process. I was pleased to see than there is now a space on the form for the mother's occupation, something missing from Nicky's birth certificate even though the copy she had was a reprinted extract from 2004 by which time the stationery (even in Ayrshire) should surely have been updated since the appallingly late introduction of the concept of mother's jobs entered the world of birth-certification forms in 1996. Similarly pleasing was the fact that the registrar was using and offered the use of a proper fountain pen for the various signatures required. It'll mean some of the documents will be incomplete when divers from the future retrieve the sodden boxes of records from the long-since-underwater office in a couple of hundred years' time but the information probably won't be much use by then.

As beings who officially exist and have a name are allowed to receive free treatment on the NHS we trundled past Nicky's new doctor on the way back to get him signed up there and then popped to a café for Nicky to refuel and to perform the first non-home-space feedings and changings, the latter on the windowsill as there wasn't a toilet. Thankfully the operators did not object and we got our first proper baby-presence-initiated bit of social interaction when we got up to pay and leave. Unfortunately we were going the wrong way to see if they immediately popped to the windowsill to give it another wipe.