Kafkaesque

 Last week I went to the courthouse, aptly built in fascist times, to present a written petition to a judge regarding my birth certificate.

I was born in a country where my parents worked as expats. Two weeks after my birth, war broke out and Westerners and their homes and businesses were attacked by angry locals. Westerners were airlifted out from a US airbase in the country and my mother got me away from the violence. My father had to fly out later and just had time to collect my birth certificate from the British embassy moments before a mob burnt it down.

Whilst I’ve got Italian residence and citizenship now, the one thing remaining is to provide a birth certificate for the Italian registry office. My British one won’t do. They require one issued by the authorities of the country in which I was born, not a consular certificate. Obviously, my parents didn’t get to the relevant registry office before fleeing because there was a murderous xenophobic riot on. However, this deficit can be remedied now by my making an application to the court to have a certificate made by them that satisfies Italian law. So I did that. The judge then asked me to make a sworn statement before a notary, corroborated by two unrelated witnesses who know me and my parents and can confirm the events in question. My dears, I know I look 20, but these events were, in fact, many decades ago and my parents are well into their 80s. Where am I to find such witnesses? Nowhere, because they’re all dead or unable to act. Should I hire a medium, perhaps? So I have petitioned the judge, politely, to stop being absurd. I'm too old for Kafkaesque insanity.

I’ve been dealing with this stuff for 7 years, since the Brexit vote. I am fed to the back teeth with lying governments and abusive officials and have nothing but contempt for authority now. Who are these filthy people? Why do they run our lives? As for Brexiteers who have put me and a million other Brits in Europe and 3 million Europeans in the UK through misery, I feel absolute contempt. I detest patriotism, "the last refuge of the scoundrel," as that most English of Englishmen, Samuel Johnson, put it in the Age of Enlightenment. I wonder why it was called that?

My mother, who is not a UK citizen but has lived there for 60 years, having survived Hitler as well the violence where I was born, is now subject to further threats and abuse. When she turns up at a UK airport she is taken to a little room to be shouted at by British officials. Because shouting at an old woman is such a macho and patriotic thing to do. I do hope Britons are proud of their plucky border guards defending that victimised nation from these hordes of dangerous foreign invaders?

I really don't plan to go through the additional rigmarole of trying to transition and change my name legally. I know that being born trans reduces my human rights, as does being born in violence. Injustice is what authority thrives on. And it is thriving right now thanks to thuggish patriots the world over.

Spring

The weather is springlike here now and new little plants are shooting up in my pots. It's time for spring cleaning. We desperately need rain after 18 months of drought. The young trees on the road outside home are dying and local rivers are dry when they should be at their fullest.

"Flower trees", Sanremo Flower Festival 2023

 

Fish

I like my food, as you know, and in the last few weeks we've had a lot of less usual fish landed on the docks here: john dory, sole, dentex, brill, transparent gobies ... I'm trying the whole range! 

Sue x