Well, it's been a little while coming, but it finally happened. On Wednesday, a mere 4006 days after arriving in London on a working holiday visa, I became a British citizen! Being a reasonably auspicious occasion (and a weekday), Claudia and I both took the opportunity to have a day off work, stick the kids in nursery and make a day of it.
The ceremony was at Herford County Hall, and was surprisingly nice. There was a decent number of people in my group, but the staff were very well organised and got us registered pretty quickly. The ceremony itself was inside the council chamber (so big, comfy chairs for all!) and the one guest limit meant that it didn't feel too much like a conveyor belt. We were lucky enough to have the High Sheriff of Herfordshire as our officiant, and she seemed more excited about the ceremony than half of the people attending. We found out later that she had only just taken up the role of sheriff, and this was her first ever time conducting a citizenship ceremony.
The process was pretty painless - swear an oath of allegience to the King, a separate pledge of loyalty to the United Kingdom (luckly no mention of who I needed to back in the Ashes), and finally a rendition of God Save the King (in which people showed their newfound Britishness by not singing). The longest part of the whole thing was everyone getting their certificates and photo individually. There was tea and coffee afterwards, which nearly nobody except us hung around for, so we got to have a decent chat with the Sheriff.
All in all, we were done by midday. Since we had the rest of the day to ourselves, we took the opportunity to meet up with a friend for lunch in Hertford, then headed home for a bit of quiet time before picking up the kids from nursery.
British citizenship is a goal that I've been heading towards ever since I knew that Claudia and I were going to be staying together. During the ceremony, it almost felt a bit anti-climactic - after years of visa applications and stress over job sponsorship, it was all over by saying a couple of sentences out loud and receiving a piece of paper that looked like it was printed out in the early 80s. But the feeling when you realise that there's no "next thing" to apply for apart from a passport (!) is a big relief. The feeling when you realise that it's suddenly become much, much harder for Suella Braverman to kick you out of the country for no reason at all is an even bigger relief.
Do I suddenly feel more British? Not really... But then, I was already fond of a cup of tea, slightly odd humour and the occasional queue, so I think I was 90% of the way there already. But it's nice to know that if the Australian top order collapses in the next Test Match, I'll have a good fallback option.
Yours etc,
Patto