Coming to my census…

Here they are, my census forms. Quite a lot of them, aren’t there?

Yes, yesterday was ‘D’ day, the 27^th of March, census day and (as they say on the envelope) my response is required by law. So, being a law abiding citizen I filled in my census forms - both of them. Yes, I’ve just discovered a new downside to having two homes.

Now they know that in our main home the three of us wander around in nine rooms (excluding bathrooms, toilets, halls or landings and rooms that can only be used for storage such as cupboards), and that five of these rooms might be bedrooms. I say might because one is Holly’s play room (not that she actually plays these days) and the other’s our upstairs lounge. But they ‘might’ be bedrooms if we wanted them to be - but then so could the dining room, living room, the room without any designated use in the cellar and the landings.

I didn’t include the utility room in the room count, I don’t know why exactly, but I thought that if I wasn’t including the bathrooms then it probably made sense not to include the utility room. After all, I don’t think I could get a bed in there – a hammock or two maybe, but not a bed.

They also know that I am in good health, apart from my knee and my back (not that I mentioned it on the form, there wasn’t any space to list my ailments – major or minor) and that we have gas central heating. Why they would want to know about our central heating is a mystery to me but I’m sure that it’ll be of interest to someone in the ministry of hot air or whatever department is in charge of producing graphs and pie charts depicting typical central heating types across the UK. I wonder if there’s more solid fuel in the North whilst the South has more electricity… not that I’ll know for another hundred years.

I was very tempted to put ‘no central heating’ because at some point (next winter maybe) energy prices will be so expensive that we might as well have none because we won’t be able to afford to use it. Similarly they now know that we have access to two cars, but with fuel prices on an ever upward path we soon won’t be driving anywhere in either of them.

I struggled a little with the religion question. I know that I didn’t have to fill it in but it seemed tardy not to, particularly as it was the only choice I had on the whole form. So I answered Pagan. Well, it’s about as close to the right label as I can get. I do believe in a creative force, I do believe that we are all part of the same life experience and I do believe that there are more things in heaven and earth, but I’m no Jedi – so Pagan seemed about right.

I hope they appreciate my runic characters.

They will be able to work out from question 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 that I’ve recently become unemployed, although this question isn’t asked directly. I wonder why not? Surely they could have just added ‘are you a sponger?’ to question 26 and dispensed with the other five.

Perhaps they just like playing twenty questions or maybe they’re shy - or I wonder if they actually think that it really isn’t any their business? I can’t believe it’s the latter, after all they seem very keen to know how many visitors were staying overnight on the twenty-seventh of March 2011. Unfortunately my visitors were all away that night, so I couldn’t include them. I usually have around twenty or so most evenings, which is why we sometimes use the bathrooms as bedrooms and the big cupboard has two sets of bunk beds.

My Welsh cottage census form was very keen to know if I could understand, speak, read, or write Welsh. I had to rather ashamedly tick the box stating ‘none of the above’, I don’t think good morning, good evening, thank you or I’ll have a pint of beer please really counts. Dyw un iaith byth yn ddigon.

Google it, you'll see what I mean.

I suppose that if I could write in Welsh I’d have filled in my Welsh census form on the other form which they sent me, the one that is printed in Welsh. The one I didn’t use and that will go straight into the recycling bin. I’ll leave you to debate the environmental, cost, waste issues versus the identity, first language, independence issues. It really does seem a bit silly to send me (an English second home owner) two more census forms that I actually need to record my family’s occupations, ages, educational achievements, employment status, method of work transport, available cars, religion and of course – type of central heating (by the way the cottage has propane, so I had to tick 'other').

Well, at least that’s done for another ten years and I can rest secure in the knowledge that I’ve done my bit to ‘help tomorrow take shape’ - whatever that means.

Mind you, given that the tomorrow I've just helped shape is a hundred years away I don't expect I'll see it. The good thing about my future is that it comes a day at a time, my time, and that gives me chance to shape it any way I want.

Now, what sort of central heating shall I have in my future? Wood burner anyone?