Grumpiness and happiness
Oct. 14th, 2003 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
triskellianRandom grumbling
My doctor's surgery has changed their appointment-making rules so that you have to call on the day you want the appointment. Sounds good in theory: no more waiting for weeks before you can go in, but I just tried calling, wanting an appointment at the end of the day (since the surgery is on my way home from work). There aren't any left after 3.50. So I have to try again tomorrow, and potentially every day until I get lucky. I can't try for a first-thing-in-the-morning appointment, because they don't open till after I'm in the office.
Happier news
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smiorgan and I went to meet the Registrar yesterday to give formal notice of our intent to marry :-) As some of you know, Oxford Registry Office is rather pretty, and we waited under stained-glass windows, in a corridor lined with pieces of paper containing the names of people who have given the same notice we were there for. The girls were listed as 'spinster' (and I was disappointed to see it not followed by 'of this parish'), and the boys as 'bachelor'. We amused ourselves by re-naming these titles 'binster' and 'spatula', although we didn't decide which way round they went ;-)
The woman we saw had a marvellous office, with one wall almost entirely filled with glossy A4 prints of movie stills, mostly attractive men from fantasy and SF films. David Bowie in Labyrinth, Johnny Depp in Pirates and so on. She herself was small and friendly, although the procedure was not entirely friendly:smiorgan (nominated by me to go first) had to answer a long list of questions about both of us, with no help from me, and then I had to do the same, with the advantage of hearing him doing it first. That done, we presented our passports and utility bills, confirmed that we're not related, and signed away our lives (after a stern talking-to about the penalties of making false declarations). The Registrar dipped her pen into a large glass ink-pot on an altar-like structure in the centre of her desk and witnessed our signatures with a calligraphic flourish. It felt formal, and real, and right.
My doctor's surgery has changed their appointment-making rules so that you have to call on the day you want the appointment. Sounds good in theory: no more waiting for weeks before you can go in, but I just tried calling, wanting an appointment at the end of the day (since the surgery is on my way home from work). There aren't any left after 3.50. So I have to try again tomorrow, and potentially every day until I get lucky. I can't try for a first-thing-in-the-morning appointment, because they don't open till after I'm in the office.
Happier news
smiorgan and I went to meet the Registrar yesterday to give formal notice of our intent to marry :-) As some of you know, Oxford Registry Office is rather pretty, and we waited under stained-glass windows, in a corridor lined with pieces of paper containing the names of people who have given the same notice we were there for. The girls were listed as 'spinster' (and I was disappointed to see it not followed by 'of this parish'), and the boys as 'bachelor'. We amused ourselves by re-naming these titles 'binster' and 'spatula', although we didn't decide which way round they went ;-)The woman we saw had a marvellous office, with one wall almost entirely filled with glossy A4 prints of movie stills, mostly attractive men from fantasy and SF films. David Bowie in Labyrinth, Johnny Depp in Pirates and so on. She herself was small and friendly, although the procedure was not entirely friendly:
smiorgan (nominated by me to go first) had to answer a long list of questions about both of us, with no help from me, and then I had to do the same, with the advantage of hearing him doing it first. That done, we presented our passports and utility bills, confirmed that we're not related, and signed away our lives (after a stern talking-to about the penalties of making false declarations). The Registrar dipped her pen into a large glass ink-pot on an altar-like structure in the centre of her desk and witnessed our signatures with a calligraphic flourish. It felt formal, and real, and right.
