Birth Record

We headed to downtown Bury St. Edmunds today to get Ollie all setup officially with a birth certificate. It was a great British civil service experience all around:

The Registrar's office is in the Lady Margaret building of Old Shire Hall (awesome name!) which is part of the city government offices that connect to the ruins of the Abbey. To get to the office you pass through one of the stone archways that pre dates the Norman era.

Once inside, the Registrar was classically British--polite to the point of awkwardnesss, yet firm when it came to the way paperwork must be handled. The Bury St. Edmunds birth register is a large record book, which has to be filled out and signed with a fountain pen (there are blotters between each record page to make this work). The registrar fills out the information and then passes the fountain pen over for one of the parents to sign.

After all that you get a computer copy of that entry in the book (the registrar made a mistake on the first copy of this she printed, at which point she said 'Oh, this form's all wonky, let me get you another one!') and a packet of information for new parents (which the registrar described as 'a load of bumpf').

So, for the bargain price of 3 pound 50 we learned two new words and got Oliver's details down in the big book.