"God Save The Queen...I’m A BRIT At Last!"

Yesterday i offically became a British Citizen. This means that I can vote, go on the dole, get through the fast queue at Heathrow, and moan about how this country is going to the dogs with the best of them. The journey which began a few months ago in front of a dodgy computer in Elephant & Castle, trying to pass a ridiculously detailed citizenship test, ended fittingly in a sweltering hot town hall with sixty other people (mainly Nigerians - but more on that later) singing the national anthem.

We were told to arrive at the Town Hall precisely at 1pm and told we would be out of there around 3:15pm. I realised this was wishful thinking when an hour later i was still jammed in a room painstakingly waiting for my name to be called out so that i could go up to the front, obtain a sticker with my name on it and make sure my outfit pasted muster (apparently no jeans or trainers were allowed and two Afganistani young men were sent home to change as was a Bulgarian fellow).

Luckily sometime around 2:30 a group of us who had recieved our name tags were ushered upstairs for some 'refreshments' and to wait while the rest of the soon to be Brits were checked in. I slunk to the back of the room and buried my head in a book for the next hour or so whilst everyone else partook of the juice being poured from cardboard boxes and watered down coffee...there were even a few biscuits to be had from the look of things...all served with utter contempt by substitue dinner ladies behind a makeshift table.

Soon the room swelled by a ridiculous amount and I realised this was because most people had come with 'guests' and I was starting to feel clautrophobic and was wondering when the hell the ceremony was going to start. It wasn't until 3:30 that we were actually seated and the given a ten minute lecture on how to behave during the ceremony. I would have thought this a pointless exercise, but my fellow passport-hungry peers were nodding with such enthusiasm that perhaps not.

Given that we all had to say our names aloud and then go up and receive our certificate to general applause, have a hand shake with the deputy mayor (a sweet but impossible to understand West Indian man with an indecipherable thick heavy accent) and pose for a picture (which we were told we could purchase later on for £15 to remember our 'special day'), the ceremony dragged on. I used the time to take note of the crazy sounding names and everyones country of origin.

Of the sixty or so of us present the breakdown was as follows: 85% Nigerians, 10% other African countries, 5% other (I was sole Canadian, there was one Aussie, on Kiwi, two Chinese, three Yugoslavians and one Vietnamese...).

All in all I am rather pleased. I've waited many years (almost 13) for this and i can finally cross off 'become a Brit' from my various to-do lists i've had over the years. It's been sheer laziness that's kept me from doing it, but I'm grateful I did at last. Now maybe my accent will come on with leaps and bounds and I'll stop being treated like a damn tourist.

Or maybe not.