Sit Down and Be Counted

We waited until today to fill in our census forms, mainly because it seemed somehow to be tempting fate to be counting the household before they’d hatched, as it were (it’s bad enough, frankly, doing it today but I think we’re likely to both survive until the evening and it’s even more unlikely we’ll get any overnight guests). So over our morning coffee we had a pleasant enough half-hour going through the questions. I’m afraid we didn’t obliterate the bar codes or fill ourselves in as Jedi knights or do anything else to annoy the powers that be – at heart I’m a fairly law abiding person and I think on the whole a census is a good thing, whoever’s actually running it. I missed out last time around because we were living in Swaziland, and the times before that I think I’ve managed to be missed more often than I’ve been counted. It’s lucky I’m not planning on having any ancestors as I’m not leaving much of a paper trail for them to follow…

Because we’re in Scotland, we’re doing the Scottish Census (in fact, if all you follow is the Scottish news you might be hard pressed to discover that the census was also happening in other parts of the UK). It being Scotland, which does not in any way have a chip on its shoulder about anything, many of the choices seemed designed largely to put the English in their place. As someone born into the C of E, my religion, had I chosen to fill it in, would have been a write-in answer – maybe I should have gone for Jedi Knight or even Great Good God of Cycling after all – and under ethnic group the tick boxes included White Scottish, Irish, Gypsy, even Polish, but the English were going to have to lump themselves in with the Welsh as ‘Other British’.  Take that, English oppressors!

It also meant we didn’t get the comedy question 17, ‘this question is intentionally left blank’ because it isn’t blank up here. Instead, we had to answer how well we spoke, read, wrote or understood Scots, English and Gaelic. I haven’t a word of Gaelic – it’s not spoken around here and never really has been – but having lived up hear for a few years and been schooled in Scotland, I’ve come across enough Scots to feel that I probably understood it, at least when it’s being spoken. For anyone similarly puzzled, there’s the Aye Can website offering samples of spoken and written Scots arranged by region so you can see if you can understand them (which unfortunately I only came across after we’d filled in the form. Still it turned out I could). In fact, even if you’re not filling in the Scottish Census, you might want to have a visit anyway – there are some charming clips of voices which are well worth a listen in their own right. Come back and tell me how you did.

 

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