The Interim Minister at our UU Congregation at Montclair recently sent me an e-mail about the British and bureaucracies. The Brits didn’t invent bureaucracies. I’m certain that the Romans and Greeks had them and probably King Tut before that and I suspect that some neolithic cave man insisted that you provide him with two flints and a description of what you were going to paint before he let you into his cave. No, the British didn’t invent the bureaucracy, but they perfected it and, indeed, turned it into an art form.

Our saga trying to open a bank account continues. We tried, back in July to open an account, but were told that we needed a visa. You might ask why our immigration status is relevant when we are just trying to give them our money, but, fair enough, it is an international thing. So we get here Friday, a week ago, with our visas, only to find out that the banks are closed until Tuesday and, not only that, but you can’t just walk into a bank and open an account, you need to make an appointment. And the next appointment won’t be until September 8th. You might wonder why the British make it so hard to open an account. It is the nature of bureaucracy that such questions are unanswerable. As you peer through the fog of paperwork and procedures, you are simply advised that these are the rules that must be followed. No one knows why.

But Judie pulls Bryan Cave strings to get us an appointment on the 1st and we get there and are told that we can’t open an account because, although we have our visas and everything else we need, we don’t have our residence permits (the British equivalent of a Green Card–only here it is pink). Of course, the British government won’t give you the card in the US along with your visa. (I’m trying to come with a rationale for that.) No, you have to pick it up at a post office (and Judie and I are, mind bogglingly, assigned different post offices). They know that we are coming and presumably have created the cards, but for some reason the cards won’t be available until September 4th. We go to the bank with the letter from the Home Office, telling us to pick up the cards on or after the 4th, but that isn’t good enough, so we are yet again out of luck. However, at least they take all of our information, put it in the computer and give us an appointment near Judie’s office for Friday, when we will have the cards.

So today, we appear at the time and place, this time with everything we need, figuring that we can just cruise in and out. Two hours and fifteen minutes later, I stagger out of the branch. We have bank account number (Hooray), but we don’t have debit cards (they will arrive in the mail next Thursday or Friday, but they won’t actually be usable since the PIN numbers will arrive separately, days after that), and we don’t have credit cards (they’ll allegedly arrive in around 10 days) and we don’t have checks (who knows when they will arrive).

I’m not sure that this will interest anyone and all this whining reminds me of Bill Bryson’s writings, but I had to write it down to ease my frustration.