Dinosaurs. Planets. Two subjects that have fascinated kids for at least a couple of generations. What’s surprising is how impactful a conversation about either can turn out to be.
In my case the subject was the planets. I was in France and a nine-year-old boy, by curious coincidence sharing my name, David, visited the house where I was staying. We got into a chat about the solar system, and I ended up drawing a diagram with him showing all the planets, right out to Pluto – this was 1980 and we hadn’t yet learned to exclude Pluto from the list of true planets.
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| How we thought of the planets in 1980 |
Please don’t think that the illustration here is a faithful copy of the diagram we produced back then. That’s long since been lost. This is a ChatGPT-generated reproduction, and far more sophisticated than anything either of us could have drawn. ChatGPT is just far too skilled (at least at this kind of thing) to lower itself to our level.
Still, unimpressive though our drawing was, it seems it impressed David enough for him to go home and tell his mother, Danielle, all about this curious Englishman he’d met. Curious enough to make her feel she’d like to see what he was like.
Jumping forward a couple of years, Danielle had thrown in her lot – and David’s – with mine and we were all three living together in England. Nor were we going to be just three for long. There came a dramatic day when I rang Danielle – from a public call box to a landline, you understand, mobiles still being a long way off – to tell her about some incident in my day that I obviously thought so important that I told her about it before she could give me her news, though now it seems so inconsequential, particularly compared to what she had to tell me, that I’ve forgotten all about it.
‘Don’t you want to hear my news, then?’ she asked. ‘About the result of the test?’
Memory flooded back. She’d been due to have a pregnancy test that morning. With the memory came certainty, given the solemnity with which she mentioned the test, about what its result had been.
‘It was positive,’ Danielle confirmed.
That was the starting pistol for a race. Those were the days of the Thatcher government, which had recently changed the laws concerning British nationality. If we were married, and the child was born in Britain, he or she would automatically inherit my nationality as well as Danielle’s, though I’d been born abroad (in Rome, since you ask) and Danielle was French. Otherwise, it would be down to the Home Secretary’s discretion. And I didn't know how discreet he was.
There was less of a practical consequence if the child was a girl. If however it was a boy and he received only French nationality from his mother, he would – as the law then stood – have been liable for military service in France when he turned 18. At the time, that represented 12 months out of a young man’s life which struck me as an appalling waste of time. Since there was no compulsory military service in Britain, getting him British citizenship would free him of tiresome obligation.
Shall I confess that I also rather liked the idea of my child sharing my nationality? I already shared a name with the lad who would become my stepson and, later on, precisely over the military service issue, would share a nationality with him too. I preferred it that my other children should not be technically foreigners to me.
Now, you may be thinking, ‘what was the problem? All you had to do was get married, right?’
Sadly, it wasn’t that simple. Danielle still had a husband back in France. As it happens, he was willing to grant a divorce, and there was no technical problem with getting an English divorce to a French marriage. There was just a linguistic one: her then husband spoke no English and the divorce papers would include no French.
He tried to be helpful. He signed the papers the court sent him on every page, but not in the one place where he had to, in the signature space. Danielle had to explain to him exactly where he had to sign and the court sent them back. By then time was getting very tight indeed.
In the final stages of the exercise, the judge called Danielle, David and me in to see him in chambers. He checked with David that he was happy with the custody arrangements (term time with us, holidays with his dad); he said he was. The judge then looked at Danielle’s distended belly and said, ‘I expect you’d like me to reduce the delay between decree nisi and decree absolute’.
Usually there’s a six-week gap between nisi and absolute, the provisional judgement for a divorce, and the definitive one that allows remarriage.
The judge reduced the time to one week.
As a result, when I started a new job on 4 January 1983, I had a request to make of my new boss.
‘I apologise for having to ask for a day off on the very day I’m starting work.’
His face fell. I could see him thinking, ‘What kind of guy have I taken on here?’
‘We’re about to have a baby and the only day my local registry office can marry us is 11 January, next Tuesday.’
He gave a roar of laughter and threw himself back in his chair.
‘David,’ he said, ‘there are few excuses I could have accepted, but that’s definitely one of them.’
So on Tuesday 11 January 1983, Danielle and I were married. And just eighteen days later, Michael was born – safely a British citizen – to join Danielle, David and me.
incidentally, by the time Michael was eighteen, obligatory military service in France had been replaced by attendance at a one-day ‘citizen’s day' workshop.
Yesterday was 11 January 2026. Danielle and I joined a bunch of people with whom Danielle used to go out dragon-boating (check it out – it’s the Chinese answer to canoeing and good for health). They were there for their annual get-together.
Our 43rd wedding anniversary became a subsidiary factor in the general good cheer.
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| Celebrating our 43rd |
In the meantime, isn’t it fun to see where a casual chat about the planets can lead?
