Today I sent in the application for Rebekah’s Irish citizenship. I needed officially validated copies of a stack of documentation, so I took them down to the Garda (police) station, where such things are done. They had the validating stamp, but before they could stamp my copies, I was told to write:

“This is to certify that this is a true copy of ___ document to the original, which was shown to Garda ___ in the Youghal Garda station on 30/01/14”

On every one of my baker’s dozen worth of papers. At the end, I pointed with my non-sore hand to the stack of originals and asked if he wanted to check them. “Ah, no. You’re grand.”

Now our little batch of stamped papers is on its way to Dublin.