The birth certificate problem

It may seem strange to conventional mainlander types, but it wasn’t until I was 33 that I even realised it was unusual not to know who my father was.  I grew up on an island comprising two single parents and their sons, any family with both parents still together would have seemed freakish to us.
 
I was, of course, aware of the facts of life and that I must have had a father. Us islanders aren’t as ignorant as it’s often made out, I simply had zero curiosity for something that wasn’t there.  I never spent my childhood hours feeding ducks, as there weren’t any ducks to feed on the island.  I never lobbed empty Tizer cans at the local bobby, as there was no local bobby, neither was there any Tizer. I never caught the number 57 bus to school, because there were no buses on my island, there wasn’t a school and there weren’t any roads.
 
Similarly, it had no interest in my father, because there was no father, he was as absent as a duck sitting on the top deck of a number 57 bus drinking Tizer.  
 
I remember the day I realised I was different. In particular, I remember being woken at the astonishingly early hour of 6.30 in the morning, by a hammering on my back door.
 
‘Who on Earth that be this early the morning?’ I wondered. I quickly dressed and rushed downstairs, to discover that it was Alun, waving a letter excitedly.
 
“It’s a letter from that publishers you’ve been pestering,” he said. 
 
“It’s been opened,” I said, accusingly.
 
“The wind’s strong out there, Jed,” he said, “it must have blown the envelope apart. Quick, read it, what does it say?”
 
Nervously, I took the letter out of its wind-destroyed envelope.
 
“It contains a contract,” I said, trying to hide my nerves. "They say they're going to publish my book, with an advance of seventeen mainland pounds and an initial print run of 2,000."
 
However, in spite of the good news, the paperwork I had to complete was endless, it was like completing the council’s annual ‘tax and services’ forms, which the council used to identify the core services it needed to provide to its taxpayers. I don’t know why we bothered completing them, Alun and I never got the helicopter and landing pad we asked for every year.
 
And then I came to it. Question 27. Father’s name. 
 
“Why are they asking me my father’s name?” I asked Alun, who was worldly wise than I am, having visited the mainland.
 
“It’s for tax purposes, Jed, they want to ensure they tax the right Jed Wood.”
 
“Are there other Jed Woods?” I asked, astonished.
 
“Probably hundreds Jed, if not thousands. There are a lot of people on the mainland, and Wood’s a popular surname.”
 
“So what should I put?”
 
“What do you mean what should you put? You put your father’s name.”
 
“I don’t know my father’s name.”
 
Alun looked surprised. In all the years he’d known me neither of us had in any way, shape or form referred to my father, not even to my absence of father/tizer/duck/bus, yet apparently all along he had assumed I knew who my father was. Maybe he thought we were in touch. Who knows what Alun had painted in the gaps of his knowledge, maybe entire scenes of my mother, father and myself on picnics in my father’s own private paddle-steamer, coasting around the shores of the mainland with a jet-stream gushing behind us. 
 
“Isn’t it on your birth certificate?” he said.

 

“My birth certificate?”
 
“You’ll need your birth certificate and National Insurance Number to prove who you are."
 
“My National Insurance Number?” 
 
“Question 183.”
 
“I thought you said it was the wind.”
 
“Wind?”
 
“That opened the envelope.”
 
“I may have glanced inside, Jed, just to check the letter was safe.”
 
“Glanced all the way up to question 183.”

 

“I just wanted to help Jed.”
 
“So what’s a National Insurance Number?”
 
“It’s your unique identifying number, it’s so the mainland tax the right Jed Wood."

 

"I'd be happy for them to tax the wrong one."

 

Clearly getting published was more complex that I'd ever imagined possible. It would involve pages and pages of paperwork, detailed research into my family history and obtaining both a birth certificate and a National Insurance Number.

 

I couldn't face it.  On top of the excitement of getting published and the emotional issues raised by mention of my father, I had never written so much in my life, except for my novel obviously. As I was walking along the coastal path thinking deeply a duck flying overhead dropped something on my head. I picked it up, an empty can of Tizer. 'This must be a sign', I thought to myself, but what exactly it signified I have no idea.