Atheists Need Not Apply

When I went to the Libyan Embassy in London to get my first residence visa for Libya, I ran into a problem. I could not get a visa without producing my baptism certificate, because atheists were not permitted to enter the country. You could only get a visa if you could prove you were a member of an organized religion. Christians, Muslims or Jews - yes, Jews - were welcome but not atheists.

I was pretty sure that I had been baptised but I had no record of it. I called my mum. She was pretty sure I had been baptised but had no record of it.

So I popped into a local church and asked the vicar if he could give me a baptism certificate. "Have you been baptised?" he asked. "I think so," I told him. "Into which church?" he followed up. "Not a clue but probably Church of England," I answered.

It seemed that this information was not enough to justify his issuing me with a baptism certificate. The only way to do this, he told me, was for him to baptise me. I explained that I didn't want to be baptised; I just wanted a certificate. He wouldn't give me one. Very inflexible, some of these religious people.

I tried the Libyan Embassy again but they were still adamant that I needed to produce a document showing I was a member of a church or temple or something similar.

So I had to improvise. I went to Woolworth's and bought a John Bull printing set. These were wonderful little toys, consisting of wooden trays, little rubber letters and numbers, a pair of tweezers and an ink pad. You made words by assembling rubber letters on the wooden trays. You inked the letters and then printed them onto paper. Pretty much the same technique that they used to print the Gutenberg Bible, except I'm not sure they used tweezers for that.

I typed up a letter confirming that I had been baptised into the Church of England at St. Ollie's and St. Stan's Church on December 25th 1945, and I signed it with the name of one of my high school friends. (His dad worked at Carlisle Cathedral, so I thought this added an authentic touch.) I then made up a nice stamp for St. Ollie's and St. Stan's with an arbitrary address in Carlisle, my hometown. I stamped the letter and took it along to the Libyan Embassy.

I got my visa.

I think Ollie and Stan would have approved.