You'd think I'd know my name and address

My name's a bit tricky for a lot of Spaniards. My mum calls me Christopher, most other people use Chris. Cristofer exists as a Spanish name, as does the more traditional Cristobal. There are a lot of Cristiáns and Cristinas who use Cris as the shortened version. Nonetheless, Chris, said with an English lilt, is usually too much for most Spaniards, at first pass and, often, I have to revert to pronouncing my name a bit like Kreees or Kreeestoffair for it to be understood. If I'm only booking a table or something it's not really a problem, any old name will do, but lots of people are surprisingly picky about how it's spelled.

My middle name is John. This is a clear misspelling for most Spaniards because the H isn't in the right place. I'm not sure that there is a way to spell this, my middle name, using Spanish spelling rules. The usual best try is to spell it as Jhon. On any number of official documents I am Jhon. 

John also comes after my first name - Christopher John - so, obviously, using the Spanish naming format, which is a name plus two surnames, my first surname is John. I have got used to responding in a medical situation or a government office when they call for a Señor John. Sometimes, when I've helped acquaintances with a hospital visit I know that I'm with Jane Brown or John Smith but I'm not nimble enough to recognise Señor Susan for Jane Susan Brown or Señor Alfred for John Alfred Smith.

My family name is Thompson. The spelling isn't at all Spanish. I used to be able to say that my name was the same as the brand of TV because there was a famous maker of TVs here called Tomson but they seem to have disappeared from the scene. I can also say "sin ton ni son", which is a phrase that means something like "without rhyme nor reason". That both explains the phonetic structure of my name and lightens the mood. Usually, though, this is a completely redundant conversation because they push a scrap of paper my way and say "write it down".

Spaniards can be despotic in the way they change names to be Castilian names. Until quite recently Catalans called Carles, would be called Carlos and Neus would become Nieves. It still happens but less so. Mind you the King of the United Kingdom is nearly always referred to as Carlos III of Inglaterra. His lads are called Enrique and Guillermo.

My address is a problem too. I live in Culebrón. Culebrón is something akin to the English villages of Pratts Bottom or Bitchfield. The name means something. People are apt to comment. Culebrón means a soap opera, and people think it's another one of my little jokes. Once they've got over that, we have to go through the rest of the address. Basically, our address is just the house number and the village name. Doing this over the phone or filling in an online form can be difficult. Many of the databases have a required field with options like street, avenue or place. If this is being done over the phone the operator usually simply chooses one at random. If I'm filling in the form I try any number of the variants that I've seen over the years. The result is that we live at several different addresses: Culebrón Street, Culebrón Close, Culebrón Court, etc.

I should add that Pinoso, our mothership town, has two names. Pinoso in Castilian and El Pinós in Valencian. We've had people visiting us in their own cars who don't recognise that the two names have the same root.

Then there's the postcode. Unlike the, almost individual, postcodes of the UK the Spanish system is much more like the US zip code. One code covers a biggish area. Murcia, for instance, with a population of nearly 500,000 people, has 18 postcodes. Pinoso has one. Given the option that postcode, 03650, is the one I use. However, that same database which assigned us a new street/close/avenue has another potential little trick up its sleeve. The official postcode for Culebrón is 03658, but when we use that postcode, the mail is sent to the Salinas Post Office, 20km away, where it disappears. The autofill forms on the Internet are often unforgiving - if Culebrón exists on the database then its postcode is 03658 and however much I want to put in 03650 the computer says no. The tussles provide another variant address.

Of no known address

Some fathead at the HSBC bank seems to think that I may have been lying about my address for the past thirteen years and about my identity for the past forty five years. They want me to prove who I am and where I live. So they sent me some sort of half baked questionnaire. Good job I wasn't lying about my address or I'd never have received it!!

Nowadays we rich folk live in an interconnected world. Instead of completing the form IN BLACK INK AND IN CAPITALS I can use a webcam application which begins with the letter J and is amusingly named to stop it from being too daunting. So I can use the software called Jumbo, Jumio or Juliet (I forget which) to prove that I'm me and that I live where I say I live. The explanatory leaflet tells me that I can supply the information they need in just six minutes. In reality It took me longer than that to read the instructions never mind the time I wasted in finding and scanning paperwork. One possible form of documentation, to prove where I live, is to send a utility bill. Given the unreasonableness of their basic request that seemed reasonable. The application Jumanji or Jamiroquai told me though that the bill needed to be in English. Ah, of course. Spanish utility companies produce all their bills in English in deference to the domination of English as THE World language. Actually though, with the wonders of the Internet, I can get the bill in a version of English. That may have saved me the translation fee which appears to be the alternative if the bill happens to be in some funny foreign language. Though tell me - what exactly is the translation of an address? What is the English for Alicante. Do they really want Culebrón translated as big snake?

There is, though, another stumbling block. My home address isn't exactly the same on the electricity bill as it is on, well almost any other proof of address, that I can muster. I've explained this before. Basically the problem boils down to terrible Spanish database design. Instead of using a free field for the box on the form where you would be expected to put street, avenue or close, some idiot, who presumably worked for the HSBC before moving to Spain, made a long list of all of the street synonyms they could think of. So if I live in Pedanía Culebrón or Partida Culebrón or Caserío Culebrón and pedania, partida and caserío are not on the database someone has to choose whatever they consider to be the nearest equivalent - drove might become drive and gate might become close or street or avenue.

Add in a bit of post code confusion. Postcodes in Spain cover areas, a whole town will share a postcode. Technically our postcode is 03658 but the town we belong to has the post code 03650 so, like everyone else who lives near Pinoso, and acting on the advice of people in the Post Office, we use 03650. But Mr Database designer (it could only be a man) never spoke to the people in our Post Office and his database links the village to the wrong postcode. So I may think my address is Culebrón Hamlet, 03650 Pinoso Alicante but the closest we can get on database A is Culebrón Street, 03650 Pinoso, Alicante whilst on database B we might find Culebrón Village, 03658 Culebrón, Alicante. The number of variations on the same basic information is really remarkable.

Now who can say. Application Jiminy Cricket may be backed up by a person who sees the photo of me holding up my passport, who sees the uploaded copies of my driving licence or electricity bill and realises that they are all basically similar and in the same name (It won't help that my name is actually misspelled on at least one of the documents) and nods the information through as true. Somehow though I suspect that won't happen. What will actually happen is that some piece of visual recognition software will check my  passport photo against the webcam picture and there will be a cursory check of my driving licence number against some European database. I'll get bounced by both and we'll be back to square one.