Chicon IV, the worldcon that year and my main destination, never knew I lived in Manchester, and this is entirely due to the fearsome reputation of American immigration officers.

Chicon IV needed an address for me (in the days long before email, remember), so that they could send me progress reports and other conventional updates and paraphernalia, and obviously at some point my Surbiton address would become invalid. One option was to give my office address: “Kevin Smith, UKFA/1, Shell UK Limited, Oxford Road, Manchester”. That was okay for banks and other official sounding stuff, but totally lacking in fannish credibility.

(UKFA/1 was what Shell called a ‘reference indicator’, essentially meaning the department I was in. This was a global system and enabled a telex, for example – you’ll have to look up ‘telex’ yourself, there isn’t space to explain here – to be addressed to UKFA/1 from anywhere in the world and arrive at the right place. The first part represented the Shell company I was in (Shell UK) and the second part showed I was in the Finance Audit department. Or more succinctly, UK was my company and FA was what I did.)

So I decided to use my parents’ address: “The Green, Bromyard, Herefordshire.” It’s actually a farm a couple of miles outside the small town of Bromyard and prominent enough that it doesn’t need a street name. In fact, there wasn’t a street name. There isn’t a street, actually, just a road between fields. I had never actually lived there. I was born and brought up on a farm in Leicestershire, but my family moved farm to Herefordshire in 1982. (It was a busy year for us all.)

This remarkably compact address baffled the Chicon IV administrators, who failed to spot the comma and were convinced that I lived in a green bromyard. I cannot conceive what they thought a bromyard of any colour might be; probably they just assumed it was a peculiar English kind of thing. Which it was, I suppose…

Why didn’t I just give my hotel as my address? Because of US immigration, that’s why.

The working assumption of American immigration officers back then, as now, was that everyone entering the USA who wasn’t already an American citizen, really wanted to stay. To get in, I had to show that I would definitely be going home again (proved by possession of a return ticket) and had enough funds to support myself whilst there. The ticket was no problem – I really did want to go home again, so I did have the return ticket. The “sufficient funds” were a little more tricky. I had a few dollars for emergencies on arrival, but the bulk of my funds were coming from the US TAFF account held by Stu Shiffman in America. No sense in paying fans’ hard earned TAFF contributions to the banks to convert currencies at extortionate rates and commissions. So I didn’t exactly plan to have a lot of US currency with me. I was prepared to explain, but I didn’t really want the hassle.

Now if I had said on my immigration visa application (you had to have a visa then) that I was of no fixed abode, currently staying in a hotel, do you think that would have helped? Neither did I. I thought that I had better give Chicon IV the same address, to be on the safe side. Those immigration service people, they could have had spies anywhere…