Can anybody read your signature?

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I can’t say that I’m particularly proud of the fact, but I have to admit that I stand a good chance of winning the “world’s worst signature” award. It is – no doubt about it – completely unreadable. It is a single line with a loop that goes up and to the right at the left end, and another that goes up and to the left at the right end. There is also a rudimentary kink half way along the line. Of course, I know what it says – it says “John Welford”. The loop at the left is the top of the J and the loop at the right is the upstroke of the D. As for the kink in the middle, that’s anybody’s guess! It’s a very quick signature to write. I reckon that it takes less than two seconds to do, so I don’t waste a lot a time when signing things – copies of my latest novel for example (if only!). It amazes me just how long some people take to sign – come on folks, life’s too short! My signature used to be a lot more readable, but then I got a job as the librarian for a large UK telecoms company. The library needed to be completely restocked and I had a very generous annual budget. This meant that new books were arriving almost daily and the finance people needed me to sign off every invoice, of which there were dozens. In order to save time I started to sign more and more quickly and eventually got it down to below two seconds, as mentioned above. Once the unreadable signature had evolved, that is where it stayed! I had a problem a few years ago when I needed to make a change to my bank account. I had had the account for a very long time, but when it came to signing the required documents the bank would not accept that I was the same person who had signed on originally. They then asked me to sign everything twice – both as I sign now and also as I used to sign 30 years ago! I had no idea how this was, so they showed me a copy. I was then in the very strange situation of being asked by my bank to forge my own signature! How this proved that I really was the same person I have no idea. I am sure that many people have noticed their signature changing as time goes by, but whether as radically as mine has is another question altogether! How about you? Is your signature likely to be as bad as mine?