The update, updated

For tedious and tiresome and sadly unfightable reasons, the 9 days I thought I had to make permit happen turn out to be only 4 days. Which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be made to resemble 5-10 days, even with begging letter. So I give. I surrender. The universe does not wish for me to be in Cape Town this year. Fine. I won't be.

If anyone out there knows any good curses, please direct them at whatever idiots thought it would be a good idea to outsource all visa functions to the private sector. I thank you.

Bureaucracy, the update

Oh it just gets more and more exciting. This whole "apply for entry clearance while in SA" thing? They need "5-10 working days" to process. Which is interesting, considering I'm only in SA for... 9 working days, including arrival and departure. Huh.

"You can include a cover letter asking them to speed things up and giving your reasons," I am helpfully told. Obviously, based on past experience, I do not have a whole lot of confidence in that. I imagine that the 5-10 day time is not because they actually require 10 days to ponder the merits of my application, but rather, because applications arrive and get dumped on the bottom of a large pile of other applications. They work their way through the pile, and reach mine when they reach it. Say, 15-45 days after submission. "Oh lookee," they will say. "She wants urgent consideration. Aw bless."

So the ulcer-inducing panic continues. (This can't be good for The Bebeh.) I fully expect to be stuck in Cape Town longer than expected. While some of my Capetonian readers may rejoice at this news, I do NOT, for reasons of (a) cost of new plane ticket (pretty sure mine doesn't allow changes) and (b) obligations back in London. Cancelling a few shifts would be annoying enough, relying on my freelance income as I do, but it's worse than that: Saturday 6 September is iKnit day. Big ol' knitting expo that I'm exhibiting at. Really not okay to skip it. Really not viable for Beloved to do it without me.

Arg.

*fretfretfret*

Esteemed Father called me a week ago. Now, I am told that it's always immediately apparent when I'm talking to him, because my side of the conversation inevitably goes: "Oh no... oh dear... how awful... oh, no..." etc. On this occasion one of the dramas (there are always multiple dramas) involved important travel documents. Viz:

He has recently had to apply for right to remain in the UK. He has been awarded said right. Hurrah! But in returning his application, the Home Office appears to have lost his and his partner's passports. They sent back a checklist of included documents, which featured "2 x passports". There were no passports. But the checklist does not lie, says Home Office! So here begins a fun bureaucratic loop:
To issue a new or temporary passpot, SA Home Affairs want a police report that the old one was lost.
To issue a report, the police want a letter from the UK Home Office that they lost it.
Home Office say no! We did not lose it! The checklist Does Not Lie!

Oh no, oh dear, how awful, etc.

Plus, enter worrying thought stage left: hm, the Home Office have had my own and Beloved's passports for a while now (applying for EEA right to remain thingy). Better check up on that. Sposed to be travelling in August and all.

Turns out, the Home Office processing times have slowed down dramatically since last time I dealt with them. They refuse to give progress reports, or even acknowledge receipt of your application, until 14 weeks after submission. (Which is at least two weeks too late for my travel plans.) Applications *may* take up to 6 months. If you need your passport urgently, you're allowed to call and ask for it (assuming you can get through - it's one of those always-busy numbers where they don't actually let you hold, you either get through or you don't), which may take up to 10 working days.

I would feel a lot better if I at least had proof they'd received my application. Which I should have, since I handed it to Beloved to post via special delivery. And I am sure he did send it special delivery. However, I don't seem to have the tracking slip. I might have noticed this sooner if it weren't for the fact that I do quite a lot of posting (that's ironic understatement, there) and have quite a lot of tracking slips. Just not the really vital one.

So, as a back-up plan, I look at SA Home Affairs to see how they feel about temporary passports and the like. And I notice two things.

1) "DUE TO CURRENT REGULATION BY UK AUTHORITIES, NO TEMPORARY PASSPORT WILL BE ISSUED TO SA CITIZENS FOR ENTRY PURPOSES TO THE UK. TEMPORARY PASSPORTS WILL BE ISSUED ONLY TO HOLDERS OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP."
Wow. Brutal.

2) Requirements include "2X certified copy of valid British Visa." Huh. Given that visas tend to be stamped into one's passport, how exactly is one supposed to provide this if one's passport has been lost, damaged or destroyed, which are the usual grounds for seeking a temporary passport?

It's all academic anyway. A more pertinent requirement is that police report, which I'm not going to get on grounds of "the Home Office has my passport I think but they won't tell me". So I must just wait patiently 3 more weeks and then write to them demanding my passport back. Oh this is going to be such fun.

Things I didn't say

"In the absence of blogging I have no idea of what's happening in your life."

Well, see, you do. What was happening last time I saw you? I was working a lot. What has my blog been - boringly, repeatedly - complaining about? Working a lot. What is my usual excuse for not blogging? I'm working a lot.

I say this without intended sarcasm or rancour. That's how it is. I'm working. And not on anything that gives me fodder for sparkling conversation or, indeed, blogging. Sorry.

"I feel like we're back at university - I mean, you're still wearing teal! You look just the same!"

I really hate being told I look just the same as I did 10 years ago. It's true, of course (at least if you ignore the inevitable wrinkling, sagging, expanding). I have occasionally cut my hair a bit shorter or coloured it a bit darker or redder, but I always default to the same basic, vaguely oldfashioned look. My clothes are a bit less exotic than they used to be, and a bit less battered and holey, but tend to follow the same silhouette and colours. So I can't complain about being told I look just the same - hey, if I want an image update, that's easy enough to do; but I don't actually want it.

Still, I hate the idea that I haven't progressed. It's been 10 years. That should be enough time to have completely reinvented myself. Yet I'm still just the same, only with less free time, and less conversation.

I feel boring. Really, really, really boring. I like to say I'm in touch with my inner granny, and it's true; I did after all spend most of high school knitting. (I'd like to point out that these days there are plenty of teenagers who knit *and* have a social life, but that wasn't really an option for me, for reasons I won't bore you with.) But I'm not always happy about my basic old-lady-hood. Increasingly I have nothing to say to my friends. All these lovely people, whom I've known for years, who are smart and funny and lively... and with whom I suddenly don't seem to have much in common.

Socialising has become hard work. The London factor (distance and public transport) doesn't help. I hardly ever see most of my friends; but there is another group of people I see a lot more regularly. Some of whom are clearly becoming my new friends. The knitters. There's a huge number of knitting groups around town, and I occasionally manage to make the effort to join some of them. At first I told myself that I was more motivated to join the knitters because I could chalk it up as almost work - it's a networking opportunity, it's market research. Which is true. Then I realised that there's more than that; knitting restores my energy, whereas socialising per se often depletes it. And just this week I realised there's another reason too: among these people, I don't feel boring. I can share the knitting stuff that's taking up so much of my headspace; I don't need anything else. It's enough. It's okay.

The same sort of thing is happening with blogging. I'm struggling to find time for the knitting blog too, but it's a bit more active than this one. Maybe not that much more, but some. Sorry, folks. But look on the bright side. At least I'm not boring you...

PS. It's extremely likely that this feeling explains my unnatural excitement when anyone I know expresses an interest in learning The Knit. Be warned: if you so much as hint at "maybe I'd not hate trying to make a scarf", I go into full pusher mode.

PPS. I am distressed to find out how many tags I already have to suit this post. Sulks, whines and boring! And I haven't even been using tags that long! See? I really have gotten dull.

Adventures in online shopping

I've been getting a bit spendy lately. Inadvisable, but never mind. One of the lovely treats the postie brought me this week was a Top Deck flavoured dildo.



Made you look.

All right, all right, it's a nostepinde. The rest of my shopping has also been largely knitting-related, so I won't bore you with it.

*yawns*

*swings feet idly, staring into the middle distance*

Look, it's only fair to remind you, I'm not doing very much that's interesting these days. Which means I don't have much to write about either. When I do have stuff to write, and time to write it for that matter, it's generally of the woolly persuasion; so it goes on over at the cafe. But even that's been pretty dry. I'm just saying.