Another Lifetime to go

15th October 2019

The drive was familiar, the same rush hour traffic hold-ups, the same ominous sunrise, this day was beginning.

I climbed the stairs from Vauxhall tube station, the queues at the bus stops snaked around.

The ten minute walk past the endless construction sites building vast steel and concrete skeletons were irrelevant to me.

The American Embassy shone like a beacon of gloom. It’s blandness feebly enhanced by sail like features, that will get grubby, and end up as a giant death shroud symbolising what the building really is.

The queue outside was small compared with last time, so progress through security was faster, but the long queue started inside the compound.

The sky was blue, the clouds seemed to sail around a no-fly zone, it’s funny what you notice when you are waiting.

Eventually I got my number, V123, I should remember that. I walked to the lift, I knew the way up to the first floor.

I then sat waiting, watching the numbers on the screen.

When my number was called, I was ushered to a privacy room, mmm this is different.

There was a pleasant English girl behind the screen, she didn’t have the usual demeanour of most Consular Officer that come with a stick up their ass, no, she made me feel welcome.

She went through the process taking the fingerprints and attaching my photograph to the forms, but instead of handing them back to me she said that my folder would follow me down, mmm this is really different.

I waited at the other area for my interview.

I waited and waited as the room emptied, I expected them to hand me a broom to sweep the place.

I guess the “V” numbers had some significance, as there seemed to be very few issued.

My number appeared on the screen, the choirs sang. I expected the screen to show “And finally V123”

I was summoned to another privacy room only to be told that someone else would deal with me, mmmm this is definitely different.

I walked to window 10, behind the screen was a middle aged woman furiously tapping the keyboard, boy, she must get through lots of them.

What followed were the oddest few minutes I have ever encountered at the Embassy before.

There was no bluntness, no trick questions, she just pounding the keys continuously as if play a game, she finally stopped, looked again at the screen, made a odd movement with her lips, turned to me and stamped my application “Visa approved”

Should I plant a big kiss on the glass, or punch the air? Instead I gave a subdued “Thank you” and walked away as if nothing special had happed.

The air outside smelt sweet, I tried to call Kelli.

She did not answer, but called me back soon after.

“ Hi Girl” I said in a somber tone, “ Well I did my best” leaving a short pause. I could tell a despondent sigh from her, “but they approved me anyway”

What happened next would live on in my memory for ever. There was a silence, then a high pitched scream, then a mixture of laughing and crying, something that she does often, but not to this extent, it just kept going, I was worried she would run out of breath and collapse on the floor, I guess she was pleased with the outcome.

14th October 2019

I am unnaturally calm today.

I want it to be over, but I’m not frightened by it.

It will be what it will be.

I wish I could go today while I’m in this strange state of relaxation. It is weird, I’m not even smoking anything.

I had a lot of encouragement from my friends. I had a long chat with Martin, who had many suggestions to how I should deal with the interview. I politely declined that I should smash the glass partition with a baseball bat and beat the shit out of the Consular Officer. Also the idea of eating a spicy meal and venting quietly so that the interview time is drastically reduced, these, I feel would not place me in a good light for getting approved.

Even I had a message from Damian, that was like getting a sign from God, so he must listen to me sometimes.

Kelli was holding a group session of many of our friends to send some positive vibes, hoping to get a sympathetic interviewer.

My friend Rob also gave me encouragement, by saying the decision has already been made. I hope, because he had a smile on his face he was sending me a positive message.

I never like wishing my time away, but this is what I have to do, I need to get on with my life and finish what I have started.

13th October 2019

It is really difficult to not to think about the visa interview that’s coming up. With the weather being so crap, I can’t even absorb myself in any woodwork.

I went through the documents I will be taking, adding some of my financial information that might be relevant.

I have to remain confident, calm and controlled, which is easy to say.

I did more CAD work on the patio design, desperately trying to put other thoughts to the back of my mind.

Damn! I wish it was all over.

Kelli is going through the same torture, she has been so supportive, but under the surface, she is facing the same nervousness.

12th October 2019

I should have been helping Louise take her furniture pieces to the Weavers Market in Trowbridge, but as the weather was not good she decided to cancel. This was a shame because she had some cool pieces to take.

I took the chair I had repaired down later, and had a chat.

She had a difficult time at work, and had decided to hand her notice in next week. She explained the Dickensian way the business was run, with no recognition of success just criticism of failure.

Louise is a bright girl, she throws herself into whatever task she is given, and is generous with praise for others, but this job had drained her of confidence, and she needed to get out.

I was surprised that any business,like she described, could ever retain people.

She is prepared to do anything at this time, and although bookings for our Airbnb are coming in, it is not enough to provide a proper income.

However she is hopeful that a change of job will help rebuild her self confidence.

11th October 2019

Today was “help a pensioner day”.

Rob, my old school friend had called me earlier in the week asking me to help him prune his large palm tree. As I had to return the lamp I had repaired for him, it was no problem to do that.

Rob damaged his shoulder falling off a ladder last year, and recently had an operation to repair the muscle. This left him a bit limited in the type of work he can do, so where I can, I help him out.

In return he finds ways to take the piss, and generally make things fun.

When I arrived at his house there were several bags full of gardening waste waiting by his gate.

I carried the lamp up his path, which was not as simple as it sounds because the top section articulates and swings round on it’s own accord. When it was in the car, it rolled about even though I had wedged it securely, the top section swung around like a demented crane.

I managed to get it through the front door without any major damage, and he was delighted with the result, although he did try it to check that the lamp still worked.

His garden is very well established, it is small but could easily be used as a jungle film set. There is a magnificent palm standing twelve to fifteen feet in height.

He handed me the extendable loppers and set about directing me at the leaves he wanted removing.

These are quite heavy especially when they land on your head, but also I had to be careful not to stand on some of his new plants.

He also wanted to remove the seed pods, these were the worst things, because at the slightest touch they dropped off the stems.

This was a nightmare when we loaded them into the Shogun, they went everywhere. I will still be finding them for years to come.

After taking them to the Bath recycling centre, we stopped off for our regular Masala Dosa.

We have been to the restaurant so many times we don’t even have to give our order, it gets started the moment we walk through the door.

10th October 2019

I spent time printing documents for my interview next week. I had to un-jam the printer a number of times, as it often wanted to push ten sheets through at a time.

I now have copies of all the letters that Kelli had organised from the two House Representative, and the Senator so they have all been passed to the American Embassy in London.

I try not to think of any down side to my next interview, I am strangely optimistic, I know a lot more about the process than before.

I am keeping busy designing the new patio space at our new home. There are a number of projects I want to do over the next year, some inside but mostly outside.

This meant dusting off my old steam driven laptop. I haven’t even started it up since I left work.

I was a bit rusty with the software, it took me a while to learn how to drive it again, but after a while it all came back to me.

9th October 2019

I put a call into my boiler maintenance company for an engineer to visit to fix a problem I had with my central heating.

I had set up the thermostat, but the boiler was not switching on.

It had been a service a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t see anything obvious.

I was told that someone would visit by the end of the day. That usually means tomorrow, but I was surprised when I had a call back to say the engineer was on his way.

Within an hour the guy was here, and it took less than a minutes to find the problem and fix it.

When the boiler was serviced, the engineer had forgotten to turn the timer switch to the “on” position. I felt a bit inadequate that I didn’t spot that, but I know now.

I decided that I would try out the potato oven that I had bought last week.

I got the fire roaring, and basted the spuds with oil, laying them inside the baking oven, and then placing it on the top of the burner.

Phew! the fire got hotter than Hades, so much so, that I had to take my shirt off. I finally got to eat them at 11.30pm, sweating like a pig.

The lesson here is to start them a lot earlier, maybe midday, then you can enjoy them at a sensible time.

8th October 2019

The final part of the barn renovation was the refitting of the doors.

They were not in good shape, a wooden frame covered with corrugated plastic. We went in search of builders merchants to find a cheap material to re-cover the doors.

The first option was to use corrugated plastic again but this would have been over £100 for the number of sheets we needed. I thought it was a bit pricy, but half expected Damian to rifle about in his pocket for some loose change, but as it wasn’t a new Ferrari he didn’t want to spend that.

We looked at some different materials, but in the end we settled for thinner corrugated plastic, similar to what was on originally.

The weather was bright and sunny when we started the day, but that changed the moment I started covering the doors. After a couple of hours of unpleasant work the doors were finished.

I had made the best of a bad job, at least it was secure, and weather tight, but it was not something I was proud of.

I drove back to the cottage, had a hot shower and relaxed.

7th October 2019

An early visit to Wickes to purchase timber for the repair to Damian’s barn. The weather was not ideal with rain forecasted all day.

I now has a good opportunity to study the condition of the barn as a whole.

The building was a simple wood frame mounted on a foundation of wooden sleepers, these were then covered with roofing felt. The problem was over the years the felt had rotted in places causing the sleepers to rot.

The easiest way to repair the front section was to insert new vertical posts bolted through the existing ones. This allowed me to raise the roof line by an inch, which made a great difference to how it looked.

By the time hunger took over, it was too dark to do any more. I was sodden, all my clothes were damp even my socks.

Damian appeared to inspect my work, I told him about the rotten timber, his first thoughts were just to tear it all down and build more garages instead. Fortunately this is a longer plan, and typically, this is Damian’s view to everything.

6th October 2019

The repair to the chair was quite a challenge, one of the back legs has snapped off.

The only solution was to fit a steel pin to join the pieces together, but the difficulty is to drill holes in both pieces that match so that everything aligns perfectly.

I made a drill fixture that could be clamped to both parts, and for the first time in my life they were perfectly aligned, I could hardly contain my excitement.

I celebrated with a cup of coffee and I raided the biscuits that we give to our Airbnb guests ( that have rapidly depleted since I got back, but I promise to replace them

I turned my attention to the gin bottles.

I had off cuts from my stairs treads that I thought would make good bases. The wood was as heavy as stone and still full of sap even after fifty years. I have never identified the species of tree, but there is a wonderful pine smell when it is cut.

The plan was to mount the bottles upside down with the neck pushed into a hole drilled into the wooden base. A string of LED lights could be fed into the bottle from the bottom and then the whole thing can be illuminated.

That was challenging, because each bottle neck was a different diameter, and the wood was bloody hard and quite waxy so quite difficult to sand or grind.

After many hours of painstaking work I had a selection of different bottles mounted on wooden bases.