November

The consulate had almost a one way system when it came to the information superhighway of the time, I can appreciate that they would do this knowing the volume of applicants they have to deal with, however, when you are one of those applicants the system can be highly frustrating.

Their business hours were short, they took a long lunch break and there was no message system, so if you telephoned you were often put on hold for horrendous amounts of time, often to be told that the person was not available and to call back on the next working day.

I could not do this at work, so that task was down to Karen who struggled with the place for weeks, it was a black hole and they had our paperwork, our passports and our birth certificates somewhere and as far as we knew, we were still three slices short of a loaf.

The month of November moved along, the way it does, and nothing was resolved.