Friday 28 June 2002

Any readers who are familiar with the BBC show One Foot in the Grave will be also be familiar with the exasperated, annoyed, pissed off, aggravated - generally at someone else's incompetence - tones of Victor Meldrew exclaiming "I don't belieeeeeve it". Said readers will therefore have a pretty darn good idea of what's going through my head right now ...

You know how I've been having trouble with the Immigration and Nationality Directorate? How they still haven't processed my spouse visa, five months after I sent them all the appropriate and correct - I say again, correct - paperwork? And how their helpline staff kept telling me "no there was no problem otherwise the case-worker would have contacted you immediately"? But nevertheless couldn't explain the delay in what is a very simple procedure (ie, stamping a passport because all requirements have been met already)? And how I was incredibly angry and depressed and basically going totally out of my tree, so I wrote to my local MP and also to the Home Office, complaining?

Well ... today I got a fat brown envelope in the mail. Which had to be signed for. Postmarked by the IND. It couldn't be, I thought, as I slit open the envelope. Not possibly, finally, after all this time, I thought, as my passport, then our marriage certificate, fell out of the envelope onto the floor ...

It wasn't.

To paraphrase the letter; I had sent them the wrong form (I hadn't) and therefore they were sending back a copy of the correct form and my documentation. They apologised for the delay.

I DON'T BELIEEEEEVE IT.

All this time ... the fucking paperwork has been sitting on someone's desk, at the bottom of someone's in-tray no doubt, or under their coffee cup, and it took nuclear-powered written complaints to MPs and the Home Office and the First Minister of Ireland (oh yeah, I wrote to him too) for some drone to fish it out ... and now to cover their arses they're claiming I sent the wrong paperwork? And would I mind applying again?

I DON'T FUCKING BELIEEEEEVE IT.

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