Visa expired

It has been an eventful week. My parents have managed to find accommodation and will be moving in to their new home on the 7th December. They found a nice place and I am quite sure that they will be very happy there. It was interesting that although most rentals come with ‘white goods”, this one did not, so that’s an extra expense mum and dad had not budgeted for.

The place is brand new so the builders are in the process of finishing it off as I speak. The owner also informed us that he will not be putting up curtain rails as some people like blinds etc. When we offered to purchase the curtain rails but asked if his builders could put the curtain rails up-he declined as the labor would be too expensive. I felt an intense need to point out to him that we are renting the place not purchasing it!

My parents also ended up paying 6 months rent in advance as they had no references. This is not always the case but sometimes they do request advance payment.

A very well traveled man though- the owner. He had recently been in SA and went into great detail about his diving trips in Durban and Cape Town.

Peter and I decided to take the weekend off and have some fun in London-boy did we have a good time. We did all the things we couldn’t do in a house full of kids and grandparents and lots of other things! Pete had a ball at the apple shop and came out inspired and enthusiastic. We had a good laugh trying to find something for me in my favourite shop – Ann Summers. Of course, they don’t exactly cater for pregnant women no matter how ‘slim’ one might be for 23 weeks! We did however find a few nice little items.

We found a real authentic Japanese restaurant and that was quite an experience especially since we were the only non-Japanese in the restaurant. And then at the end of the evening when we had four drunk Japanese business men sit at the table next to us, we really got educated. We had no idea what they were talking about but oh boy were they having fun-I have never seen men in black suits laugh so much. I have also never seen anybody drink neat whiskey with no ice and no water (except in movies). Maybe I haven’t been around enough. But it was different and fun.

The weekend in London took away the distress we felt on the previous Friday when we received the telephone bill and discovered that our oldest son had spent £500 solely on phone calls to his girlfriend’s mobile phone (this would be after we told him no mobile numbers!). I must be honest and say that I did have a moment of complete overwhelming desire to put him on a plane and send him back to his mother in SA-I’m not sure that I have recovered yet.

Monday started with a very distressed Father and son returning from the bank to tell me that their visas had expired and the bank had told them that they were illegally in the country! In our enthusiasm we had failed to notice that the entry clearance officer in charge had given them a 3 months visa in their passport not 6 months as stated on the British Commission web site. This is apparently up to the officer’s discretion so it was our responsibility to check.

I phoned immigration in a hurry and frantically explained to one of the officers what had happened. He calmly asked me what nationality I was and told me not to get too worried-I just had to write a letter explaining honestly what happened and send all our docs in with the EEA application. If all our docs were in order and they had my passport then the issue should be resolved and father and son would receive their residence cards.

Of course to complicate matters further we have booked for son to visit his mother in SA during the school holidays. The boy’s Christmas holiday with his mother now lays entirely in the hands of an immigration officer who probably receives thousands of urgent requests a day.

So… as I said… a very eventful week indeed!