The work permit nightmare has finally resolved itself!! I've got it. For a year anyway ($3000 with not so much as a thank you).
I should really start my own site dedicated to telling people how to go about getting one because at this point I think I'm probably better informed than the American government. I think I already mentioned that when Amy called the helpline it was manned by a Russian who could do little else than read out what it already said on the US government website.
You have to have a photo of course, like a passport photo but it's not a passport photo, at least not like the ones you can get done in a photo booth at the supermarket. No, this one's bigger - well, being America it would be - we were brought up over here on the understanding that everything's bigger in America.
So the photo has to be so many inches from chin to hairline and the whole photo area has to be five centimetres square and you can only get it done by certain officially sanctioned photographers. We found all this out late on Friday night so we were in a bit of a panic on Saturday morning because the nearest photographer was an hour and a half away in Angouleme. Photographers tend to shut up shop for the weekend at midday on Saturday and my appointment at the US consulate was set for half past eight on Monday mornng.
Our friend Ian Button was over to do some recording on our side project which may or may not end up being called Loto. We’ve recorded five or six tracks so far and four of them are actually mixed and finished. We were originally going to do a single, Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby meet The Anthony Anderson Project, but it’s been going so well that we’ve decided to form a band make an album.
Anyway, Ian had a plane to catch and I was supposed to take him to the airport. I had to press gang a friend into taking him. I’ve just found out that the friend has a brother who was in The Cleaners From Venus (not Martin Newell, the other one who I think is called Giles Smith). So that was quite some meeting – an ex member of Death In Vegas being driven by the brother of a Cleaner From Venus.
While that was happening I was hurtling through French villages at the kind of speeds that have me cursing motorists driving through our own village. And all the time I was keeping up a mantra: sorry, sorry, sorry, blame it on the US government…
Two days later at the US consulate I was told that the Colisimo envelope Amy bought in accordance with the US government website instructions for sending the visa-ed up passport back to me was all wrong – I had to have a Chronopost envelope. But no matter, they had a machine full of them as long as you had twenty three Euros in change which fortunately I had.
The envelope flumped out of the vending machine, I extricated it from the metal trapdoor, turned around and there was a photo booth offering photos of the required size.
The visa arrived the following day - it almost beat me home. The accompanying paperwork describes me as an alien of extraordinary ability.
The journey to America follows on when I've got the strength to re-live it. Sufice to say for the moment this world makes little sense to me and, in my capacity as an alien, I'll be glad when I can leave, possibly wearing a preposterous grey plastic helmet with gold wings on the sides - My work here is done...
A bit like John Wayne as a Roman Centurion in The Story Of The Bible - This surely must be The Son Of Gard etc.