I’m just suddenly feeling excited about this year.
I think it might be brought on by all the signs of life in my tiny garden.
So I didn’t make it out last night. Instead I nodded off at half past six.
When I woke up at seven, I had a vegetarian dinner and ice cream in front of “The Day The Earth Stood Still”
Every time I saw the leading lady’s face, I just remembered the horror I felt when I first saw her in a film; sharing a black dildo as long as my arm with another quaking junkie in Requiem For A Dream. Jesus, that shook me up.
Also, I think it’s wise for Keanu Reeves to lean towards roles that involve being an emotion-free save-the-world kind of guy.
All in all I’d brand it boring.
But it was still better than “Blindness”.
If I could have avoided anything this month it would’ve been “Blindness”.
And I used to like Gael García Bernal so much. (I’m busy sighing right now)
I wrote my test today. I was a bit bent out of shape because I didn’t do a great job of revising.
We were meant to arrive 20 minutes before our 9:30 test.
I was feeling irritable at 9:45 when we’d just started the practice test.
The practice test was completely redundant. It was for people who’d not clicked a mouse before- and since none of us were foetal tissue or street children, we really could have skipped this step.
While the two invidulators openly fumbled over how to get going, we stared at little laminated A4 sheets in front of us.
Depicted on them were neat dissections of the test page layout, with needless explanations for each site element.
I wanted to beat a guy over the head with my shoe when he proceeded to ask questions; the answers of which were all fucking obvious and beneath his nose, in very simple English.
When one invidulator finally asked “are there any more questions?” Nobody spoke up. He got as far as “right, well-” before someone piped up with “Just one more question”
After the test we had to wait for our pass or fail result.
Apparently Home Office was having a problem “getting the information”. Spying an opportunity for my more than competent co-workers, I asked if it was an online system that they use, or software. The hippo lady who huffed and puffed about everything until she was face to face with a colleague waved her bear-paw hand and said “ooh, it’s all around software”.
To be honest, I think she was more into sandwiches.
The wait for results normally takes a few minutes; they have to do it face to face and look at your ID before handling over a printed-out certificate. So if for any reason there’s a hold-up, you’ve got to just wait around for results.
And wait we did. Three hours later I sat in a match-box room with 11 other people, all staring at a geriatric ink-jet printer, sluggishly cranking out our papers. Until this point the office phone had been ringing constantly. When fatty wasn’t in, the answering machine picked up messages. My least favourite was the last; a call made by a toddler who shrieked and squealed for minutes on end. There was an on-off banging sound I imagined to have been the telephone receiver hitting the floor. Bloody little fool.
As I was walking out the parking lot, my ass was just beginning to remember where it is located when a silver car slowed to a stop in line with me on the opposite side of the road. From it a Vietnamese girl and her mom shouted “yes? yes?” nodding, with their thumbs up.
I screamed “YEAH! I got it too! Yeah! Well done!” with my thumb up and then waved them off.
To celebrate, I might go to the pub quiz and get pissed in my vintage union jack flag tonight.
Only two more years and I can toss my crappy goddamn green passport in the “obsolete memories” part of my attic.
It’s only February and I’m already snivelling for a few extra hours in the day.
My “Life in the United Kingdom: a journey to citizenship” text book arrived two weeks ago.
I’ve opened it and counted the 5 chapters spread over 60 pages I need to study for next Tuesday. So far I’ve found it to be boring. That said, I didn’t really expect it to contain a narrative or sex or exhumed corpses or anything.
I did expect to find that in the five years since I last studied for anything, I would’ve matured enough to sit down and just get on with it.
But I’m suddenly 17 again and find hunger, the loo and American Pie 2 all totally reasonable excuses to walk away from its bounce-closed pages.
I don’t even really like American Pie 2. I think telly must’ve got stuck in a bit of a time warp too.
This much I know: after World War 2 Britain encouraged immigrant workers to come and help rebuild the country. They kept this up until the late 60’s/early 70’s when laws were passed to restrict the influx of stinky foreigners. Like me.
Half of the population’s young adults have sampled illegal drugs, while a third of the entire population have given them a bash.
Drugs are bad, as is smoking and gross inebriation in public. And they cost the country money.
Oh and women are equal to men in that they can vote, although their hourly earning power is 20% less than their dick-flaunting counterparts.
When Ideal Brown and I were walking home last night, we side-stepped a lady flinging her arms around. She was with some friends. One was a man, who pushed a toddler in a pram. The lady kept shouting for the toddler to not lean oot its seat. She nudged it with one hand. In the other she held an extra tall beer can and a fag.
She was wearing pink joggers and shouted a lot.
Wouldn’t it be funny if she had to write a test and pay £750 to stay in the country too?
I wish I could pay £1000 and skip the test. But I can’t; because I don’t live in South Africa anymore.
