Tag: Passports

#286 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Coffee Hunters, Moving HouseLeave a comment

Facebook reminds me that it is five years since I was in North America. That is a timely reminder as yesterday we had planned a North American experience.

Lets be honest a coffee in an independent Coffee Shop, Hot Black Coffee, in Toronto is a very different experience from a Tim Horton coffee, but needs must and we are in Plymouth not Canada. Tim Horton opened in Plymouth yesterday.

Now that was the plan. But domestic life got in the way and inadvertantly solved a year old problem.

When we moved house a year ago we had made a grab bag of important documents and items that must not be lost. The plan was that one of us would grab the, highly visible, leopard print clutch bag, and move it safely from one house to the other. That didn’t happen and neither of us know how. The bag has been missing for over a year. The contents were so important that every room in the new house has been turned upside down and inside out several times. The loss of some of these items has been crucial and the 6 month wait for new passports is probably the most painful result of our loss.

We were up early yesterday to visit Tim Horton’s for breakfast. In the quiet of the morning there was the sound of a drip in our utility room.

Our utility room is know as the ‘Futility Room’ as it is too small for its true purpose and yet somehow is a perfect store room, and loo!

We had to move a lot of stuff to get at the drip. Having located and fixed the fault we decided to reconfigure some of the shelving installed by our diligent removal men. Unbelievably behind the shelving the Leopard print clutch bag was resting, safely holding all of our important things. One of the removal men must have picked it up, tucked it under his arm and moved it with the shelving and then just put it to one side at the new house. That is the end of a year of puzzlement. It was also the end of breakfast at Tim Horton’s. We did drive over at 2pm having mentally swapped breakfast for doughnuts but the rest of Plymouth had got there before us. Huge queues for drive-thru and eat in. Maybe we will go back, maybe not. In less than a month we are Toronto bound, the queues will be shorter there and we can also go independent. After 5 years we may well do both.

#247 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Stonehouse2 Comments

A blue letter day, with bells on. Blue was the colour of the day. After 6 months my passport arrived! 6 months of waiting. 6 months of sitting on phone lines listening to shocking music and on the rare occasions I made contact with a human call centre person several months of listening to a variety of lies about the location of my missing passport. Just one month of getting my local MP involved and the passport is snuggly in my possession. How I wish my passport was still a cheery red European one but after 6 months the blue British one will have to do. This unacceptable delay was apparently caused by the loss of my original documents, something that would have been of concern to me had all the documents not been posted back to me four months ago. Quite how a passport could be sanctioned last week with no documents is a mystery that I can’t quite get my head around. Maybe I just sounded really British to the nice young man who phoned me last week from Westminster …

In other blue related events, the scaffolding came down from the front of our house and we can see the new colour scheme. We are very happy with our choices.

The ‘bells on’ comment comes from the evening dog walk. Morris Men and clog dancers were performing at a local pub.

The local streets were alive with the sounds of leg bells. While the dancers  twirled and stamped and entertained, the dogs were curious and happy to watch, but jangling legs close up were too much for them in the confines of the pub and we left, no doubt,missing a jolly evening of music making.