I rang up the UK Borders Agency, or whatever they're calling themselves this week, and asked how I renew my wife's visa. Good news - we can go to Croydon and have it done same day. Bad news - we have to go to Croydon. And it costs £950. (There's a £750 option, but that takes up to fourteen weeks and our families have paid for plane tickets for us to the US in October so we can see the wife's family, who she's not seen for two years.)
So I checked my bank account. After deducting the stuff from the current balance that has to come out - rent, Council Tax, etc. - I have worked out that I have somewhere in the region of £0 to last the three and half weeks until payday. That's no money to get two adults, a car and a cat through three and a half weeks.
Which is, obviously, impossible. Especially as I have to order a passport this month. And the car needs an MOT. And my insurance is due to run out in a couple of weeks. And I only have half a tank of petrol. And, you know, it would be nice to have more to eat each day than one evening meal of dry pasta with nothing on it.
And, just in case you forgot, we need an extra £950 before the end of the month.
My credit rating is shot to buggery - the reason we've got no money is basically because I'm having to make payments I can't afford on debts I can't afford - so I can't borrow the money. Not from any banks, not from friends, not from family.
So either I find, realistically, £1,500 - at the very least - from somewhere in the next week or, um, I don't think there's an or.
Oh, and there are some very scary health issues in the household at the moment, too. Like, properly so. But I won't go into those.
It's really a case of fall into a heap and cry with abject terror or just decide to be insanely cheerful. I seem to have chosen the latter, so I'm feeling very chipper, while some part of my mind I'm choosing to ignore sits in the background quivering the dark.
I can't say that life is boring right now. It's so easy just to wander through life without taking much notice of it - right now I feel really alive and there are things that really fucking matter. And if that's not a reason to be happy, nothing is.
Course, I'll be much happier when I work out how to get the money I need, but one step at a time, eh?
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