The Long Day of the Visa

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After the alarms of being without my passport....it is returned in the post the very next day, one day ahead of the postal strike. But no visa. Postal applications no longer accepted. Well, we had just discovered that from the Indian High Commission website, though it still explains in detail how to go about getting a visa through the post.

Malcolm has an improving morning on the net looking for Plan B and finds it. Visa clinic in Bradford, today. Plan C was to get to Birmingham by 8.00 a.m Monday morning on our way to London.... please, no!

Friday evening, Malcolm and I go to a cracking amateur performance of The Full Monty in Bolton, featuring among others, daughter Elinor. So we stay over with her family, got up at 6.30 a.m, and are at The Hindu Community Centre and Temple in Bradford by 8.00 a.m.

What possessed us to think that would be good enough? We are about 250th in the queue. There are people there getting visas on behalf of 8-10 others. We have time to fret, time to envy the people with the foresight to bring chairs, time to make lots of friends (hello Juliet from Newcastle!), time to devise any number of systems to offer to the Indian High Commisssion to improve on the way things are done, time to complete the Guardian crossword as a group project. We text friends and family with progress reports.

Malcolm, who's nobly come with me, takes orders and goes shopping for pakoras and halwa. The staff at the Shell garage opposite cheerfully open up as an impromptu public toilet. The queue grows to perhaps 600 or more. The rumour factory disseminates the news that 200 people have been processed and there is room for 100 more. Hmm, by then we are perhaps 50th, but who knows how many applications the people ahead of us have between them?

12.00. An official counts us, and says we will definitely get through. Then they close for lunch.

2.00. The doors open, the queue moves forward and we get in the building by about 2.30.

2.45. Paperwork reviewed. The Good Ladies of the Temple are running a refreshment stall with home-cooked food ('Two pakoras, a big helping of channa dhal, a tea and a coffee. Is £2.00 too much?') and provide friendly company.

3.00. Our ticket numbers are finally called. Summoned upstairs. Hand in paperwork. Watch as our passports and paperwork make painfully slow process along a long line of officials who complete one small task before passing the whole thing on. The desks are deep in pile upon pile of maroon passports. We track what's going on because Juliet's passport has a pale blue cover. After watching fixedly as it seems to get stuck for far too long in one place, my name is called, and Juliet's . A few pleasantries, and suddenly, at 4.15 p.m, it's all over.

Except for some, it's not. The visa have run out after about 600 people have got into the system, and still there is a queue. Disappointed applicants decline to leave. As we return to our car, a community policeman arrives...................

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