It all began a little over three years
ago. My frend Dave, from St Clair, Missouri, told me about a St Louis
radio station called KSHE (www.kshe95.com)
and i listened. Online, of course. Listened, and liked the music and
started listening regularly. And a strange thing happened. Hearing
the on-air personalities talking about St Louis, and hearing what
goes on there, fascinated me. I did some independent investigating
(a.k.a. Googling) and the more i learned about the place, the more
interested i became. It looks a beautiful city and i definitely began
to feel an affinity.
Maybe two years ago, i determined to go
there.
It took me a while to save the money. I
don't make a lot, which is fine: normally i don't need a lot. I have
no debts and my monthly expenses are easily manageable. I don't need
things at all – buy the occasional new CD or DVD, and i
generally only buy new clothes when the old ones wear out. It took a
while. But i did it.
There was another stumbling block, too:
my old passport expired in 1990. (I haven't been outside Southern
Ontario since the eighties!) No problem, though (i said to myself,
hopefully) – i was easily able to download an application for a
U.K. passport in January of 2015 and ....
Lordy mama, have i ever said how much i
hate government forms? I looked at it once and decided to hibernate
for the winter rather than try to deal with the bureaucratese. It was
June before i girded my loins and finally tackled it, and i was in
trouble right from question #1! But i struggled through it, answered
what i could, and then went back to the U.K. Government website to
see what to do next. Oh, i found, i could also fill out an online
application and pay for it online, which i did, and which would
presumably begin the process in advance of the paperwork.
Next step: passport photograph. I had
one taken. The things is, though, that the last time i applied for a
passport, the photograph had to be authenticated by a professional
person – doctor, lawyer, priest, someone like that. I supposed,
without looking into the matter, that it was still the same. I don't
have a doctor at the moment – thank you, Canada's famous health
care system! -- but i have a dentist (no lawyer or priest) and so i
went to his office and ... the receptionist told me that he was on
holidays for two weeks.
Now the time factor enters the picture.
The application process is supposed to take six weeks or more. I was
planning my trip for mid-September, it's now late June or early July
(i forget which) and there i was, stuck spinning my wheels for two
weeks. A fortnight later, back i went to see my dentist and a
different receptionist told me that he wouldn't do it – he refused
to share his own personal passport info, but that the rules had
changed and the authenticator no longer had to be a professional
person: anyone who had known me for a substantial length of time
could do it. Well fuck me blind (i said to myself), two weeks
wasted! I took it to the owner of my restaurant, with whom i've been
friends for well over twenty years and he verified that i am, in
fact, me. I sent it off, along with my old passport, by registered
mail ($22.00 to the U.K!) immediately, of course.
About a week later, the fiasco began. I
received an email from some functionary explaining several things i
had done wrong. For instance, i had applied to renew an old passport.
Wrong! My old one was so old i should have applied for a new
one. Er, nowhere on the application form had i noticed anything about
that. Further, i as i wasn't in their computer database, they needed
a lot more information. They needed my parents' dates and places of
birth, for instance, which i didn't know, and they also needed my
birth certificate (which took me a few days to find). Also, they
said, i hadn't enclosed my payment.
?!?! Well, of course i hadn't enclosed
a payment – i'd paid online several weeks earlier (and had the
statement to prove it). Unfortunately, this was one of those
“noreply” emails so i couldn't reply to the geezer with this
info; instead i went to the bank and said, these people say that they
didn't receive this (pointing to the item on my statement), what do i
do now? They said they'd look into it for me and give me a call. They
didn't.
It's now August. I filled out the new
form they sent me as well as i could and sent it off by registered
mail ($22, as you may recall) and hoped for the best. I've decided on
Sept. 22 as my departure date and i know i'm cutting it rather fine
here, but that's over six weeks away and i remained hopeful.
During, i think, the second week in
September, i received an email from a different functionary,
informing me that the ninety days required for me to complete my
application (which i hadn't known about) had elapsed, therefore they
were withdrawing it (the application) and retaining my payment to
cover administrative costs. Wait, what? Last i heard, they hadn't
received a payment at all. WTF?
I was pretty distraught, i don't mind
admitting. I had been looking forward to going to the Mississippi
Valley so much. A few days later i received, by courier, my old
passport back. They kept my photograph, though. Nice touch!
Distraught, discouraged, disheartened.
I didn't want to think about passports at all for a while.
To be continued. Here, have a playlist.
Led Zeppelin -- Physical Graffiti
Kim Mitchell -- Rockland
Max Webster -- High Class In Borrowed
Shoes
The Allman Brothers Band -- Brothers
And Sisters
Oysterband -- Here I Stand
Mike Oldfield -- Music Of The Spheres
Arkells -- High Noon
Rory Gallagher -- Cradle Rock
David Gilmour -- Rattle That Lock
Led Zeppelin -- Boxed Set 2
Bruce Springsteen -- The Essential
Bruce Springsteen
Joan Osborne -- Relish (20th
Anniversary Edition)
Elvis Costello -- Spike
The Beatles -- With The Beatles
Siouxsie & The Banshees -- The
Rapture
Billy Joel -- Turnstiles
Marillion -- Anoraknophobia
Bluehorses -- Ten Leagues Beyond The
Wild World's End
Carole King -- Tapestry
2 comments:
You're back! 'Bout time.
Was beginning to think your last post should have been titled:
"Spriggsblog . . . end of an era"
You have followers who worry. Well, maybe 'are curious' is a better phrase about how you're faring after ending the relationship with your long-time watering hole.
Did the two of you ever patch things up? Did love bloom anew? Did the music and staff ever improve? Or did you simply move on to another. Can't be too many places in your burg that sell Rickards Red.
Ha ha, thanks, bro. But i was so depressed after the original passport fiasco, i couldn't find the motivation. I didn't even publish a "Best Of 2015" list.
No, it's never recovered. I had dinner there in January and it's a nice spot but that witch with a b of a manager was there, and ignored me completely. If i knew when her days off were... My server was nice enough and the food was good.
I only know of four places here that serve Rickard's Red and the two i like are downtown -- a half an hour's walk -- and in this weather i just haven't bothered.
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