Tuesday 31 January 2012
How is Monkey doing?
So if you want a quick look at what Monkey is up to now that his big USA trip is off check out the details of our house on www.melvyndanes.co.uk (17 Gorcott Lane B90 1SY) and see if you can spot him in the slide show...........yes that's him lying on our bed waiting for his next big adventure to start...........bless......
Todays the day....
Today is my very last day with Pfizer. It's been a long time coming in many ways but in others the 11 years have flown by as have the 2 months since we found out what our fate was to be. We have been racing round and round through the change curve like a roller coaster lurching from positivity and excitement ones day to despondency, anxiety and despair on others. We have been angry and sad, confused and focused and often all at the same time. It has been reassuring to know that this is all perfectly normal and so are episodes of fantasy and denial.
It is strange trying to discipline ourselves to have some sort of routine - it almost feels as though every day is a Saturday or Sunday which is good in some ways but then when the weekend comes along it just feels like any other day and has lost its sparkle a little....
We have been making cost-saving almost a new hobby and it has been sort fun to see how much money we can NOT spend. We went into Birmingham Market and saved a fortune on fruit and veg and meat and fish. Sadly, we then rewarded ourselves in Starbucks with coffee and muffins setting us back almost as much as we saved...............!!!!!
I have had a couple of lovely lunches to say goodbye to my lovely Pfizer colleagues. It is the people that I will miss most of all.......the East Midlands Team bought me a beautiful necklace (which I was not expecting given that so many people are leaving all at the same time) and lots of people have called or texted or left messages on Face Book to say goodbye.
Yesterday the car, phone and computer all went back. The upside is that I am working only on the Mac now instead of flitting between the two and that I have "had to" buy myself a new iPhone. That has made me very happy, at least for a moment or two! My last payday has come and gone but the upside of that is that we paid of all the little bits and pieces and are totally debt free except for the mortgage.
As far as the B&B plans are going, we are slowly but surely making progress. The house is now officially on the Market with Melvyn Danes. www.melvyndanes.co.uk We have a number of businesses lined up for viewings in March and some local ones this week to get a feel for the process and what we will get for our money....The Scotland trip is cloming together nicely. We have looked really carefully at other locations and always return to Scotland on grounds of value for money, location and business potential.
Now that the USA Trip is off, it's hard to find interesting things to write about but I will keep going with this as things could get interesting again very soon.....
The biggest thing I can do now is share this blog with my Face Book friends which has been something I been reluctant to do until this stage in the process.
We'll keep you posted........and as ever any feedback, ideas, criticisms or comments are always welcome......
It is strange trying to discipline ourselves to have some sort of routine - it almost feels as though every day is a Saturday or Sunday which is good in some ways but then when the weekend comes along it just feels like any other day and has lost its sparkle a little....
We have been making cost-saving almost a new hobby and it has been sort fun to see how much money we can NOT spend. We went into Birmingham Market and saved a fortune on fruit and veg and meat and fish. Sadly, we then rewarded ourselves in Starbucks with coffee and muffins setting us back almost as much as we saved...............!!!!!
I have had a couple of lovely lunches to say goodbye to my lovely Pfizer colleagues. It is the people that I will miss most of all.......the East Midlands Team bought me a beautiful necklace (which I was not expecting given that so many people are leaving all at the same time) and lots of people have called or texted or left messages on Face Book to say goodbye.
Yesterday the car, phone and computer all went back. The upside is that I am working only on the Mac now instead of flitting between the two and that I have "had to" buy myself a new iPhone. That has made me very happy, at least for a moment or two! My last payday has come and gone but the upside of that is that we paid of all the little bits and pieces and are totally debt free except for the mortgage.
As far as the B&B plans are going, we are slowly but surely making progress. The house is now officially on the Market with Melvyn Danes. www.melvyndanes.co.uk We have a number of businesses lined up for viewings in March and some local ones this week to get a feel for the process and what we will get for our money....The Scotland trip is cloming together nicely. We have looked really carefully at other locations and always return to Scotland on grounds of value for money, location and business potential.
Now that the USA Trip is off, it's hard to find interesting things to write about but I will keep going with this as things could get interesting again very soon.....
The biggest thing I can do now is share this blog with my Face Book friends which has been something I been reluctant to do until this stage in the process.
We'll keep you posted........and as ever any feedback, ideas, criticisms or comments are always welcome......
Thursday 19 January 2012
Reality Bites
It's been a week or so since our last post and almost 2 weeks since the visa disaster. The more we think about it the surer we are that we might have had a lucky escape and that something, or even someone, might even be guiding us in the right direction! I never thought I'd hear myself say something like that and I lurch with discomfort when others describe how they are guided by "The Universe" but it does feel bit like that at the moment. Mike has always believed, some he lost his mother in his 20's that she has been looking out for him like a sort of guardian angel. Who knows......
The end of last week for me was pretty dark as reality set in. Last year we had Christmas and the trip to New York to distract us and then the USA trip to plan. Suddenly, the enormity and uncertainty of the change we are about to go through, and are currently going through really hit home. I felt overwhelmed but the number of small things I needed to do to disengage from Pfizer and ended up spending two days in my dressing gown in the the office sorting out my personal stuff from my work stuff and transferring my life from my work computer to my personal one and my work email address to my home one. I had a long list of accounts from FaceBook and Love Film to my Bank Account and Credit Cards where I needed to change my email address - essentially I was feeling a bit out of control and needed to take it back.
So what have we been doing? Plan B has been slowly but surely crystallising into a pretty solid plan. We have decided to go down Route 2 and go straight for the Bed and Breakfast idea in term of buying a going concern. We decided the Chalet idea was just another avoidance or delaying tactic and that you don't really need to do courses to learn how to mange a budget and profit and loss account or to cook breakfasts and clean rooms. Work experience still might be useful though. Mike is still pursuing his Barbadian Citizenship although we are increasingly thinking that the time is not right for a move to Barbados just yet and that leaving Pfizer and starting our own business might be enough to deal with at one time, and a move to the other side of the Atlantic might just be a step too far even for us!
So the new plan is to get the house on the market and start researching and looking for a suitable going concern to purchase. Scotland is emerging as the front-runner in terms of location at the moment. We can't do anything until May/June when Mike gets his money so we have a few months to get the various wheels in motion.
In the background I've been selling stuff on EBay as a start on clearing the house ready to sell and I've been writing a little bit of my novel everyday using the Snow Flake Method by Randy Ingermanson which is really working for me at the moment and the story and characters feel as though they are coming together. http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
I have bought the domain name for my on-line retail business and started to try and set-up a web page but am beginning to think I'm going to need some help with this one. I am a great believer ever in the concept that anyone can do anything if they take the time and put their mind to it but I am struggling with this one.
Mike has been given four two hour sessions with his group of teenage boys and has been working on what he is going to do with them. Today he has gone of for his CRB check in relation to that.
On Monday we drove down to Pfizer Head Office at Walton Oaks in Surrey to meet with an independent financial adviser from Origen http://www.origenfs.co.uk/index.html as part of our redundancy package. We had the option of doing it over the phone but because both of us are affected and it felt like a tough conversation to have on the phone, opted for the face to face meeting. When we were driving down to Surrey and around the M25 we did ask ourselves whether it was going to be worth but we can honestly say it was. Nice young bloke with some really good ideas that we would never have thought of! For example, he suggested that if our goal is to raise enough cash to buy the best Bed and Breakfast we can then it might not be the best idea for Mike to pay his redundancy into his pension and that even if he is taxed on 40% we will still get more tax now if he doesn't do it. He also persuaded Mike that it is cost-effective to pay and accountant to do your tax returns as they will almost always save you more than you pay them. It was weird and uncomfortable being in Walton Oaks. Things are carrying on as if nothing has happened and for everyone else I suppose it hasn't. People were going about their business apparently oblivious to the turmoil we are going through. There was also an irrational sense that we were disgraced in some way and the few people we did meet seemed awkward and embarrassed when they realised why we were there. That said, it was good in some ways to have a final visit there and to say our own goodbyes in our own way........
Another useful meeting we had this week was with a DBM Consultant, again as part of the redundancy package. DBM are an outplacement support organisation who have been doing well recently. It must be odd to measure your success through the misfortune of others. http://www.dbm.com/ Again, a very useful meeting which was worth the drive into Birmingham City Centre on a cold and frosty day. We took some time to explore the market, a thing we have never really done before despite having toured markets all over the world from France to Vietnam. We resolved as part of our new cost-saving strategy to buy as much of our fruit, veg meat and fish as we can form there over the coming weeks.
The main things to come out of the DBM meeting for me were the realisation that we are going through a massive change curve and that it is normal to have extremes of emotion on an almost daily basis, and the need to generate a robust business plan for the Bed and Breakfast sooner rather than later. That will be our number one priority for next week.
We have also been to visit a small quest house and lovely little event venue 5 minutes from home called The Limes http://www.limescountrylodge.co.uk/ We are going to explore the possibility of doing some work experience there although it is not quite the same as our own concept. The staff are friendly and helpful and the owner has built it up from scratch into something quite special. The first step will be to spend a day shadowing the House Keeper in terms of the process and procedures associated with cleaning the bedrooms - how difficult and complicated can that? be I hear you say......well we'll let you know.......
We have also been planning our trip to Scotland in March. We are going to stay for a couple of days at a Bed and Breakfast that we know about through the family and that us currently on the market and do some wider research on the West Coast of Scotland as a potential location, including identifying and viewing a few other businesses. It is also an opportunity to visit some of the places I lived in as a child with Mike, but also to take Mum and Dad back to them too, on a sort of nostalgic Scottish road trip. We also have a few friends in Scotland that we are going to try and catch up with while we have the time.
Life has been getting back to normal in other ways. I have resumed my Burlesque classes this year at the MAC in Edgbaston http://www.macarts.co.uk/, and have graduated to the intermediate group where we have begun already to rehearse for a show in April. OMG! What was I thinking! Seriously it is great fun. Lovely women and Dixy Derriere is a great teacher. http://www.bijouxburlesque.co.uk/home
Mike and I have also resumed our ballroom classes at the Mosley Dance Centre. Again, great fun and great teachers. ....http://www.moseleydancecentre.com/.... we are currently working on the waltz and the quick step for the second time having failed miserably on our first attempt to complete the Friday might beginners class.
And finally, in the context of saving money I have decided to move from our local expensive designer opticians to SpecSavers for my glasses and contact lenses so spent several hours yesterday having eye-tests and choosing some new glasses and making an appointment for new contact lenses - I reckon I am going to save us a fortune!!!!!!
http://www.specsavers.co.uk/?gclid=CLLwh4T-260CFUIMfAodvxSLnw&sissr=1
The end of last week for me was pretty dark as reality set in. Last year we had Christmas and the trip to New York to distract us and then the USA trip to plan. Suddenly, the enormity and uncertainty of the change we are about to go through, and are currently going through really hit home. I felt overwhelmed but the number of small things I needed to do to disengage from Pfizer and ended up spending two days in my dressing gown in the the office sorting out my personal stuff from my work stuff and transferring my life from my work computer to my personal one and my work email address to my home one. I had a long list of accounts from FaceBook and Love Film to my Bank Account and Credit Cards where I needed to change my email address - essentially I was feeling a bit out of control and needed to take it back.
So what have we been doing? Plan B has been slowly but surely crystallising into a pretty solid plan. We have decided to go down Route 2 and go straight for the Bed and Breakfast idea in term of buying a going concern. We decided the Chalet idea was just another avoidance or delaying tactic and that you don't really need to do courses to learn how to mange a budget and profit and loss account or to cook breakfasts and clean rooms. Work experience still might be useful though. Mike is still pursuing his Barbadian Citizenship although we are increasingly thinking that the time is not right for a move to Barbados just yet and that leaving Pfizer and starting our own business might be enough to deal with at one time, and a move to the other side of the Atlantic might just be a step too far even for us!
So the new plan is to get the house on the market and start researching and looking for a suitable going concern to purchase. Scotland is emerging as the front-runner in terms of location at the moment. We can't do anything until May/June when Mike gets his money so we have a few months to get the various wheels in motion.
In the background I've been selling stuff on EBay as a start on clearing the house ready to sell and I've been writing a little bit of my novel everyday using the Snow Flake Method by Randy Ingermanson which is really working for me at the moment and the story and characters feel as though they are coming together. http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
I have bought the domain name for my on-line retail business and started to try and set-up a web page but am beginning to think I'm going to need some help with this one. I am a great believer ever in the concept that anyone can do anything if they take the time and put their mind to it but I am struggling with this one.
Mike has been given four two hour sessions with his group of teenage boys and has been working on what he is going to do with them. Today he has gone of for his CRB check in relation to that.
On Monday we drove down to Pfizer Head Office at Walton Oaks in Surrey to meet with an independent financial adviser from Origen http://www.origenfs.co.uk/index.html as part of our redundancy package. We had the option of doing it over the phone but because both of us are affected and it felt like a tough conversation to have on the phone, opted for the face to face meeting. When we were driving down to Surrey and around the M25 we did ask ourselves whether it was going to be worth but we can honestly say it was. Nice young bloke with some really good ideas that we would never have thought of! For example, he suggested that if our goal is to raise enough cash to buy the best Bed and Breakfast we can then it might not be the best idea for Mike to pay his redundancy into his pension and that even if he is taxed on 40% we will still get more tax now if he doesn't do it. He also persuaded Mike that it is cost-effective to pay and accountant to do your tax returns as they will almost always save you more than you pay them. It was weird and uncomfortable being in Walton Oaks. Things are carrying on as if nothing has happened and for everyone else I suppose it hasn't. People were going about their business apparently oblivious to the turmoil we are going through. There was also an irrational sense that we were disgraced in some way and the few people we did meet seemed awkward and embarrassed when they realised why we were there. That said, it was good in some ways to have a final visit there and to say our own goodbyes in our own way........
Another useful meeting we had this week was with a DBM Consultant, again as part of the redundancy package. DBM are an outplacement support organisation who have been doing well recently. It must be odd to measure your success through the misfortune of others. http://www.dbm.com/ Again, a very useful meeting which was worth the drive into Birmingham City Centre on a cold and frosty day. We took some time to explore the market, a thing we have never really done before despite having toured markets all over the world from France to Vietnam. We resolved as part of our new cost-saving strategy to buy as much of our fruit, veg meat and fish as we can form there over the coming weeks.
The main things to come out of the DBM meeting for me were the realisation that we are going through a massive change curve and that it is normal to have extremes of emotion on an almost daily basis, and the need to generate a robust business plan for the Bed and Breakfast sooner rather than later. That will be our number one priority for next week.
We have also been to visit a small quest house and lovely little event venue 5 minutes from home called The Limes http://www.limescountrylodge.co.uk/ We are going to explore the possibility of doing some work experience there although it is not quite the same as our own concept. The staff are friendly and helpful and the owner has built it up from scratch into something quite special. The first step will be to spend a day shadowing the House Keeper in terms of the process and procedures associated with cleaning the bedrooms - how difficult and complicated can that? be I hear you say......well we'll let you know.......
We have also been planning our trip to Scotland in March. We are going to stay for a couple of days at a Bed and Breakfast that we know about through the family and that us currently on the market and do some wider research on the West Coast of Scotland as a potential location, including identifying and viewing a few other businesses. It is also an opportunity to visit some of the places I lived in as a child with Mike, but also to take Mum and Dad back to them too, on a sort of nostalgic Scottish road trip. We also have a few friends in Scotland that we are going to try and catch up with while we have the time.
Life has been getting back to normal in other ways. I have resumed my Burlesque classes this year at the MAC in Edgbaston http://www.macarts.co.uk/, and have graduated to the intermediate group where we have begun already to rehearse for a show in April. OMG! What was I thinking! Seriously it is great fun. Lovely women and Dixy Derriere is a great teacher. http://www.bijouxburlesque.co.uk/home
Mike and I have also resumed our ballroom classes at the Mosley Dance Centre. Again, great fun and great teachers. ....http://www.moseleydancecentre.com/.... we are currently working on the waltz and the quick step for the second time having failed miserably on our first attempt to complete the Friday might beginners class.
And finally, in the context of saving money I have decided to move from our local expensive designer opticians to SpecSavers for my glasses and contact lenses so spent several hours yesterday having eye-tests and choosing some new glasses and making an appointment for new contact lenses - I reckon I am going to save us a fortune!!!!!!
http://www.specsavers.co.uk/?gclid=CLLwh4T-260CFUIMfAodvxSLnw&sissr=1
Wednesday 11 January 2012
Redundancy Update
For those of you that are following the progress and process of the Redundancy a quick update on what has happened this week. It very busy being made redundant.
On Monday we had the meeting with the Solicitor and finalised the legal side of everything.....can't say anymore than that on that one for legal reasons!
On Tuesday we went to the Apple Shop in Solihull and took part in an excellent workshop on "how to make the most of your Mac. http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/touchwoodcentre/
They are so helpful in there and it was great to find out a bit more about how to use our Mac Book to all the things we currently do on our PC. Actually when you get your head round it I think it is more intuitive and generally easier to use than Microsoft. We also got some great advice about what sort of phone to buy and whether to get a contract or pay as you go etc....It seems that of you have cash it is better to buy a phone outright and get a sim only contract especially of you are thinking of travelling between countries.
We also spent a lot of time working out our finances in detail so that we know what will be going out, what will be coming in and what will be in the pot as the year progresses...
I have had to get a letter from the company car leasing agency about my driving history for insurance purposes when we get around to buying a car.
I have cancelled our Home Alarm System Servicing contract as it only increases our insurance payment by about £1 a month compared to almost £30 a month for the ADT Contract.
I have ordered some books on setting up a web-based business.
We are going to a workshop on Setting up Your Own Business in February.
We are having a joint session with a financial adviser on Monday and have had to pull together all sorts of paperwork to take to that.
The list of tasks seems to be endless but I have 3 weeks complete them.......its busy doing nothing!
On Monday we had the meeting with the Solicitor and finalised the legal side of everything.....can't say anymore than that on that one for legal reasons!
On Tuesday we went to the Apple Shop in Solihull and took part in an excellent workshop on "how to make the most of your Mac. http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/touchwoodcentre/
They are so helpful in there and it was great to find out a bit more about how to use our Mac Book to all the things we currently do on our PC. Actually when you get your head round it I think it is more intuitive and generally easier to use than Microsoft. We also got some great advice about what sort of phone to buy and whether to get a contract or pay as you go etc....It seems that of you have cash it is better to buy a phone outright and get a sim only contract especially of you are thinking of travelling between countries.
We also spent a lot of time working out our finances in detail so that we know what will be going out, what will be coming in and what will be in the pot as the year progresses...
I have had to get a letter from the company car leasing agency about my driving history for insurance purposes when we get around to buying a car.
I have cancelled our Home Alarm System Servicing contract as it only increases our insurance payment by about £1 a month compared to almost £30 a month for the ADT Contract.
I have ordered some books on setting up a web-based business.
We are going to a workshop on Setting up Your Own Business in February.
We are having a joint session with a financial adviser on Monday and have had to pull together all sorts of paperwork to take to that.
The list of tasks seems to be endless but I have 3 weeks complete them.......its busy doing nothing!
Plan B
It's been almost a week since the end of Plan A and now that we have got our heads together again and "licked our wounds" we are ready to move on to what has now become Plan B in the Redundancy Road Trip. We are going to continue the blog and still call it Redundancy Road Trippers as, in a way, it is our Road Trip through and beyond a double-redundancy situtation.
After a weekend spent relaxing with the kids, we have spent much of the week working up Plan B. We started by working throuhg some articles in a recent edition of the Oprah magazine. Those of you who know Mike will know that she is his guru and that he is more likley to do something if Oprah endorses it! There are things like treating Athlete's Foot with cider vinegar that I have been telling him for years but he took no notice until he read it in Oprah and thus waited several years before he successfully got rid of a troublesome case of the fungal infection. http://www.oprah.com/omagazine.html
The November 2011 issue Volume 12, Number 11 contained a series of articles under the banner "Find Your True Calling - A guide to discovering who you're mean't to be. Step 1 was how to find your Passions, Step 2 Taking Stock of Your Strengths, Step 3 Tapping into your Motivation and Step 4 GO!
The whole process took us back again to an idea we had a few years ago when we considered getting out of the corporate world, that encapsulates all of our joint passions and interests - running a Bed and Breakfast or small Guest House.
So this is where we are headed for the moment anyway!
This could go in one of two directions at the moment;
Route 1 involves trying to get a job running a chalet in a ski resort next season from November to March, as a means of dipping a toe in the water before making a full commitment. We would spent the time between May and November getting some relevant work experience either paid or voluntary and possibly undertaking some courses such as catering, book-keeping and property maintainence.
Route 2, which is more risky and scary, would be jumping in with both feet and buying a going concern as soom as we get our money and can sell our house. There are a few interesting opportunities that have presented themselves to us in this repsect but we'll keep you updated on that one when we know more........
In the background we have a few ideas to supplement our income and keep ourselves stimulated and busy;
Mike has only today been given the opportunity to work, on a voluntary basis, with some underperforming teenagers at his old school as a mentor come motivater.
I am planning to do a bit of buying and selling on EBay and possibly create an on-line business but again more of that in the future...........nudge nudge wink wink....
I have even considered trying to write a novel - they say everyone has one in them and there seems like no better time to have a dabble in that direction.....
SO, USA we are over you and mooooving on! Your loss US Economy and Tourist Industry......
After a weekend spent relaxing with the kids, we have spent much of the week working up Plan B. We started by working throuhg some articles in a recent edition of the Oprah magazine. Those of you who know Mike will know that she is his guru and that he is more likley to do something if Oprah endorses it! There are things like treating Athlete's Foot with cider vinegar that I have been telling him for years but he took no notice until he read it in Oprah and thus waited several years before he successfully got rid of a troublesome case of the fungal infection. http://www.oprah.com/omagazine.html
The November 2011 issue Volume 12, Number 11 contained a series of articles under the banner "Find Your True Calling - A guide to discovering who you're mean't to be. Step 1 was how to find your Passions, Step 2 Taking Stock of Your Strengths, Step 3 Tapping into your Motivation and Step 4 GO!
The whole process took us back again to an idea we had a few years ago when we considered getting out of the corporate world, that encapsulates all of our joint passions and interests - running a Bed and Breakfast or small Guest House.
So this is where we are headed for the moment anyway!
This could go in one of two directions at the moment;
Route 1 involves trying to get a job running a chalet in a ski resort next season from November to March, as a means of dipping a toe in the water before making a full commitment. We would spent the time between May and November getting some relevant work experience either paid or voluntary and possibly undertaking some courses such as catering, book-keeping and property maintainence.
Route 2, which is more risky and scary, would be jumping in with both feet and buying a going concern as soom as we get our money and can sell our house. There are a few interesting opportunities that have presented themselves to us in this repsect but we'll keep you updated on that one when we know more........
In the background we have a few ideas to supplement our income and keep ourselves stimulated and busy;
Mike has only today been given the opportunity to work, on a voluntary basis, with some underperforming teenagers at his old school as a mentor come motivater.
I am planning to do a bit of buying and selling on EBay and possibly create an on-line business but again more of that in the future...........nudge nudge wink wink....
I have even considered trying to write a novel - they say everyone has one in them and there seems like no better time to have a dabble in that direction.....
SO, USA we are over you and mooooving on! Your loss US Economy and Tourist Industry......
Saturday 7 January 2012
US Embassy Visa Hell!
Well, it looks as though the dream is over before it even started and we failed to get through the first hurdle and are now officially "undesirables".
Its been a crazy week, after another day with the Robinson's in Brooklyn on the 2nd of January we flew home at stupid o'clock and arrived back in the UK on Tuesday the 3rd around 8pm.
Up the next day and off to our final Individual Consultation meetings where we were officially served with our Notice of Redundancy and then off to the Solicitor's to drop in copies of the Severance Contracts before our meeting on Monday.
We spent Thursday catching up with work and stuff and getting ready for the trip down to get our Visa's on Friday. As advised in the guidance we put together a pack containing evidence of our ties to the UK in terms of family and property, evidence that we were on a trip in terms of the the details of the camper van buy-back and a provisional route map, and details of our finances to demonstrate that we have sufficient funds to cover the trip. We printed out all the relevant documentation and put it all together with our passports and photos.
We decided against the train as the tickets were £160 each due to it being peak hour, so we got up at 5am and drove to West Ruislip where we caught the London Underground to Marble Arch and walked down to the US Embassy on Grosvenor Square. Even at 08.30 the queue was snaking in front of the building and it was freezing. Women were feeding babies as they stood in the queue and people were fumbling with papers and passports with numb fingers. Armed police officers in the background.
First stage was to show your invitations and DS-160 which allowed you to enter the first queue. When called over to the next queue we were retired to show our invitations and passports before entering the second queue. People were entering the security building but many were leaving and hurrying down the street only to return and rejoin the second queue again flustered and sweaty. We finally got into the security building in groups of 3 of 4 only to be told that we could not take our car key into the building as they qualified as an electronic item.
Suddenly, it became clear why people had been scurrying around with red faces. We were given the option of paying to store the key in a little pharmacy a few streets away but Mike took it on himself to stash it in the leaves in the park in the centre of the square. Back into the second queue again, back into the security building, through the scanner, outside again, round the corner and into the main building itself to join another queue. This time we had to present all of our bar coded documentation again and we given a number. N112, it will stay with me for a long time!
So we then entered the immigration hall and sat down in a section on the left hand side where we waited to be called to windows 1-12. After 15 to 20 minutes we were called to window 4 where we went through stage 1 which involved submitting all our papers again and having our finger prints checked at an electronic scanner. We then sat down an waited to be called to the next stage when we would be called to windows 12-25.
It was at this stage that I began to think about the whole thing. Who do the USA they they think they are that gives them to right to treat people like this? Between us we have travelled to many countries in the world and never have to go through a process like this to get a Visa. A little voice in the back of my head kept asking me if I really wanted to spend a year in the country that treated foreigners in this way....I began to add up the time and money we had spent on the process so far.......As we sat there with the calls for numbers to windows rolling out in an almost hypnotic way, it became clear that we were different, or special, in some way. Numbers in the high 100's and early 200's were being called through to the second stage but we were still sat there. Now and again low numbers were called N09 to Window 17, 111 to window 23. All of a sudden after about and hour we were called, N112 to Window 17. It was time.
We were expecting an interview, how silly were we. A young American girl sat at a desk behind a class window. We had to stand at a counter and had to bend forward to hear what she was saying. she had our papers on her desk with Mike's police certificate on the top which she kept tapping with her hand throughout the "interview". She seemed taken aback when we said we wanted to visit for a year and said that only 6 months in one year would be possible no matter how we did it including driving in and out of Canada. She asked why we were planning such a long trip and we explained but it very quickly turned sour after that. She refused to look at any of the documentation we have brought with us and asked us very few questions other than about our children, who because they are grown up and employed could not be regarded as ties to the UK. She eventually said that because she could not see that we had any ties to the UK she could not be sure that we planned to return and could not grant us a Visa even for 6 months. She made reference at one point to lack of funds but when I asked to explain what she meant, because we had clear evidence with us of sufficient funds to sustain us for several years, she became flustered and said it was not her job to advise us about what might be regarded as ties to the UK. Apparently a house, family and money in the bank is not enough. She seemed to imply that you need a job to return to as well but ironically it is because we don't have jobs to return to that we are even able to consider a trip like this. She did not give Mike a chance to talk about his retirement. It became a blur after that as I realised what she was saying and could not believe it, shock and surprise quickly turned into anger and disgust and an immediate sense that I do not even want anymore to visit a country that was so arrogant about the way it treated decent people.
She passed us our documentation and a letter saying that we were ineligible for a non-immigrant Visa to the USA. We could not appeal but we could re-apply which would mean going through the entire process from start to finish again including paying another $140 each for the privilege. Do you know what? Forget it! Interestingly, the letter she gave us was already signed and dated before we got to the window and she just handed it to us as we left. She had made up her mind before we even go there! What a farce! What a rip-off! What a complete disgrace! It all seemed so unreasonable that I began to question her real motives in my mind and its probably best not to go down that road..................
Clearly, it was a difficult and emotional experience and one we would never willingly repeat. It is not every day you are humiliated and insulted by an arrogant young American who took 5 minutes to destroy our dream...............................
Its been a crazy week, after another day with the Robinson's in Brooklyn on the 2nd of January we flew home at stupid o'clock and arrived back in the UK on Tuesday the 3rd around 8pm.
Up the next day and off to our final Individual Consultation meetings where we were officially served with our Notice of Redundancy and then off to the Solicitor's to drop in copies of the Severance Contracts before our meeting on Monday.
We spent Thursday catching up with work and stuff and getting ready for the trip down to get our Visa's on Friday. As advised in the guidance we put together a pack containing evidence of our ties to the UK in terms of family and property, evidence that we were on a trip in terms of the the details of the camper van buy-back and a provisional route map, and details of our finances to demonstrate that we have sufficient funds to cover the trip. We printed out all the relevant documentation and put it all together with our passports and photos.
We decided against the train as the tickets were £160 each due to it being peak hour, so we got up at 5am and drove to West Ruislip where we caught the London Underground to Marble Arch and walked down to the US Embassy on Grosvenor Square. Even at 08.30 the queue was snaking in front of the building and it was freezing. Women were feeding babies as they stood in the queue and people were fumbling with papers and passports with numb fingers. Armed police officers in the background.
First stage was to show your invitations and DS-160 which allowed you to enter the first queue. When called over to the next queue we were retired to show our invitations and passports before entering the second queue. People were entering the security building but many were leaving and hurrying down the street only to return and rejoin the second queue again flustered and sweaty. We finally got into the security building in groups of 3 of 4 only to be told that we could not take our car key into the building as they qualified as an electronic item.
Suddenly, it became clear why people had been scurrying around with red faces. We were given the option of paying to store the key in a little pharmacy a few streets away but Mike took it on himself to stash it in the leaves in the park in the centre of the square. Back into the second queue again, back into the security building, through the scanner, outside again, round the corner and into the main building itself to join another queue. This time we had to present all of our bar coded documentation again and we given a number. N112, it will stay with me for a long time!
So we then entered the immigration hall and sat down in a section on the left hand side where we waited to be called to windows 1-12. After 15 to 20 minutes we were called to window 4 where we went through stage 1 which involved submitting all our papers again and having our finger prints checked at an electronic scanner. We then sat down an waited to be called to the next stage when we would be called to windows 12-25.
It was at this stage that I began to think about the whole thing. Who do the USA they they think they are that gives them to right to treat people like this? Between us we have travelled to many countries in the world and never have to go through a process like this to get a Visa. A little voice in the back of my head kept asking me if I really wanted to spend a year in the country that treated foreigners in this way....I began to add up the time and money we had spent on the process so far.......As we sat there with the calls for numbers to windows rolling out in an almost hypnotic way, it became clear that we were different, or special, in some way. Numbers in the high 100's and early 200's were being called through to the second stage but we were still sat there. Now and again low numbers were called N09 to Window 17, 111 to window 23. All of a sudden after about and hour we were called, N112 to Window 17. It was time.
We were expecting an interview, how silly were we. A young American girl sat at a desk behind a class window. We had to stand at a counter and had to bend forward to hear what she was saying. she had our papers on her desk with Mike's police certificate on the top which she kept tapping with her hand throughout the "interview". She seemed taken aback when we said we wanted to visit for a year and said that only 6 months in one year would be possible no matter how we did it including driving in and out of Canada. She asked why we were planning such a long trip and we explained but it very quickly turned sour after that. She refused to look at any of the documentation we have brought with us and asked us very few questions other than about our children, who because they are grown up and employed could not be regarded as ties to the UK. She eventually said that because she could not see that we had any ties to the UK she could not be sure that we planned to return and could not grant us a Visa even for 6 months. She made reference at one point to lack of funds but when I asked to explain what she meant, because we had clear evidence with us of sufficient funds to sustain us for several years, she became flustered and said it was not her job to advise us about what might be regarded as ties to the UK. Apparently a house, family and money in the bank is not enough. She seemed to imply that you need a job to return to as well but ironically it is because we don't have jobs to return to that we are even able to consider a trip like this. She did not give Mike a chance to talk about his retirement. It became a blur after that as I realised what she was saying and could not believe it, shock and surprise quickly turned into anger and disgust and an immediate sense that I do not even want anymore to visit a country that was so arrogant about the way it treated decent people.
She passed us our documentation and a letter saying that we were ineligible for a non-immigrant Visa to the USA. We could not appeal but we could re-apply which would mean going through the entire process from start to finish again including paying another $140 each for the privilege. Do you know what? Forget it! Interestingly, the letter she gave us was already signed and dated before we got to the window and she just handed it to us as we left. She had made up her mind before we even go there! What a farce! What a rip-off! What a complete disgrace! It all seemed so unreasonable that I began to question her real motives in my mind and its probably best not to go down that road..................
Clearly, it was a difficult and emotional experience and one we would never willingly repeat. It is not every day you are humiliated and insulted by an arrogant young American who took 5 minutes to destroy our dream...............................
Monday 2 January 2012
Yesterday was essentially the climax of the trip for Mike when we went to his father's house (now Sherry's) for a Robinson Family get together. We were picked up by his cousin Bently who drove us over in his much adored white BMW! Bently wound up Peggy and Sherry by calling ahead to say that he had not found us and had decided to come without us. Not sure that they found it all that funny!
When we arrived Mike met his sister Peggy for the very first time and brother Owen for the second. We were joined by his niece and nephew Toni and James and James son Christian who was highly excited about his 12th Birthday the following day! This was only the start and as the day progressed more and more members of the enormous Robinson clan arrived until it was quite overwhelming. His cousin Trevor gave us a copy of the family tree and it says it all when I say that there are 9 pages of it! It appears that his Grandfather and Grandmother between them had around 10 children which has created multiple complex branches of the family. Another twist in the tale is that Peggy's close friend is also Mike's cousin on his mothers side! It was a great party full of noise and laughter, dancing and eating, family photos and a great sense of love and warmth towards Mike from his new found family. At times it was overwhelming and emotional given that for most of his life it was just Mike and his Mum.............Trevor made a toast to the family, those who were there and those who were not and Cecil made a little speech about passing on the mantle of responsibility to Trevor and the next generation including Mike and Mike himself got the opportunity to thank them all for making us both feel so welcome.
When we arrived Mike met his sister Peggy for the very first time and brother Owen for the second. We were joined by his niece and nephew Toni and James and James son Christian who was highly excited about his 12th Birthday the following day! This was only the start and as the day progressed more and more members of the enormous Robinson clan arrived until it was quite overwhelming. His cousin Trevor gave us a copy of the family tree and it says it all when I say that there are 9 pages of it! It appears that his Grandfather and Grandmother between them had around 10 children which has created multiple complex branches of the family. Another twist in the tale is that Peggy's close friend is also Mike's cousin on his mothers side! It was a great party full of noise and laughter, dancing and eating, family photos and a great sense of love and warmth towards Mike from his new found family. At times it was overwhelming and emotional given that for most of his life it was just Mike and his Mum.............Trevor made a toast to the family, those who were there and those who were not and Cecil made a little speech about passing on the mantle of responsibility to Trevor and the next generation including Mike and Mike himself got the opportunity to thank them all for making us both feel so welcome.
Sunday 1 January 2012
1st of January 2012
Its Sunday the 1st of January 2012 and aptly we are in the USA as this is where we will be for most of this year all being well!
We spent yesterday doing a bit of tourist type stuff in New York. Breakfast of Bagel and Lox in a diner then we spent the rest of the morning in the International Photography Centre http://www.icp.org/
There were 3 very contrasting exhibitions on;
Signs of Life by Peter Sekaer, photographs of different people getting by in the 1930's Great Depression in the USA.
Harpers Bazaar: A Decade of Style, a selection of photos from the magazine including unusual and striking portraits of celebrities like Julianne Moore and Lady Gaga.
Remembering 9/11, a sombre and moving collection of visual images of the aftermath of September 11th.
In the afternoon we took the subway down to the World Trade Centre and then gradually strolled back uptown via Battery Park, Financial District, Chinatown, SoHo and Greenwich just taking in the atmosphere. We stopped at an Irish bar for a cold beer and later at a cafe called Landmark which was immediately between China Town and Little Italy and appropriately served a mixture of american, oriental and italian food!
Back to our room before heading out for New Year's Eve. We spent the evening in the Mexican we went to the other day but it was a little disappointing and rather lacking in atmosphere. They handed out hats and rattles but the party never really got going.
Back to bed about 1am...........
Rather hungover today but made it out for breakfast before coming back to get ready for the New Years Day party at the Robinsons on Van Buren Street, Brooklyn.
We spent yesterday doing a bit of tourist type stuff in New York. Breakfast of Bagel and Lox in a diner then we spent the rest of the morning in the International Photography Centre http://www.icp.org/
There were 3 very contrasting exhibitions on;
Signs of Life by Peter Sekaer, photographs of different people getting by in the 1930's Great Depression in the USA.
Harpers Bazaar: A Decade of Style, a selection of photos from the magazine including unusual and striking portraits of celebrities like Julianne Moore and Lady Gaga.
Remembering 9/11, a sombre and moving collection of visual images of the aftermath of September 11th.
In the afternoon we took the subway down to the World Trade Centre and then gradually strolled back uptown via Battery Park, Financial District, Chinatown, SoHo and Greenwich just taking in the atmosphere. We stopped at an Irish bar for a cold beer and later at a cafe called Landmark which was immediately between China Town and Little Italy and appropriately served a mixture of american, oriental and italian food!
Back to our room before heading out for New Year's Eve. We spent the evening in the Mexican we went to the other day but it was a little disappointing and rather lacking in atmosphere. They handed out hats and rattles but the party never really got going.
Back to bed about 1am...........
Rather hungover today but made it out for breakfast before coming back to get ready for the New Years Day party at the Robinsons on Van Buren Street, Brooklyn.
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