After assembling the full packet of letters of introduction, itineraries and such, all this and my passport were sent down to London…

To bounce instantly to the tune of ‘where is his UK residency card’. At this point the French HR lady and me looked at each other and went “his/my what?” Apparently, though I am an EEA citizen and thus have no need of it, I can have a UK residency card… and thus it is required for issuing visas.

So get a residency card I hear you say - indeed, but on investigation it turned out to be either a ~70 day wait or a day trip to Croydon to do it in person. Ok, so how about I apply for it in Dublin? So off I go online, pony up the fees, fill in all the boxes and it turns over to say - “interview on the 19th”.

This is a Thursday, and they only issue visas Mondays to Thursdays. Needless to say, I fly on the following Monday, 6am, and therefore even if the matter was expedited from point of interview, I would not have it in time and now I’m in the system with ‘Dublin’ as my point of reference.

So tomorrow I have to find out (when they open) if I can possibly get that interview moved up - even earlier that week would probably be fine. And this is just for a business visa, to go talk to people, have a look around.

Omega option is just roll with the Dublin process, jump through their hoops, burn a hole in the atmosphere hopping over and back, roll back and rebook the flights to PHC and just roll with it - but roll it back five days and it starts to grind into my trip to the States….

Its like being offshore again. I should have known, its travel, it involves work, therefore the twin gods SNAFU and FUBAR are all over it.