No Update !!

It’s been a week or so since we updated, well that’s because we have not much to update or say :-) Passports came back, even though the UK post office said the photos were questionable, I made them send them anyhow and they were fine. Although typical of the UK post office we got Mollies old passport back on the Wednesday and the new one Wednesday noon, Tom’s did not arrive until Friday, strange as they were both posted on the same day and in the same envelope. Next door’s house is still on the market, they seem to have had quite a lot of interest, well there are quite a few cars coming and going so we would make that assumption. Ours is not on the market, BUT we have started to touch up the painting AND tided our bedroom, so that it looks nice and tidy for some pictures and to show people round. Not yet finished getting ready though – Jason has been told that at this rate he will be going alone while I stay here and sell the house, so we really do need to get ourselves more organised.

Whoo hoo, a tidy bedroom

Well, the day we received the paperwork from E&Y we sent an email asking them about Tom and if we needed anything specific from Mark, we received a reply telling us that she would “prepare advice accordingly”, this was received on the 13th Nov. Very quickly (on the 14th Nov) we received a form for Mark to fill in, and a couple of documents which need to be certified copies. Ok what is the Oz definition of certified. To be on the safe side and to make sure we weren’t going to hold up the visa nor spend money on a solicitor when they actually wanted a notary, we send a further email that day, the 14th Nov, asking who can certify, quite a simple question – NOT really !

On Sunday the 18th we returned all the info they needed for the visa application including the supporting documents they needed, apart from the info they need from Mark (who doesn’t know we need this yet – sorry Mark) but no point in asking the question until we know what we need him to provide and certify in front of who.

On Tuesday 20th we sent an email asking if they had received the emails and if the scanned documents were of a sufficient quality for the application. Wednesday 21st we received an email confirming that they had received the emails and the scanned docs were fine. The email then introduced another person who will be managing the preparation of the visa and will reply to our queries shortly. Needless to say this person has not sent us an email nor responded to our specific queries, well the simple “who can certify” question.

Hopefully we should hear something next week, visa’s are taking anything from 8 weeks to 12 weeks once they have been lodged. 8 weeks from next Monday is the 21st January, 12 weeks will be 18th February. We don’t want to leave until the beginning of March so the 12 weeks will work well for us.

We have started getting quotes to ship the dog, goodness (being very polite here) it is expensive, Jason thinks we should leave him and buy another dog and save ourselves the £3,000 give or take a few hundred to take him. Cat can’t come due to his age, we need to re-home him, with someone who loves a greedy, lazy, but very affectionate cat, he doesn’t like other cats and does not know his green cross code so needs to be an only cat and away from busy roads, not sure if this is going to be easy, but no rush yet to sort him out, lots of other things higher up on the list of things to do :-)