Indefinite Leave to Remain

Posted on 2008/12/05 15:34:09 (December 2008).

[Friday 5th December]
Today Chie had an appointment at the Home Office for the renewal of her visa. We'd been advised that we'd be better off if I went along as well, so we both took the day off.

Chie had got her curent visa two years ago when we left Japan to come back to live in the UK, and that process had all gone very smoothly. We had no reason to believe the renewal would be problematic, but I at least was still a little anxious in the run up to it.

Anyway, I'm pleased to report it all went fine this morning, they gave us the new visa on the spot in fact, and Chie now has indefinite leave to remain in the UK. Hopefully that means she'll never have to apply for another visa again!

After somewhat elatedly leaving the Home Office, visa in hand, Chie decided she wanted to take advantage of the fact that we were in Croydon, and visit Ikea. There's a tram from East Croydon to Ampere Way, where the Ikea is. That was quite fun (the tram that is). We did a relatively quick whizz round Ikea, as fortunately it wasn't all that busy. Didn't really buy all that much, bearing in mind we'd have to carry it back.

We then got the tram back to East Croydon, and the train from there back into London. We popped back to our flat to drop off the stuff we'd picked up in Ikea, and had a nice cup of tea. Then we headed out again - Mum was in London for the day, and we'd arranged to meet up at St Pancras before she got on her train back to the Midlands.

As we had cause to celebrate we decided to go to the St Pancras Champagne bar. It wasn't quite what we'd expected - it is pretty much on the platform - but still it was quite jolly nonetheless. We had a bottle of Perrier Jouet Rosé and spent an hour or so chatting with Mum, which was very nice.

We waved Mum off around 6, and then Chie and I thought, as it was going to be our wedding anniversary this coming Monday and we were in St Pancras we would try to see if there were any last minute Eurostar tickets available. Moreover we still had an offer of a half price return ticket because our last Eurostar journey had been delayed. Our luck was obviously in - despite having checked about a week ago and got the impression all the trains to Paris were already fully booked this weekend, when we asked at the ticket office we were able to get tickets, and quite reasonably priced at that (although I suppose that was largely down to them being half price). So our weekend plans were sorted out.

For the remainder of the evening Chie went off to the Hiroshimakenjinkai's annual dinner, whereas I decided to just head back home and have a quiet night in, and get ready for our weekend away.

I can't tell you how pleased I was to meet you both in St Pancras today to celebrate with pink champagne!

Posted by John's Mum at 2008/12/05 22:33:31.

you guys should be happy man even me i just got mine i am crazy now

Posted by cable at 2009/07/24 23:19:35.

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