what would Dr Johnson say?

or, The Saga Continues


Well. I have a letter from the Immigration office at Heathrow. It's not from my mate Jimmy. It's from my mate who shall remain nameless for his own protection.

At first (I say first; I'd been waiting 45 minutes) he simply crossed out the offending lines of text with a biro and wrote in there, "stamped in error." I pointed out that I could have done that myself, weeks ago and without the expenditure of £20 and the second-hottest day of the year spent in transit in central London. He said if he stamped my passport with a fresh stamp it would be "falsifying the passport," as I had not entered the country today, and what would it look like. He kept showing me the actual stamp, turning it this way and that, saying "it's just human error." I'm a bit of a pedant; I could appreciate the falsifying point; so I said to him, "so what's the solution?"

He gets a bit exasperated, goes: "But you have this (voice rising) stamp here, it says indefinite leave to enter! They can see that you have it!" See, he hasn't spent enough time on the phone to the Home Office. I said to him, "No. It all goes on the most recent stamp." He says I can always write to them and ask for a letter; it won't take long, maybe a week.

I asked him to wait, I rang the employers, I told the girl in HR about the line through the stamp. She sounded a bit sharp. She says, "You could have done that yourself." Tell me about it, says I. I said, here, talk to the guy yourself. All on my bill, mind. I passed my phone under the little hatch.

Ages later, still on my bill, he passes the phone back and she says to me that if I can come in tomorrow she will photocopy my passport, and write a letter to Immigration, and as soon as they've sent her a satisfactory letter I can start work. It shouldn't take more than a week. "I'm getting off the phone," I tell her. "Let me handle this."

When he comes back down he has written the letter himself, having been told by his boss that the procedure is for me to write in and wait like a good girl for my reply. He asks that I not complain to his boss about the initial error, as he has gone out on a limb. I ask him if he doesn't think this whole system is all a little - you know - unprofessional? He shrugs: "It's the public sector."