Category: blog

Molly prepares for the bishop’s visit.

So today, it is Advent.

Well, I know it is not really, but since I don’t get Thanksgiving today, we must have something.  All week I have been hassled and hassling over what needs to be done, and one of the major stressors was an address to Parliament for next week that really needed to have been written ages ago, but that refused to take shape amidst all the interruptions.

So today, it was time.  I decided not to answer the phone till it was done: and so the phone did not ring.  I decided that I simply couldn’t prepare an address for Advent till I had listened to the Advent Responsory, so music now fills the room.   I let myself write slowly, enjoying all the thoughts of Edinburgh a-glint on a winter’s afternoon.    And for the first time all week I am calm.

Now, let us not spoil the moment with AGMs and property matters.  An afternoon of preparing liturgies and liturgy booklets, I think…

For once, the immigration rules have not turned against me.  Or rather, they have, but I have slipped under the wire.

I am in the last phases before (hopefully) getting indefinite leave to remain.  So, once I pass the ‘Life in the UK’ test and pay the government another £1000, I should be safe.

But, if I had been ordained just a few months later, I would be embroiled in endless forms that require not only me, but the province and diocese/ church to register with Immigrations, and to pay application fee after application fee,  in order to assign me a number which would then allow me to pay application fees.

Britain can say all it likes about America being its closest ally, but it has become an increasingly difficult (and expensive) place to remain if one has an American passport.

The next time I delay/ cancel time off because there is too much needing to be done, remind me to go away anyway, and just take the work along.

Time, now, to start the first thing on my list for today — having completed the dozen or so things that were not on my list, but refused to wait.