Jason asks how clotted cream tastes. Answer: try it! If indeed they have it in Michigan (do they?)
We found that Central Market is only a Texas thing. We went back there as not only is it the only place to get clotted cream, fresh lamb and Wiltshire cheese (no, you don't eat all three of those together) but it's also probably the best place to get really good, fresh fruit here in north-central Texas. We got some peaches - imported from Chile - last time we went and they were amazing: fragrant, dewy-juicy, perfectly ripe and tasting as good as anything that comes out of southern Georgia in the summer. And it wasn't just the peaches: apples, tangelos, even the lettuce was delicious.
We wondered if it was just that the peaches came from Chile. At Wal-Mart last weekend we saw peaches from Chile, and bought five. All five were dry, tasteless and essentially inedible. And they weren't that much cheaper than the ones at Central Market. So, in the interests of trying to keep with with the five-a-day thing, back we went.
Of course, while we were there we also had to stop at the in-store Gelateria for some genuine Italian ice-cream, as well as nosing round the various sections and buying a half-leg of lamb for a pretty extortionate price. And then through the bread section, and then on to the cheese section where (as readers who get beyond the first paragraph of these blogs will remember) the Clotted Cream basket sits. As we approached, we noticed two of the shop workers having a discussion there. Being the rude person I am, I interrupted them.
"Does this stuff sell well?" I asked, holding up a jar of Clotted Cream.
"Oh yeah," the older man responded. "Yeah, that's real popular."
Pause.
"Why is it in the cheese section?"
*This* was the key question, I felt. Did they actually think it was cheese?
"That's a good question," he replied. I know it's a good question, I thought.
"It may be because the dairy section is over-full, they've no room over there. But I think it's because you don't think about the clotted cream when you go through dairy, but then people come to the bread section, pick up their scones and then think 'well I need some clotted cream', so it's here."
People think *that*? They think about scones and clotted cream?
There followed an interesting discussion about the differences between double cream and clotted, and the processes involved with making the two. The employees came out of it with having learned about Jersey milk, and I came out of it feeling much happier that people in this country, at least *some* of them, understand about scones.
Now, having determined where all this stuff is in Texas, it's a little ironic that we're going to end up in Indiana, and have to start the process all over again.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
7 February 2008: Scones
The picture above is not a fake, it is not Photoshopped in any way and neither does it date from a time prior to our move to the USA. It is - exactly - what it looks to be. It is a home-made scone covered with peach jam and topped with clotted cream, and the photo was taken last night, deep in the heart of Texas.
This will come as something of a shock to those of you who are (1) fans of clotted cream and (2) familiar with the way things are on this side of the Atlantic. I mean, it was sometimes hard to find clotted cream when I lived in London (I shopped at the big Safeway on Holloway Road so I guess it was my own fault to a degree), and knowing the requirements for making it, I thought there was no way whatsoever that there would be even a sniff of it over here.
For starters, you can't readily get Jersey milk. Those little shaggy brown cows aren't as popular over here as the Brangus moo-moos we were out feeding last week on the ranch, and even in the specialist shops that sell a wider variety of dairy products, your milk choice is restricted to full-fat milk (that's the blue-label one at Tesco), 2% milk (roughly equivalent to semi-skimmed, which tends to top out at 1.7%), low-fat milk and no-fat milk (skimmed), along with other products such as buttermilk and chocolate milk. The cream section contains whipping cream and, if you're very lucky, 'heavy whipping cream'. No gold top in sight, and certainly nothing approaching the stuff Langage farm outputs with such glorious regularity.
But yesterday, as we continued our quest to map out the land here and discover what you can and can't get, and what is reasonably enough priced that you can get it regularly, we visited Central Market. This is a small chain of large supermarkets run by H.E.B. (who also run more normal supermarkets), as we had been told this was the best (possibly only) place in Fort Worth to buy lamb. We indeed found lamb there, but also enjoyed looking round at the Lyle's Golden Syrup, Yorkshire Tea, Patak's curry products and the now-customary large range of Root Beer varieties. There was also a pleasing-to-the-eye selection of butter (step forward Lurpak and Kerrygold) and a cheese section featuring a bewildering array of cheeses from all over the world, including Wiltshire.
And there, in the corner of the cheese section (why the cheese section?) was a small basket containing a number of jars, half of which were marked "English Luxury Double Cream" and the other half marked "English Luxury Clotted Cream". To say we did a double-take would be to understate the point: we spent a good five minutes looking away and looking back, just to make sure. And what was more interesting was the brand name: "The Devon Cream Company". No, I hadn't heard of them either. In fact they're not from Devon at all - but they were from England, and over here that's just as good. What was more interesting, though, was the 'Best Before' date stamped over the front of the small glass jar.
"BBE NOV 08", in case you can't quite read the print in the photo.
Normally clotted cream will last a month at a push if you buy it at the right time. But November 08? That's when they're having the election over here (I'm sick of it already). That's months away. And how long since it was made, chilled and transported here anyway?
Answer: it's not *quite* normal clotted cream. It's clotted cream's equivalent of UHT. When we realised this, spirits sank a little. But only a little. It was still worth buying, still worth transporting home in an ice box, still worth making scones and scooping it out in Blaine-sized portions (you know what I'm talking about, Blaine) over the top and when I took a bite, mildly fearful it would taste like UHT milk...
Nope. It was nice. It was very nice indeed. And we'll be going back again to get more.
6 February 2008: Tesco Express Plus One
Had a very bizarre dream last night.
I dreamed they (whoever "they" are) were building a new shopping area somewhere that was probably Devon but may also have been partly Texas (you know how such things are when you're dreaming). This shopping area featured, as part of it, a 'Chick-Fil-A' fast food outlet and in my dream I told Gloria this excitedly, knowing she is a fan, to which she replied that she already knew it was there. But the main feature was a reasonable size supermarket, and the sign outside declared it was going to be a "Tesco Express +1".
This meant, apparently, that they would always be an hour behind all the other Tesco's in the area, meaning that if one of the other Tesco's sold out of something, they would *always* have it in stock there for another hour. Additionally, they would also be open an hour later than the other stores each day. They were basing the idea on the "+1" TV channels on UK television, where if you miss Oprah on ITV2 you can watch it an hour later on ITV2+1, minus the adverts (which they haven't been paid to show twice).
What a brilliant plan, I thought, as sleep slowly gave way to waking. I wonder if I could make some money out of this fantastic, mould-breaking marketing idea? Then I remembered that it was very rare for Tesco to sell out of something, and certainly for me to visit it within an hour of them selling out. Then I also remembered a lot of Tesco stores are open 24 hours Monday to Saturday, so that meant these would have to be open 25 hours a day for them to have the same effect. Then I woke up a little more and realised that if they could predict what they were going to sell out of, they'd just order more for the store that was about to sell out rather than sending it to the other store down the road.
So actually the whole thing was a complete load of nonsense.
On the other hand, it did have a Chick-Fil-A next door, which is still a good idea. And it was a fun thought while it lasted.
I dreamed they (whoever "they" are) were building a new shopping area somewhere that was probably Devon but may also have been partly Texas (you know how such things are when you're dreaming). This shopping area featured, as part of it, a 'Chick-Fil-A' fast food outlet and in my dream I told Gloria this excitedly, knowing she is a fan, to which she replied that she already knew it was there. But the main feature was a reasonable size supermarket, and the sign outside declared it was going to be a "Tesco Express +1".
This meant, apparently, that they would always be an hour behind all the other Tesco's in the area, meaning that if one of the other Tesco's sold out of something, they would *always* have it in stock there for another hour. Additionally, they would also be open an hour later than the other stores each day. They were basing the idea on the "+1" TV channels on UK television, where if you miss Oprah on ITV2 you can watch it an hour later on ITV2+1, minus the adverts (which they haven't been paid to show twice).
What a brilliant plan, I thought, as sleep slowly gave way to waking. I wonder if I could make some money out of this fantastic, mould-breaking marketing idea? Then I remembered that it was very rare for Tesco to sell out of something, and certainly for me to visit it within an hour of them selling out. Then I also remembered a lot of Tesco stores are open 24 hours Monday to Saturday, so that meant these would have to be open 25 hours a day for them to have the same effect. Then I woke up a little more and realised that if they could predict what they were going to sell out of, they'd just order more for the store that was about to sell out rather than sending it to the other store down the road.
So actually the whole thing was a complete load of nonsense.
On the other hand, it did have a Chick-Fil-A next door, which is still a good idea. And it was a fun thought while it lasted.
Friday, February 01, 2008
1 February 2007: Brangus
Went feeding the cows this morning, a few bulls too. Nothing quite like being out in the early morning sunshine here in Star, Texas.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
30 January 2008: Wildfire
As I mentioned yesterday, there's not a lot of rain here in rural north Texas. And that can cause problems.
Incidentally, for those of you with maps, you might like to know where we are: if you find the USA and go to the big state right in the middle at the bottom, that's Texas. Houston is at the bottom-right, but we're closer to Dallas, which is kind of near the top and central as you look. Just to the left of Dallas you'll see Fort Worth (the airport here is called 'Dallas-Fort Worth' and sits between the two cities) and if you have a detailed map, you might be able to spot the names of a few towns to the north and north-west of Fort Worth. Denton is the big city just north of the DFW area. Directly west of that is Decatur, and a little further west along that road is the town of Bridgeport, where I sit as I write this blog. Slightly south-east of Bridgeport is the 'city' where we were married, named Paradise. (A city, it seems, is not determined by the existence of a cathedral or by appointment by the Queen, but upon the existence of a municipal water system. Paradise is therefore a city, despite having a censused population of only 459.)
Yesterday, however, the population of Paradise dropped a little, albeit only temporarily. The lack of rain and the incoming Siberian cold front pushing towards us from Colorado meant there were very dry conditions, very low humidity, very high sunshine figures and very high winds (sustained winds around 40mph for a while, gusts touching 60mph). This means if somebody throws a cigarette stub out of a car window without making sure it's extinguished first, there is going to be trouble.
Three major wildfires (and several minor ones) raged through the day yesterday in the area north-west of Fort Worth. Two were in more rural areas, but the most destructive in terms of personal loss was in Paradise. We had no idea that fire had broken out until Gloria's great-uncle called at 3pm to check if we were ok as he had heard there were wildfires in our county. We were, we said, and flicking on the TV we found that it was Paradise rather than Bridgeport that was being consumed, where the fire had been going since around 11am.
Now, although we don't live in Paradise, we have a connection there beyond just being married at the little church in the centre of town. We have a lot of stuff - two garages full - in a storage facility on the south side of town, by the school. Although there's no way we'd be able to get it all out into our little Toyota-with-orange-indicator-lights, we thought we should go and try to rescue some irreplaceable things such as photos and Tunnock's caramel bars. So off we went, down the five miles of Highway 114 towards Paradise, spotting a few odd things like the occasional uprooted tree (that wind was strong) and, off to the west, a huge smoke cloud coming from another of the wildfires. Then there was a line of traffic, a flashing light at the front end and a policeman walking from car to car, talking to drivers. We slowed, and crawled forward as one by one the cars were released to go onward. As we did, several drivers decided to cut up the inside, driving on the shoulder of the highway in a perfectly illegal manner, presumably unaware there was a policeman waiting for them up ahead.
"Where are y'all headed?" drawled the cop.
The storages by the school in Paradise.
"OK," he replied, "turn right by the Pecan orchard and go round the back way."
We didn't. We went the regular way, through the centre of town. Another police car at the main intersection in town, blocking Highway 114. We turned right towards the school, past our little wedding church, out to the school and, briefly, on past the school, back on the road towards the closed Highway 114. Over the crest of the hill and all we could see were people standing round, no shortage of vehicles with flashing lights, and clouds of smoke rising in the near-distance. We U-turned and went back to the storages, took out the valuables and noted that the strong wind direction was blowing the fire away from the main part of the town (indeed, the school was still in, they hadn't evacuated the pupils). Feeling more confident about the security of our own stuff, we headed back on 114 towards Bridgeport, past the policeman and his now-lengthy queue.
As we approached, however, we saw him turn and race towards his car, just as we drove past. He spun it around, lights flashing, heading in our direction, back towards Bridgeport. Along the queue of cars, we quickly saw why the policeman was heading this way. Yet another fool had tried to cut up the inside and by-pass the queue, but rather clumsily had run their car into the back of a massive articulated lorry. We crawled past the wreckage and back towards Bridgeport, commenting on how it was the strangest trip to Paradise that either of us have ever had.
Turning on the TV on our return, we watched as the local news began to relay the details from the scene. 15 homes destroyed, about 30 buildings in total, all just to the south of the main part of Paradise. No fatalities or even any reported injuries. Gloria didn't know any of the residents interviewed on TV but certainly knew a few people who live around that area. One man on the TV said it was the third time his home had been burned down, and he'd only just moved back in to his house back in October. You might say that perhaps nature was telling him to move somewhere else, or at least build his house out of something other than wood, but he seemed to be a good ol' local boy who wasn't going to let a little fire stop him living in his home town.
The winds dropped overnight and the fires were contained. The wind picked up a little today, but a cold front came through and there is even a small chance of a little rain tomorrow, so that should solve the issue - for now. But it's another of those differences between living in Southampton and living in rural north-central Texas - here the weather forecast and the smoking laws are more than just a matter of community moaning, they can combine to mean life and death in a matter of hours.
Paradise lost? No, just slightly damaged this time.
Incidentally, for those of you with maps, you might like to know where we are: if you find the USA and go to the big state right in the middle at the bottom, that's Texas. Houston is at the bottom-right, but we're closer to Dallas, which is kind of near the top and central as you look. Just to the left of Dallas you'll see Fort Worth (the airport here is called 'Dallas-Fort Worth' and sits between the two cities) and if you have a detailed map, you might be able to spot the names of a few towns to the north and north-west of Fort Worth. Denton is the big city just north of the DFW area. Directly west of that is Decatur, and a little further west along that road is the town of Bridgeport, where I sit as I write this blog. Slightly south-east of Bridgeport is the 'city' where we were married, named Paradise. (A city, it seems, is not determined by the existence of a cathedral or by appointment by the Queen, but upon the existence of a municipal water system. Paradise is therefore a city, despite having a censused population of only 459.)
Yesterday, however, the population of Paradise dropped a little, albeit only temporarily. The lack of rain and the incoming Siberian cold front pushing towards us from Colorado meant there were very dry conditions, very low humidity, very high sunshine figures and very high winds (sustained winds around 40mph for a while, gusts touching 60mph). This means if somebody throws a cigarette stub out of a car window without making sure it's extinguished first, there is going to be trouble.
Three major wildfires (and several minor ones) raged through the day yesterday in the area north-west of Fort Worth. Two were in more rural areas, but the most destructive in terms of personal loss was in Paradise. We had no idea that fire had broken out until Gloria's great-uncle called at 3pm to check if we were ok as he had heard there were wildfires in our county. We were, we said, and flicking on the TV we found that it was Paradise rather than Bridgeport that was being consumed, where the fire had been going since around 11am.
Now, although we don't live in Paradise, we have a connection there beyond just being married at the little church in the centre of town. We have a lot of stuff - two garages full - in a storage facility on the south side of town, by the school. Although there's no way we'd be able to get it all out into our little Toyota-with-orange-indicator-lights, we thought we should go and try to rescue some irreplaceable things such as photos and Tunnock's caramel bars. So off we went, down the five miles of Highway 114 towards Paradise, spotting a few odd things like the occasional uprooted tree (that wind was strong) and, off to the west, a huge smoke cloud coming from another of the wildfires. Then there was a line of traffic, a flashing light at the front end and a policeman walking from car to car, talking to drivers. We slowed, and crawled forward as one by one the cars were released to go onward. As we did, several drivers decided to cut up the inside, driving on the shoulder of the highway in a perfectly illegal manner, presumably unaware there was a policeman waiting for them up ahead.
"Where are y'all headed?" drawled the cop.
The storages by the school in Paradise.
"OK," he replied, "turn right by the Pecan orchard and go round the back way."
We didn't. We went the regular way, through the centre of town. Another police car at the main intersection in town, blocking Highway 114. We turned right towards the school, past our little wedding church, out to the school and, briefly, on past the school, back on the road towards the closed Highway 114. Over the crest of the hill and all we could see were people standing round, no shortage of vehicles with flashing lights, and clouds of smoke rising in the near-distance. We U-turned and went back to the storages, took out the valuables and noted that the strong wind direction was blowing the fire away from the main part of the town (indeed, the school was still in, they hadn't evacuated the pupils). Feeling more confident about the security of our own stuff, we headed back on 114 towards Bridgeport, past the policeman and his now-lengthy queue.
As we approached, however, we saw him turn and race towards his car, just as we drove past. He spun it around, lights flashing, heading in our direction, back towards Bridgeport. Along the queue of cars, we quickly saw why the policeman was heading this way. Yet another fool had tried to cut up the inside and by-pass the queue, but rather clumsily had run their car into the back of a massive articulated lorry. We crawled past the wreckage and back towards Bridgeport, commenting on how it was the strangest trip to Paradise that either of us have ever had.
Turning on the TV on our return, we watched as the local news began to relay the details from the scene. 15 homes destroyed, about 30 buildings in total, all just to the south of the main part of Paradise. No fatalities or even any reported injuries. Gloria didn't know any of the residents interviewed on TV but certainly knew a few people who live around that area. One man on the TV said it was the third time his home had been burned down, and he'd only just moved back in to his house back in October. You might say that perhaps nature was telling him to move somewhere else, or at least build his house out of something other than wood, but he seemed to be a good ol' local boy who wasn't going to let a little fire stop him living in his home town.
The winds dropped overnight and the fires were contained. The wind picked up a little today, but a cold front came through and there is even a small chance of a little rain tomorrow, so that should solve the issue - for now. But it's another of those differences between living in Southampton and living in rural north-central Texas - here the weather forecast and the smoking laws are more than just a matter of community moaning, they can combine to mean life and death in a matter of hours.
Paradise lost? No, just slightly damaged this time.
29 January 2008: Syrup
So here we are.
They have the internet in the USA, it appears, so I will be able to continue with the occasional blog. In fact, since arriving here a couple of weeks ago, it's been a curious journey to find what they do and don't have over here compared with the UK.
For example, they have immigration and border controls that make you want to shake your fists at the sky and cry "why me?". Arriving at DFW airport with a visa in my passport that we fought a hard seven-and-a-half-month battle for. For the uninitiated, a visa is a good thing to have when you want to enter another country: it means the country you are trying to enter has already granted you entry clearance. Previously when entering the USA for a visit, I'd had to fill out a green form entitled 'I-94 Visa Waiver' which means I'm telling the immigration officer that I'd like to visit the USA for a period of less than three months and I have proof that I'll be leaving (usually in the form of a return or onward plane ticket). The officer then asks some questions of varying degrees of severity and eventually decides to let me in. But when you have a visa it's different: it means the US embassy have already done the questioning and have decided that you are to be let in. Visa means "entry clearance". In the UK it really does mean that: armed with visa in passport, Gloria was never questioned about anything when coming into the UK.
The US, however, decided that it's not enough to have entry clearance. I had to not only show a whole bunch of supporting documentation (remember the brown envelope from my previous blog?) but also, instead of the guy saying "welcome to the USA", I had to be taken to an extra area for additional questioning and form-filling-in. Why was this not done at the US embassy in London? I have no idea, but it took us a full two hours before they eventually allowed us through (admittedly, this was partly due to there being 32 immigration desks, of which 29 were closed, so there was a good solid bit of waiting for everyone). However, they did let us through, so I now have full permanent immigrant status, a Green Card on the way and a Social Security number so I can pay taxes. Yay!
As a quick aside, you might wonder what happened about the chest X-ray we were told to take on the plane with us and show to the immigration officer. I pulled it out and offered it to him, pointing to the bit on the letter where it says "you must show this to the immigration officer". Unsurprisingly, he said "I don't know anything about X-rays" and informed us that the real purpose of it is to give it to a local doctor when I register. Which does, kind of, make sense, although why we had to take it on the plane with us remains a mystery.
So we made it through and have spent the days since arrival generally travelling around saying "hello" to as many people as possible, including visits to Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana as well as Texas. In addition to this there's been the question of what we can and can't get at the supermarkets, an investigation that I have begun at quite a thorough level for fear of running out of essentials such as malt vinegar and PG Tips. And overall, I've been very pleasantly surprised.
It's quite amazing to me how much America has changed since I first visited back in 1991. Back then the cars were all huge saloon models with flashing brake lights that doubled as indicators (orange indicator lights were few and far between). There was no way to find out the cricket scores short of very expensive phone calls back to the UK. There was certainly no Indian food and the height of international excitement was finding a small branch of Harry Ramsden's in the Atlanta Underground food court. Now it's different: it's not just the internet and cheaper international phone cards, it also the invasion of cars from the Far East with their orange blinkers and hatch-backs and, most interestingly, the foods that are slowly becoming available at the supermarkets, or, at a slightly higher price, the 'World Market' shops which are now in all the cities. (For reference: the day I write this blog, 1 UK pound is equal to $1.98).
To run through the check list:
- Twining's Tea (all brands) available at Wal-Mart, Kroger, Albertsons, Winn-Dixie, all the main ones. PG still requires a trip to the World Market or other import store, but frankly we have enough to last me a good six months yet, by which time we hope to receive some from the UK.
- Malt Vinegar is now available as one of Heinz' "Gourmet Foods" products, alongside the Balsamic and White Wine vinegars, and every bit as expensive ($1.74 for one of those normal 250ml vinegar bottles).
- Cadbury's: bit of a false dawn on this one - Cadbury's brand chocolate (Dairy Milk etc) has been available over here for at least six years but it's not actually Cadbury's: look on the back of the wrapper and it says "Made in the USA under licence by Hershey Inc." If you know Hershey's chocolate you'll know that it's not going to be the same. If you can't get anything else, this fake Cadbury is the best available (and it's at all the Wal-Marts, no trouble to find it), but for the real stuff you need to go to an import shop such as World Market and pay the import prices.
- Patak's curry paste: Mr and Mrs Patak, bless 'em, have now set up a small US distribution operation. This is encouraging, and I hope the shops that carry the product will expand. World Market carries a couple of the pastes ("Mild Curry Paste" and "Hot Curry Paste" rather than anything interesting like Madras) along with a tandoori grilling sauce, and the prices aren't too bad ($3.99 compared with about £1.50 at Sainsbury's, so a 52p or so markup). We also were very pleased to find it at a small college supermarket in Tennessee which specialised in organic and health food. (Curry as a health food? I like that idea.) Further investigation, we hope, will lead to further finds.
- Naan bread: got some from the World Market in Birmingham, Alabama, but despite being imported from a company in Leicester, it was a little dry and disappointing. We have a couple of recipes for naan, so I suspect we'll be making it rather than buying it in future.
- Poppadoms: yet to see any in our two weeks so far, but we do know of an Indian/Pakistani shop in San Antonio which sells the Crazy-Eyed Rabbit brand. However, we also have yet to see lime pickle on sale anywhere, so it may be that this combination is something that will require a trip to the internet import shop.
- Maltesers: like other "real" English sweeties, we found this one so far only at the World Market but we did find it at a ridiculous price - the 'Christmas Edition' tube of Maltesers was on clearance (75% off: in the US they do understand what a clearance sale should be, M&S please take note) and so they were selling a nice 80g tube for 99c each. That's about 51p. That's cheaper than Asda. We bought four and later regretted we didn't just buy their entire stock.
- Fruit Gums/Fruit Pastilles: I know, a Nestle product these days, but we have to keep the economy of York turning over somehow. Unlike the UK chocolate products on ridiculous markup ($1.75 for a Crunchie bar: no thanks) these were at the World Market for 99c each, normal price. Again, that's 51p. I've become accustomed to seeing a little sticker saying "42p" on these in the UK. I can cope with a 9p markup.
- Dandelion & Burdock: not required as they have Root Beer here. Early experimentation has shown that Stewart's and IBC are the best root beers, with Sioux City not far behind, but the research continues.
- Golden Syrup: this is an important one as it's a key ingredient in Mars Bar Cake, not to mention my late grandmother's legendary "chocolate cake with no eggs in it because it's wartime". It's hard to find a substitute for this as Tate & Lyle famously use only pure cane sugar for their syrup, whereas over here the culture is geared towards corn syrup. We brought a big tin of the stuff with us, and will use it sparingly, but we have found a few potential substitutes at the supermarkets and, at just one World Market, we did find it on import with a hefty mark-up. So it does exist over here, it's just a little work trying to find it.
- Lamb: this is more a Texas issue than a USA/UK issue: the only place you'll get lamb here is if you go to the Mall and find a 'Wraps' take-away in the food court which features 'Gyros' (= Donner Kebab). This is surprisingly common, a pleasant discovery. Beyond that, however, Texas is a lamb-free state. We are lead to believe that the Fort Worth Central Market will carry it, but certainly none of the normal supermarkets do. We had no problem finding a reasonable selection of lamb (imported from Australia, of all places) in both Tennessee and Alabama, and indeed even found Paxo stuffing at the World Market to go with it, so perhaps we just need to move east a little.
- Sausages: Again to my surprise, "link sausages" (or 'sausages' to you and me) are available here at Wal-Mart. Not much choice, just regular slightly-seasoned pork, and they're not going to be threatening Upton's of Bassett for the sausage-of-the-year award, but hey, they're available. It's tempting to get a few recipes for Lincolnshire or Cumberland sausages and make then up by hand. Certainly regular sausage-meat is freely available.
And on the down-side, a few things we've not found and aren't hopeful of finding:
- Kebabs: on the kebab front, there's a reasonable number of 'Kabob' restaurants and take-aways, along with the 'Gyros' at the Malls, but frankly nothing that matches up to the Charcoal Grill on Portswood Road and certainly nothing like Big George's tandoori chicken donner kebab. Having said that, I've never had anything as good as that anywhere else in the UK either, even in London.
- Fish and chips: Harry Ramsden doesn't seem to have made it big out here yet, although I'm not much of a fan anyway. There's nowhere I can see offering chips like you'd get from a traditional British chippy: thick-cut and greasy-hot, just begging for vinegar. (Aside: ever tried putting vinegar on McDonald's 'French Fries'? Everyone should try it once.)
- Back bacon: or middle cut, or collar cut (which, frankly, is hard enough to find in the UK these days) - these are just not around. Oscar Meyer do produce 'Canadian Bacon' which looks a little bit like the round bit from back bacon but is suspiciously exactly circular, and doesn't really taste like that fine thick-cut dry-cure stuff that Uptons sell.
- Clotted cream: don't even think about it. I understand there is a firm in North Carolina which makes it and will overnight-air-freight it for a truly ridiculous price.
- Rain. It doesn't rain here very much at all.
So we're settling in, slowly but surely, still job-hunting and heading to the pharmacy every time we need to look on the internet. It's a little different, but as I said before, nothing like as different as it was when I first came some seventeen years ago. Maybe it's globalisation, maybe it's progress, maybe it's just me getting old, but it really doesn't feel as foreign as I expected it to.
And so, here we stay.
They have the internet in the USA, it appears, so I will be able to continue with the occasional blog. In fact, since arriving here a couple of weeks ago, it's been a curious journey to find what they do and don't have over here compared with the UK.
For example, they have immigration and border controls that make you want to shake your fists at the sky and cry "why me?". Arriving at DFW airport with a visa in my passport that we fought a hard seven-and-a-half-month battle for. For the uninitiated, a visa is a good thing to have when you want to enter another country: it means the country you are trying to enter has already granted you entry clearance. Previously when entering the USA for a visit, I'd had to fill out a green form entitled 'I-94 Visa Waiver' which means I'm telling the immigration officer that I'd like to visit the USA for a period of less than three months and I have proof that I'll be leaving (usually in the form of a return or onward plane ticket). The officer then asks some questions of varying degrees of severity and eventually decides to let me in. But when you have a visa it's different: it means the US embassy have already done the questioning and have decided that you are to be let in. Visa means "entry clearance". In the UK it really does mean that: armed with visa in passport, Gloria was never questioned about anything when coming into the UK.
The US, however, decided that it's not enough to have entry clearance. I had to not only show a whole bunch of supporting documentation (remember the brown envelope from my previous blog?) but also, instead of the guy saying "welcome to the USA", I had to be taken to an extra area for additional questioning and form-filling-in. Why was this not done at the US embassy in London? I have no idea, but it took us a full two hours before they eventually allowed us through (admittedly, this was partly due to there being 32 immigration desks, of which 29 were closed, so there was a good solid bit of waiting for everyone). However, they did let us through, so I now have full permanent immigrant status, a Green Card on the way and a Social Security number so I can pay taxes. Yay!
As a quick aside, you might wonder what happened about the chest X-ray we were told to take on the plane with us and show to the immigration officer. I pulled it out and offered it to him, pointing to the bit on the letter where it says "you must show this to the immigration officer". Unsurprisingly, he said "I don't know anything about X-rays" and informed us that the real purpose of it is to give it to a local doctor when I register. Which does, kind of, make sense, although why we had to take it on the plane with us remains a mystery.
So we made it through and have spent the days since arrival generally travelling around saying "hello" to as many people as possible, including visits to Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana as well as Texas. In addition to this there's been the question of what we can and can't get at the supermarkets, an investigation that I have begun at quite a thorough level for fear of running out of essentials such as malt vinegar and PG Tips. And overall, I've been very pleasantly surprised.
It's quite amazing to me how much America has changed since I first visited back in 1991. Back then the cars were all huge saloon models with flashing brake lights that doubled as indicators (orange indicator lights were few and far between). There was no way to find out the cricket scores short of very expensive phone calls back to the UK. There was certainly no Indian food and the height of international excitement was finding a small branch of Harry Ramsden's in the Atlanta Underground food court. Now it's different: it's not just the internet and cheaper international phone cards, it also the invasion of cars from the Far East with their orange blinkers and hatch-backs and, most interestingly, the foods that are slowly becoming available at the supermarkets, or, at a slightly higher price, the 'World Market' shops which are now in all the cities. (For reference: the day I write this blog, 1 UK pound is equal to $1.98).
To run through the check list:
- Twining's Tea (all brands) available at Wal-Mart, Kroger, Albertsons, Winn-Dixie, all the main ones. PG still requires a trip to the World Market or other import store, but frankly we have enough to last me a good six months yet, by which time we hope to receive some from the UK.
- Malt Vinegar is now available as one of Heinz' "Gourmet Foods" products, alongside the Balsamic and White Wine vinegars, and every bit as expensive ($1.74 for one of those normal 250ml vinegar bottles).
- Cadbury's: bit of a false dawn on this one - Cadbury's brand chocolate (Dairy Milk etc) has been available over here for at least six years but it's not actually Cadbury's: look on the back of the wrapper and it says "Made in the USA under licence by Hershey Inc." If you know Hershey's chocolate you'll know that it's not going to be the same. If you can't get anything else, this fake Cadbury is the best available (and it's at all the Wal-Marts, no trouble to find it), but for the real stuff you need to go to an import shop such as World Market and pay the import prices.
- Patak's curry paste: Mr and Mrs Patak, bless 'em, have now set up a small US distribution operation. This is encouraging, and I hope the shops that carry the product will expand. World Market carries a couple of the pastes ("Mild Curry Paste" and "Hot Curry Paste" rather than anything interesting like Madras) along with a tandoori grilling sauce, and the prices aren't too bad ($3.99 compared with about £1.50 at Sainsbury's, so a 52p or so markup). We also were very pleased to find it at a small college supermarket in Tennessee which specialised in organic and health food. (Curry as a health food? I like that idea.) Further investigation, we hope, will lead to further finds.
- Naan bread: got some from the World Market in Birmingham, Alabama, but despite being imported from a company in Leicester, it was a little dry and disappointing. We have a couple of recipes for naan, so I suspect we'll be making it rather than buying it in future.
- Poppadoms: yet to see any in our two weeks so far, but we do know of an Indian/Pakistani shop in San Antonio which sells the Crazy-Eyed Rabbit brand. However, we also have yet to see lime pickle on sale anywhere, so it may be that this combination is something that will require a trip to the internet import shop.
- Maltesers: like other "real" English sweeties, we found this one so far only at the World Market but we did find it at a ridiculous price - the 'Christmas Edition' tube of Maltesers was on clearance (75% off: in the US they do understand what a clearance sale should be, M&S please take note) and so they were selling a nice 80g tube for 99c each. That's about 51p. That's cheaper than Asda. We bought four and later regretted we didn't just buy their entire stock.
- Fruit Gums/Fruit Pastilles: I know, a Nestle product these days, but we have to keep the economy of York turning over somehow. Unlike the UK chocolate products on ridiculous markup ($1.75 for a Crunchie bar: no thanks) these were at the World Market for 99c each, normal price. Again, that's 51p. I've become accustomed to seeing a little sticker saying "42p" on these in the UK. I can cope with a 9p markup.
- Dandelion & Burdock: not required as they have Root Beer here. Early experimentation has shown that Stewart's and IBC are the best root beers, with Sioux City not far behind, but the research continues.
- Golden Syrup: this is an important one as it's a key ingredient in Mars Bar Cake, not to mention my late grandmother's legendary "chocolate cake with no eggs in it because it's wartime". It's hard to find a substitute for this as Tate & Lyle famously use only pure cane sugar for their syrup, whereas over here the culture is geared towards corn syrup. We brought a big tin of the stuff with us, and will use it sparingly, but we have found a few potential substitutes at the supermarkets and, at just one World Market, we did find it on import with a hefty mark-up. So it does exist over here, it's just a little work trying to find it.
- Lamb: this is more a Texas issue than a USA/UK issue: the only place you'll get lamb here is if you go to the Mall and find a 'Wraps' take-away in the food court which features 'Gyros' (= Donner Kebab). This is surprisingly common, a pleasant discovery. Beyond that, however, Texas is a lamb-free state. We are lead to believe that the Fort Worth Central Market will carry it, but certainly none of the normal supermarkets do. We had no problem finding a reasonable selection of lamb (imported from Australia, of all places) in both Tennessee and Alabama, and indeed even found Paxo stuffing at the World Market to go with it, so perhaps we just need to move east a little.
- Sausages: Again to my surprise, "link sausages" (or 'sausages' to you and me) are available here at Wal-Mart. Not much choice, just regular slightly-seasoned pork, and they're not going to be threatening Upton's of Bassett for the sausage-of-the-year award, but hey, they're available. It's tempting to get a few recipes for Lincolnshire or Cumberland sausages and make then up by hand. Certainly regular sausage-meat is freely available.
And on the down-side, a few things we've not found and aren't hopeful of finding:
- Kebabs: on the kebab front, there's a reasonable number of 'Kabob' restaurants and take-aways, along with the 'Gyros' at the Malls, but frankly nothing that matches up to the Charcoal Grill on Portswood Road and certainly nothing like Big George's tandoori chicken donner kebab. Having said that, I've never had anything as good as that anywhere else in the UK either, even in London.
- Fish and chips: Harry Ramsden doesn't seem to have made it big out here yet, although I'm not much of a fan anyway. There's nowhere I can see offering chips like you'd get from a traditional British chippy: thick-cut and greasy-hot, just begging for vinegar. (Aside: ever tried putting vinegar on McDonald's 'French Fries'? Everyone should try it once.)
- Back bacon: or middle cut, or collar cut (which, frankly, is hard enough to find in the UK these days) - these are just not around. Oscar Meyer do produce 'Canadian Bacon' which looks a little bit like the round bit from back bacon but is suspiciously exactly circular, and doesn't really taste like that fine thick-cut dry-cure stuff that Uptons sell.
- Clotted cream: don't even think about it. I understand there is a firm in North Carolina which makes it and will overnight-air-freight it for a truly ridiculous price.
- Rain. It doesn't rain here very much at all.
So we're settling in, slowly but surely, still job-hunting and heading to the pharmacy every time we need to look on the internet. It's a little different, but as I said before, nothing like as different as it was when I first came some seventeen years ago. Maybe it's globalisation, maybe it's progress, maybe it's just me getting old, but it really doesn't feel as foreign as I expected it to.
And so, here we stay.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
22 December 2007: Visa
We had been warned it could take nine months. It turned out to be seven and a half.
Yes, that's right, we (more specifically, I) have finally been given a visa to move to the USA. It wasn't easy, it wasn't fun and it wasn't something I'd ever recommend. But it's done, and as we reflect on the process, it's worth running through a few things we learned along the way in case anyone reading this blog wants to get a marriage visa to move to the US.
The process began in May when we started considering the possibility of moving. We investigated the process from the US Embassy website and realised it was a multi-stage process, the first of which was mainly to do with proving that Gloria was a US citizen. That's why we have passports, you may think. You'd be wrong. For the US Visa and Immigration service, we had to fill in a whole bunch of forms and wait two months for them to even look at it all. Eventually they said ok, we agree Gloria is a US citizen and is allowed to sponsor a spouse.
Then they turned their attention to me. We had to fill in another bunch of forms but also we had to get a whole series of other pieces of information, most of which we had in our possession (long-form birth certificate, for instance) but one of which we didn't (police check from sometime in the last twelve months). Had we known in advance we needed one, I'd have gone to the Police Station and asked them for one some time before, since it takes 40 days for one to arrive. In addition, they asked for Gloria's "most recent tax return", which (since the IRS were insisting on making me apply for a US tax number simply because I was married to a US citizen) was the 2005 return rather than the 2006 return, which was still in process. We phoned the £1.20 per minute helpline, who responded "you need to email instead." We emailed, asking whether they meant us to bring the 2005 tax return or the as-yet-not-processed 2006 return. response: Thank you for your email enquiry. Unfortunately we can only accept the most recent tax return. Well, that clears that up then. Anyway, eventually we got all of this documentation together and so filled in more forms and said "we have everything you've asked, please can we have an interview now?"
In the meantime I made an appointment for, and attended, a medical where I had to pay a lot of money for a Harley Street doctor to do a five-minute examination and do a chest X-ray showing I didn't have TB. My local GP could have done all of that, but the US Embassy don't recognise the NHS as a valid medical practice. And let's not even talk about the blood tests I had to get in order to prove that I didn't need vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella because I'd had all three diseases. Anyway, after a good bit of hassle, they decided I was clean and so another hoop was successfully jumped through.
The Embassy wrote back. Interview date 9 October. Please arrange for a medical interview. Well, done that already. So we carefully got all the documents in order, headed to London, waited in line for our "8.30 appointment" (ha ha) in the pouring rain and eventually made it inside, took a ticket, waited two hours and eventually got called for our interview. Well, not really an interview as they never asked us anything other than "please give us the next document." It was much more like going to a bank teller window than an interview. But anyway, they told us that as all our income is UK earned, and the US Immigration service don't recognise income earned outside of the US (which is funny, because the US tax people certainly do recognise foreign earned income since Gloria has to pay tax on it) and as such we were under the poverty line and as such invalid for a marriage visa. The lady said we needed at least seventeen and a half thousand dollars in a US bank in order to meet this requirement, and thus we'd need a joint sponsor who could show they had seventeen and a half thousand dollars in a US account. Message is clear: only rich people are allowed to marry foreigners. Please go and sit down, the lady said, and we'll call you back later to let you know the decision.
Waited another hour or so, then called back to the desk where we were told our application for the visa had been suspended because (1) we had no money (actually, we had not earned US dollars, we had earned plenty of pounds sterling over the last twelve months) and thus we needed a joint sponsor who could show fifty thousand dollars of US savings. Fifty thousand. Not seventeen, we asked? No, fifty thousand, five-zero. And (2) we had provided no evidence of a completed 2006 tax return. It's in process as they're making me apply for a tax number. It's October, the lady said, taxes are filed by April so it has to have been processed by now. Essentially the message was "you're lying". In order to get the visa, she continued, you need to provide a completed 2006 tax return in addition to the joint sponsor. Now please take your chest X-ray photo and go away. (Why did they have my chest x-ray and why were they giving it to me now? I'd paid for it, I guess. Maybe I'll hang it on the wall.)
Gloria was in tears by this point. It's stressful enough to have to go through this long, largely pointless process but to be accused of lying by a rude US government employee who clearly would much rather we didn't exist was very bad indeed, especially when the reason the taxes weren't yet sorted was because it was another branch of US government employees, the IRS tax service, who were causing the delay.
I won't detail the tax side of it, except to say that they lost things, mis-processed things and changes the rules half way through such that I ended up being both denied and accepted for a US tax number. The good old IRS also have a telephone helpline, on which they told us more than once that they had no record of Gloria's tax return for 2006 because it was in transit from one office to another, but don't worry, it'll probably just show up somewhere in a few weeks. Hm, we thought, had they said that to the lady at the US Embassy they would certainly have been accused of lying. But what can you do? All we could do was wait.
Meantime a phone call to the visa helpline to clear up the discrepancy between the joint sponsor amounts we had been told... was it seventeen thousand or fifty thousand? Which was correct? Neither are correct, the man on the expensive phone line said, the joint sponsor just has to make up the shortfall in US funds to get the total up to seventeen thousand. Sheesh. Three different stories from three different people. Best bet, we thought, is to make sure all three situations were covered, including topping up our US bank account to the seventeen thousand amount and printing off a statement proving it.
Still nothing from the US tax people though, so off we went on holiday to Italy, and back we came to find still nothing. All this for an almost-zero tax return: actually, due to some bizarre tax rule related to long-distance telephone accounts, the IRS actually owed Gloria thirty dollars. And guess what? One chilly Saturday afternoon in November, thirty dollars was deposited from the IRS into our US bank account. Nothing in the mail of course, but now we had proof: they had found the tax return and processed it. Now we were allowed to re-enter the visa process!
Of course, it's one thing knowing that the IRS has processed your taxes, it's quite another to prove it. From what we could tell, we now had to print out yet another form, fax it to an office in Austin, Texas, have them mail the tax return printout to someone in Gloria's family, and have them courier it over as quickly as possible. Except - well, we had discovered in our dealings with the US Embassy in London that they had a small IRS office there. We knew they didn't give tax advice or help with filling out the hugely-complex US tax forms, but perhaps they were linked up to the main computer and thus could provide the printout we needed? Gloria walked in to the Embassy (as a US citizen!) and asked. Yes, said a helpful lady, I'll do it for you right now.
Right now? For free? Were things finally starting to accelerate for us?
So with tax printouts and joint sponsor forms completed, we sent it all off to the US Embassy by SMS courier (despite the fact I was working in London and could easily have dropped it all in by hand - not allowed to do that!) and waited. Three to five days, we'd been told. That's if it's successful. (If I had been denied, incidentally, it would have been very difficult for me to ever enter the US as I'd never be allowed to do the I-94 visa waiver form that you normally do when you visit the US on holiday - instead I'd have to apply for a temporary visa each time, and given I'd been denied a visa before, the chances are I'd never be allowed to enter the US. They hadn't told us that when the process began. But I digress).
The following Wednesday we got a text message (sent the previous day, but hey SMS are a courier with a fine reputation. Cough.) saying "please stay in all day tomorrow (ie today by the time I received the message), the courier will deliver your documents between 6am and 6pm." I was in London of course, but luckily Gloria was in. The courier arrived and initially refused to hand over the package ("I need proof of ID for Duncan." "You mean his passport?" "Yes." "It's in that package you have in your hand, idiot.") but eventually was convinced to do so. Opened the package and there it was, my passport with a visa in it, a long small-print letter and an A4 sized beige envelope full of stuff. Woo-hoo!
Opening the pretty-much unmarked envelope to see what was inside, it turned out to just be all our application forms, information etc. Then read the letter:
"Do not open the envelope. If you do, it will invalidate the visa and you will have to go to the Embassy to get a new one."
Oops.
But the other funny thing (apart from there being nothing on the seal-side of the envelope saying "DO NOT OPEN" or anything helpful like that) was that there was a "personal data" sheet attached to the front of the envelope, saying stuff like my date of birth, mother's name etc. And it proudly proclaimed the following:
- Place of birth: Southampton (err, try Plymouth, like it says on my passport)
- Last place of residence: London (no, how about Southampton, the address you just mailed this package to?)
- Occupation: Student / children under 16 (where did they get that from?)
And the best bit was, since we'd now opened the envelope we weren't supposed to, we could now see all the application forms we'd filled out. And there it was: place of birth - Plymouth; place of residence - Southampton; occupation - Research Fellow in Computer Science.
So we phoned that wonderful £1.20 per minute visa helpline again. "We can't help, it's not our department." Really? Aren't you the visa department? And isn't this a visa issue? "No, it's an immigration issue." What's their phone number then? "You can't phone them." They don't have telephones? "They don't have external lines. You must email them."
Sheesh again. We emailed. No response the next day. No response the day after that. No response the day after that. What to do?
Well, the letter with the visa had said "you will need to go to the Embassy and get another one [visa]." So we took it literally and headed off to the Embassy, where you can't enter unless you have an appointment. We had no appointment, nor any means of getting one, nor any means of asking anyone how we get one. Went at 10.10am. Almost nobody queueing. We realised they tell everyone they have an 8.30 appointment just to get them all there early. Come at 10.10 and there's nobody there. Up we went to the lady at the entrance to the security area.
"When's your appointment for?"
We don't have one. Here's the situation: opened the package by mistake and a lot of the data is wrong. We phoned and emailed but have no response, and we need to get this stuff rectified. it said to go to the Embassy, so here we are.
"Lots of people open the envelope, it happens often."
(Well, why not mark it "do not open" across the seal?)
Hold on a minute," she continued, pulling out her mobile phone and calling someone inside the building.
"They opened the envelope, but also some of the personal data is wrong. They want to drop it off now to be corrected and we should allow it, because it's the Embassy's fault that the data is wrong."
It's the Embassy's fault? Did she really say that? Yes, she did.
"OK," she said to us, "Go through security, don't take a number, don't wait to be called, just go straight to desk thirteen."
Seriously?
In we went. Straight to desk thirteen. Nobody there. A man in the office behind saw us and came over. We explained the situation, gave the correct data for the sheet and even showed him the correct data we'd filled out on our forms.
"Not sure how long it will take," he said, being very non-committal as to whether he was talking minutes, hours, days or weeks. We'd learned that you simply can't tell even those kinds of scales with this process. "Do you want to wait a bit, just in case they can release it quickly?"
So we waited. Fifteen minutes later, perhaps less, we were summoned back to the desk.
"There's the new visa," he said, showing us a shiny new visa on the inside of my passport. "The old one has been cancelled. He flicked over a page and showed us the previous visa, now stamped all over with the words "CANCELLED WITHOUT PREJUDICE".
He gave us the new, sealed envelope and correct data sheet, the passport, and another copy of the letter saying "don't open the envelope" (among other things). He also went through the letter with us, explaining it point by point in a manner that was very helpful given that the language used is often very ambiguous. He smiled, was polite and actually seemed like he wanted to help.
Were we honestly in the same building as in October when we'd been told conflicting stories about what we had to provide and had left in tears because of the rudeness of the staff and the implied accusations of not filing taxes? Were we dreaming?
No we weren't, because as I write this I have the visa and unopened envelope sitting beside me on the floor. The other thing we saw in the letter just a couple of days ago was a sentence buried in the middle of some small print telling us to bring the chest X-ray photograph with us on the plane to show to the immigration officer when we land. Lucky we didn't throw that away. Funny how nobody had told us at any stage that we need to keep that.
But the best bit of the letter is the start of it. It reads, and I jest not:
We are pleased you intend to immigrate to the United States.
They're pleased? They hide it very, very well.
Postscript: Some twelve days after emailing the immigration department, we still have not received a response. Luckily it doesn't matter any more.
Yes, that's right, we (more specifically, I) have finally been given a visa to move to the USA. It wasn't easy, it wasn't fun and it wasn't something I'd ever recommend. But it's done, and as we reflect on the process, it's worth running through a few things we learned along the way in case anyone reading this blog wants to get a marriage visa to move to the US.
The process began in May when we started considering the possibility of moving. We investigated the process from the US Embassy website and realised it was a multi-stage process, the first of which was mainly to do with proving that Gloria was a US citizen. That's why we have passports, you may think. You'd be wrong. For the US Visa and Immigration service, we had to fill in a whole bunch of forms and wait two months for them to even look at it all. Eventually they said ok, we agree Gloria is a US citizen and is allowed to sponsor a spouse.
Then they turned their attention to me. We had to fill in another bunch of forms but also we had to get a whole series of other pieces of information, most of which we had in our possession (long-form birth certificate, for instance) but one of which we didn't (police check from sometime in the last twelve months). Had we known in advance we needed one, I'd have gone to the Police Station and asked them for one some time before, since it takes 40 days for one to arrive. In addition, they asked for Gloria's "most recent tax return", which (since the IRS were insisting on making me apply for a US tax number simply because I was married to a US citizen) was the 2005 return rather than the 2006 return, which was still in process. We phoned the £1.20 per minute helpline, who responded "you need to email instead." We emailed, asking whether they meant us to bring the 2005 tax return or the as-yet-not-processed 2006 return. response: Thank you for your email enquiry. Unfortunately we can only accept the most recent tax return. Well, that clears that up then. Anyway, eventually we got all of this documentation together and so filled in more forms and said "we have everything you've asked, please can we have an interview now?"
In the meantime I made an appointment for, and attended, a medical where I had to pay a lot of money for a Harley Street doctor to do a five-minute examination and do a chest X-ray showing I didn't have TB. My local GP could have done all of that, but the US Embassy don't recognise the NHS as a valid medical practice. And let's not even talk about the blood tests I had to get in order to prove that I didn't need vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella because I'd had all three diseases. Anyway, after a good bit of hassle, they decided I was clean and so another hoop was successfully jumped through.
The Embassy wrote back. Interview date 9 October. Please arrange for a medical interview. Well, done that already. So we carefully got all the documents in order, headed to London, waited in line for our "8.30 appointment" (ha ha) in the pouring rain and eventually made it inside, took a ticket, waited two hours and eventually got called for our interview. Well, not really an interview as they never asked us anything other than "please give us the next document." It was much more like going to a bank teller window than an interview. But anyway, they told us that as all our income is UK earned, and the US Immigration service don't recognise income earned outside of the US (which is funny, because the US tax people certainly do recognise foreign earned income since Gloria has to pay tax on it) and as such we were under the poverty line and as such invalid for a marriage visa. The lady said we needed at least seventeen and a half thousand dollars in a US bank in order to meet this requirement, and thus we'd need a joint sponsor who could show they had seventeen and a half thousand dollars in a US account. Message is clear: only rich people are allowed to marry foreigners. Please go and sit down, the lady said, and we'll call you back later to let you know the decision.
Waited another hour or so, then called back to the desk where we were told our application for the visa had been suspended because (1) we had no money (actually, we had not earned US dollars, we had earned plenty of pounds sterling over the last twelve months) and thus we needed a joint sponsor who could show fifty thousand dollars of US savings. Fifty thousand. Not seventeen, we asked? No, fifty thousand, five-zero. And (2) we had provided no evidence of a completed 2006 tax return. It's in process as they're making me apply for a tax number. It's October, the lady said, taxes are filed by April so it has to have been processed by now. Essentially the message was "you're lying". In order to get the visa, she continued, you need to provide a completed 2006 tax return in addition to the joint sponsor. Now please take your chest X-ray photo and go away. (Why did they have my chest x-ray and why were they giving it to me now? I'd paid for it, I guess. Maybe I'll hang it on the wall.)
Gloria was in tears by this point. It's stressful enough to have to go through this long, largely pointless process but to be accused of lying by a rude US government employee who clearly would much rather we didn't exist was very bad indeed, especially when the reason the taxes weren't yet sorted was because it was another branch of US government employees, the IRS tax service, who were causing the delay.
I won't detail the tax side of it, except to say that they lost things, mis-processed things and changes the rules half way through such that I ended up being both denied and accepted for a US tax number. The good old IRS also have a telephone helpline, on which they told us more than once that they had no record of Gloria's tax return for 2006 because it was in transit from one office to another, but don't worry, it'll probably just show up somewhere in a few weeks. Hm, we thought, had they said that to the lady at the US Embassy they would certainly have been accused of lying. But what can you do? All we could do was wait.
Meantime a phone call to the visa helpline to clear up the discrepancy between the joint sponsor amounts we had been told... was it seventeen thousand or fifty thousand? Which was correct? Neither are correct, the man on the expensive phone line said, the joint sponsor just has to make up the shortfall in US funds to get the total up to seventeen thousand. Sheesh. Three different stories from three different people. Best bet, we thought, is to make sure all three situations were covered, including topping up our US bank account to the seventeen thousand amount and printing off a statement proving it.
Still nothing from the US tax people though, so off we went on holiday to Italy, and back we came to find still nothing. All this for an almost-zero tax return: actually, due to some bizarre tax rule related to long-distance telephone accounts, the IRS actually owed Gloria thirty dollars. And guess what? One chilly Saturday afternoon in November, thirty dollars was deposited from the IRS into our US bank account. Nothing in the mail of course, but now we had proof: they had found the tax return and processed it. Now we were allowed to re-enter the visa process!
Of course, it's one thing knowing that the IRS has processed your taxes, it's quite another to prove it. From what we could tell, we now had to print out yet another form, fax it to an office in Austin, Texas, have them mail the tax return printout to someone in Gloria's family, and have them courier it over as quickly as possible. Except - well, we had discovered in our dealings with the US Embassy in London that they had a small IRS office there. We knew they didn't give tax advice or help with filling out the hugely-complex US tax forms, but perhaps they were linked up to the main computer and thus could provide the printout we needed? Gloria walked in to the Embassy (as a US citizen!) and asked. Yes, said a helpful lady, I'll do it for you right now.
Right now? For free? Were things finally starting to accelerate for us?
So with tax printouts and joint sponsor forms completed, we sent it all off to the US Embassy by SMS courier (despite the fact I was working in London and could easily have dropped it all in by hand - not allowed to do that!) and waited. Three to five days, we'd been told. That's if it's successful. (If I had been denied, incidentally, it would have been very difficult for me to ever enter the US as I'd never be allowed to do the I-94 visa waiver form that you normally do when you visit the US on holiday - instead I'd have to apply for a temporary visa each time, and given I'd been denied a visa before, the chances are I'd never be allowed to enter the US. They hadn't told us that when the process began. But I digress).
The following Wednesday we got a text message (sent the previous day, but hey SMS are a courier with a fine reputation. Cough.) saying "please stay in all day tomorrow (ie today by the time I received the message), the courier will deliver your documents between 6am and 6pm." I was in London of course, but luckily Gloria was in. The courier arrived and initially refused to hand over the package ("I need proof of ID for Duncan." "You mean his passport?" "Yes." "It's in that package you have in your hand, idiot.") but eventually was convinced to do so. Opened the package and there it was, my passport with a visa in it, a long small-print letter and an A4 sized beige envelope full of stuff. Woo-hoo!
Opening the pretty-much unmarked envelope to see what was inside, it turned out to just be all our application forms, information etc. Then read the letter:
"Do not open the envelope. If you do, it will invalidate the visa and you will have to go to the Embassy to get a new one."
Oops.
But the other funny thing (apart from there being nothing on the seal-side of the envelope saying "DO NOT OPEN" or anything helpful like that) was that there was a "personal data" sheet attached to the front of the envelope, saying stuff like my date of birth, mother's name etc. And it proudly proclaimed the following:
- Place of birth: Southampton (err, try Plymouth, like it says on my passport)
- Last place of residence: London (no, how about Southampton, the address you just mailed this package to?)
- Occupation: Student / children under 16 (where did they get that from?)
And the best bit was, since we'd now opened the envelope we weren't supposed to, we could now see all the application forms we'd filled out. And there it was: place of birth - Plymouth; place of residence - Southampton; occupation - Research Fellow in Computer Science.
So we phoned that wonderful £1.20 per minute visa helpline again. "We can't help, it's not our department." Really? Aren't you the visa department? And isn't this a visa issue? "No, it's an immigration issue." What's their phone number then? "You can't phone them." They don't have telephones? "They don't have external lines. You must email them."
Sheesh again. We emailed. No response the next day. No response the day after that. No response the day after that. What to do?
Well, the letter with the visa had said "you will need to go to the Embassy and get another one [visa]." So we took it literally and headed off to the Embassy, where you can't enter unless you have an appointment. We had no appointment, nor any means of getting one, nor any means of asking anyone how we get one. Went at 10.10am. Almost nobody queueing. We realised they tell everyone they have an 8.30 appointment just to get them all there early. Come at 10.10 and there's nobody there. Up we went to the lady at the entrance to the security area.
"When's your appointment for?"
We don't have one. Here's the situation: opened the package by mistake and a lot of the data is wrong. We phoned and emailed but have no response, and we need to get this stuff rectified. it said to go to the Embassy, so here we are.
"Lots of people open the envelope, it happens often."
(Well, why not mark it "do not open" across the seal?)
Hold on a minute," she continued, pulling out her mobile phone and calling someone inside the building.
"They opened the envelope, but also some of the personal data is wrong. They want to drop it off now to be corrected and we should allow it, because it's the Embassy's fault that the data is wrong."
It's the Embassy's fault? Did she really say that? Yes, she did.
"OK," she said to us, "Go through security, don't take a number, don't wait to be called, just go straight to desk thirteen."
Seriously?
In we went. Straight to desk thirteen. Nobody there. A man in the office behind saw us and came over. We explained the situation, gave the correct data for the sheet and even showed him the correct data we'd filled out on our forms.
"Not sure how long it will take," he said, being very non-committal as to whether he was talking minutes, hours, days or weeks. We'd learned that you simply can't tell even those kinds of scales with this process. "Do you want to wait a bit, just in case they can release it quickly?"
So we waited. Fifteen minutes later, perhaps less, we were summoned back to the desk.
"There's the new visa," he said, showing us a shiny new visa on the inside of my passport. "The old one has been cancelled. He flicked over a page and showed us the previous visa, now stamped all over with the words "CANCELLED WITHOUT PREJUDICE".
He gave us the new, sealed envelope and correct data sheet, the passport, and another copy of the letter saying "don't open the envelope" (among other things). He also went through the letter with us, explaining it point by point in a manner that was very helpful given that the language used is often very ambiguous. He smiled, was polite and actually seemed like he wanted to help.
Were we honestly in the same building as in October when we'd been told conflicting stories about what we had to provide and had left in tears because of the rudeness of the staff and the implied accusations of not filing taxes? Were we dreaming?
No we weren't, because as I write this I have the visa and unopened envelope sitting beside me on the floor. The other thing we saw in the letter just a couple of days ago was a sentence buried in the middle of some small print telling us to bring the chest X-ray photograph with us on the plane to show to the immigration officer when we land. Lucky we didn't throw that away. Funny how nobody had told us at any stage that we need to keep that.
But the best bit of the letter is the start of it. It reads, and I jest not:
We are pleased you intend to immigrate to the United States.
They're pleased? They hide it very, very well.
Postscript: Some twelve days after emailing the immigration department, we still have not received a response. Luckily it doesn't matter any more.
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