Weezl is leegl!!!
Got confirmation of my second visa today. Actually, “confirmation” is a bit of an overstatement — I got a package with all my stuff in it and a cover letter that said, “here’s your stuff; you’ll get your ID next week.” So I guess that’s a yes.
The first visa was the fiancée visa — required biometric data, good for six months, entitled me to enter the country and get married. I’ve been here longer than six months, but I was covered by that visa for the fourteen weeks they considered my second application. That’s standard turnaround for this one, but I was starting to sweat a little.
This visa is the Further Leave to Remain — biometrics again, and then I’ve got two years less a month from the date I entered the country to apply for the next one. During which time I have to take the Life in the UK Test, a multiple choice exam in which your humble weasel regurgitates facts such as the year Her Maj was crowned and the percentage of the population that is Hindu. No shit. Really looking forward to it.
Ordinarily, the next visa along would be the Indefinite Leave to Remain, and soon after I’d be eligible for citizenship. But they’re in the process of rolling those two things together into a Provisional Citizenship, with community service and some shit to be determined later. The almost certain change in governments we’ll have in the next year may not change that — sometimes the civil services rocks on regardless.
Anyhow, the important thing is — I can get a job now!
Oh.
Shit.
July 10, 2009 — 6:18 pm
Comments: 44
Jam and Jesus
That’s who you can blame for the lack of a proper post today.
I promised to do the layouts on a guidebook to the local church — the quaint little place we done got hitched at. Only, all my work muscles have atrophied and it took me forever to remember how all the dinguses and thingies worked. Oh well. “Making excuses” is my besteses job skill, and one I will NEVER forget.
And then I remembered my strawberry conserves were due for the final boil and potting up tonight.
Jam. Jesus. Where the hell am I and how the fuck did I get here…?
July 6, 2009 — 9:16 pm
Comments: 8
Partners in crime
They work as a team. Dude on the left pinches scones; dude on the right clotted cream. I don’t think the lady who owns them spends a whole lot on chicken feed or Friskies.
Heh. Yeah. That’s right. I managed to screw two posts out of this one time a few weeks ago when we stopped for tea. That’s what a lazy sack of shit I am this week.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
July 3, 2009 — 6:57 pm
Comments: 26
Please help me. I’m trapped in an episode of the Avengers.
…and I look complete shit in a leather catsuit.
We stopped for cream tea (!) one afternoon and this steam train (!) hooted down the tracks behind the parking lot. It isn’t part of an antique steam fair or anything; that’s a genu-wine scheduled train service. Toot toot!
That wasn’t today, though. Today, I have been practicing conservation of energy. If you’ve noticed a certain lack of oomph in my efforts this week, our little corner of England has had itself a by-god heat wave. Nothing compared to Tennessee or <ugh> Louisiana — or even Rhode Island — can do, but I reckon it got into the nineties. And humid. And almost no-one here has air conditioning.
It hit the crescendo today and it’s supposed to break tonight. The moon was orange when I went out earlier, and it’s vanished altogether now. We hear the occasional rumble from the direction of France.
Yep. That there’s another build-your-own-joke.
July 2, 2009 — 8:04 pm
Comments: 21
Nuclear wasteses; I eated it
Not really. This is one of Scubafreak’s six cats, coming along nicely, thank you. They’ll be ready to harvest any day now. He’s got a classified going out next week trying to rid himself of a few. If that doesn’t work, what say we all pile into a rental car, drive to Colorado, and take his flash gun away from him before he hurts somebody.
In fate’s ongoing Summer War on Celebrities, actress Mollie Sugden died today. She was 86. Best known for her role as Betty Slocombe in Brit TV’s Are You Being Served? She managed to outlive Wendy Richard (who played the young tart) by some months.
As I am tired from a long day of shopping, making black currant syrup and choppin’ broccoli, I invite you to put paragraphs one and two together and build your own Mrs Slocombe’s pussy joke.
July 1, 2009 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 22
D’oh, a deer. A preemie deer.
Rupert the Deer, born two to three weeks prematurely by c-section after his mother was hit by a car. On second thought, don’t follow the link — despite the best care, Rupert didn’t make it. Check out Smoothie the Squirrel instead, and join me in laughing at the misfortune of others. There, isn’t that better?
Brought to you by St Tiggywinkle’s Wildlife Hospital. Because Britons are bugfuck crazy about animals.
Good weekend, all!
June 26, 2009 — 6:25 pm
Comments: 16
Thank christ it’s the solstice
Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in our hemisphere. Thirty thousand hippies turned up at Stonehenge, but it was cloudy and they couldn’t see the sun rise, so all they dressed up like assholes and got stoned. Oh, wait — that’s what they were going to do anyway.
This is the first I’ve spent time in England in Summer — it costs a fortune to fly overseas during the tourist season, so all my trips were off-peak — and I am so damned happy to see the solstice come and go.
See this map? I threw a lassoo around Britain and pulled it directly West. You’ll note that London is more or less in a line with Hudson Bay. Here’s what the forecast said for the day of the solstice:
sunrise sunset
London 4:47 9:21
Providence 5:13 8:24
Nashville 5:31 8:08
Given that it’s light long before sunrise and stays that way long after sunset, you can easily see that it never gets dark in England. Land of the Frakkin’ Midnight Sun, that’s what it is. Also, lucky me, it’s The Year It Never Rains Along the South Coast. The sun, it burnnnnssss ussssss.
Of course, I’ll catch up on my sleep in Winter, when it’s dark for six months. Natural born Mole Person, me.
June 22, 2009 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 15
Impenetrable symbols
I’ve had to create graphics in international symbols style; I know boiling ideas down to a few simple shapes is not easy. Still, half the damn things are so utterly impenetrable, I feel sure it would be better just to spell it out in Maori or Sanskrit or whatever and let me look it up in the dictionary. (My favorite sign in the States was the international symbol for library. Pointless. What would someone who can’t read the local lingo need with a library?)
Britain seems more than ordinarily decorated with these things. Seems everywhere we go, some poor bubble-headed bastard is getting electrocuted, sliced in half like firewood and pan-fried. He should sue somebody.
Today, I ran across one so impenetrable, I’m still trying to work it out (see above). So far, this is my best guess:
■Holy shit!
■According to the book
■Rays of light will come shooting out of your face, your bellybutton and the tips of your toes
■If you stand too close to the monolith
Got a better idea? I can’t seem to find an international symbol dictionary, so I’m opening it up to suggestions. And no — I’m not going to tell you where I saw it. That would be cheating.
June 16, 2009 — 5:50 pm
Comments: 29
Visible from space
Here at Stoatiweaselco, we believe in going the extra mile. Giving a little more. Being there for you.
Sure, it took the Sun to break the story, and Drudge to disseminate it around the world. But only sweasel.com searched Google maps, tirelessly explored the neighborhood and ultimately discovered the Surrey rooftop on which some schoolboys years ago spelled out “COCK” in bricks. Just to bring you this URL.
Don’t thank us. It’s what we’re here for.
June 15, 2009 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 13
The weekend of schmooze…
w00t! Stolen internet connection! I ain’t forking over £6 an hour to read twenty Indonesian penis enlargement offers and spend quality time on my own damn blog. I love you guys, but I’m not paying to hang around with you.
We’re in Ye Olde Docklands, where Uncle B has to do a touch of professional schmoozing for a few days. I took this picture out the window at a cocktail party.
Yep, that there’s the Dome in the background — the Boil on the Bum of Greenwich. I’ve only been there once, when it was still just a building site. There was a sort of shed with the architect’s rendering of what the thing was going to look like, plus a guestbook to sign. Somebody before us had written, “why don’t you fuck off back to America and take your ugly building with you?”
So, so unfair.
Cocktail party. Heh. Not to worry. Weasel isn’t selling out to adulthood. I drank beer and wore jeans and shared my recipe for pan-fried rattlesnake. It’s handy, being able to use my immigrantness to mask my hopeless inadequacy as a grownup.
June 12, 2009 — 8:10 am
Comments: 25