Visa-Vie!

(Paulo Cocke and I on my 19th birthday...he stole that rose FOR ME!)

My bid for international Aussie-dom began this week…albeit with some procrastinating months previous whereby I printed and reprinted the required visa forms THREE times. With each form consisting of at least thirty pages, Dave wasn’t happiest with my complete lack of hippy ideals and paper wastage.

There were character checks (am still not sure I have any), photos (requisite glamorous shots with me in too much make-up, and fully coiffed hair….so much so that the Justice of Peace seriously doubted that these photos resembled the half shambled girl sitting in front of him chewing surreptitiously on a ragged fingernail) and Australian and British police checks (the worst thing I ever did in Blighty was not pay a car parking fine from Torquay hospital….I lived there for fucks.. and the worst thing I did here was get chucked out of a nightclub for being just a wee bit tipsy, losing my handbag and ‘apparently’ chatting up some man-child and agreeing to go home with him…I didn’t. Obviously! I was too drunk!!)

These visa forms are designed to wheedle information out of you like the Gestapo did with our very brave moustachioed airmen in WWII. The forms ask questions which sound very easy for twenty odd pages before slipping in a ‘and have you ever worked for a terrorism organisation or tried to kill innocent people in a way which would allow you prime time reportage on 'Americas Most Wanted'?

Before you know it you’re admitting to pulling off the wings of daddy long legs and hinting at a past career in people trafficking

You have to have your wits about you in this game or else they will pounce on a simple answer where you joke about not liking your paternal grandfather that much, where they come to the conclusion that you must have killed the old man and then cut off his limbs and used them in some sixth form art project. (Before you get all ‘Karma’ on me, I don’t have a paternal grandfather. My grandmother was a Janner after all!)

With all these forms the idea is to make them as complicated as possible so as to determine the ones who can actually understand a tenth of the questions and therefore allow them first dibs on their hallowed country. Hopefully, I have copied the correct answers off my good friends John, Sue and Dots exam papers, umm, I mean Visa forms so as to allow my full and cheesy smile to entice those middle aged, comb-over businessmen in the Department of Immigration to swoon over me (as so many old men do) and invite me to stay in their country permanently….

…and then my reign of terror shall begin. Mwwwaahhhhh, mwwwaaahhh, mmmwwaaaaaaaaahhhhh!