Diary

It is perhaps the first thing to check if you are considering moving abroad, as different countries have different rules, and it can even vary across the country. If you cannot make a decent living, then unless you have a burning desire to change careers it tends to make the whole emigrating thing moot.

I had trained for my profession a long time ago, and had not kept all the notes as they had gone for a ceremonial cremation quite a few years ago. This was bad news as I apparently had to take all of my exams again over a one week period. It sounded like complete hell and also made me feel a little bit whingy as anyone coming into the UK does not have to do the same thing. I could still work but only as an assistant. It would do but I didn't feel very gracious about it.

Maybe its a signal that I should become a lady of leisure I said to the husband. The grunting reply did not sound very polite.

“Why don't we cross that bridge when we come to it?” said he. “After all they may reject us”.

The form takes quite a while to fill in, and there are a lot of documents that have to be gathered up. They need all the obvious ones like birth and marriage, but also need a police certificate to prove you are not a criminal. You have to prove that you can support yourself once you are over there, and that means showing how much money you have behind you.

It costs a lot to apply, but you do get some of it back if they do not like the look of you. It is all done on a points system and we were okay on that part. If you get past the initial bit then you have the pleasure of going for a medical.

It was done and sent off. You can hear back in as little as three months, or it can take years. We took years. You can use a specialist firm to help you through the process, but we naively thought it was better to do it ourselves. On reflection this may not have been such a brilliant idea.

Waiting to see if you can emigrate puts you in a strange kind of limbo. It is difficult not to feel as if your life is on hold while you are waiting. You start to put off doing anything major around the house in case you do not get your money back later on. You put off buying electrical goods because they may end up on eBay a few months later. Now we had to break the news to everyone...