Awww. There she is, Daughter, having chopped off her fringe nine or so years ago, thus ending up with a mullet. A few days later (not sure if it was before or after this pic was taken), her left eye came up like a tennis ball for some unknown reason. It did go down again, but for a while she looked like something you would put in the window at halloween.
This is my LO for this week's challenge at Scrapping Out LOUD! where there is no sketch because Jessica is very poorly. Get well soon, Jessica! A nice simple challenge to use three different pps - I treated myself to the lovely Urban Prairie collection pack so you'll be seeing a fair bit of it on here.
Anyway. Big Fat Aaargh. Let me tell you about dd's passport. It doesn't exist at the moment, but she needs it for May, which is getting closer and closer. I've already paid for the trip to Belgium. I've also paid for two tickets to some noise on the beach she wants to go to for her birthday, and for some inexplicable reason gave 50 quid to Visible Teenager because his friend had already bought him a ticket for the Reading festival that he didn't have the money to pay for.
And Youngest said he needed some bearings for his skateboard. Only 20 quid so I GAVE IT TO HIM...then there was a ramp-building day so I paid 15 quid for that. Oh, and it's cheap day at the cinema on Tuesday so this evening we went to see The Boat That Rocked.
So. The passport. Not something I wanted to pay much money for really. When my car wasn't working I ran to the post office twice. The first time they pointed out that I'd missed a bit off the form, and the second time they said I needed a full birth certificate.
This wasn't a good start as it always makes me cross when they can't tell you all the things you've done wrong at the same time. It must be part of their training, although the second woman I saw had obviously been poorly trained because she also told me that my photos were rubbish. She should clearly have saved that for my third visit.
Today I thought I would take a leisurely drive to the pleasant market town of Leatherhead (no, George Clooney doesn't live there) to fetch a full copy of Daughter's birth certificate. But I decided to ring first, and there it all began.
Firstly, they don't have a proper phone number. They have a stupid non-geographical phone number which costs extra money, and which I cannot ring from my landline because I have barred expensive calls due to the presence of expensive teenagers in the home.
I therefore rang them on my mobile. Oh, said the lady, you can go there but they'll just send you the certificate in the post anyway, why don't you order it over the phone? It only takes ten minutes. Oh, said I, I'd better get some more credit then.
So I rang off and got some credit, and rang back, and got halfway through ordering the birth certificate, at which point it became apparent that I couldn't remember where my daughter was born and was in fact telephoning the wrong office at 25p a minute.
The nice lady gave the mad woman the number for the right office, and lo it was a proper ordinary phone number. However, the right office don't do a phone ordering service unless you're prepared to wait a couple of weeks for the certificate. Or I could drive into London, find somewhere to park, pay to park there and hang around for 3 hours. Hmmm...
Another option was to phone the NATIONAL Register Office (this was getting bigger and bigger), who would send me a copy within 48 hours. Hooray! Sadly they had a stupid phone number.
So eventually I managed to order the certificate, which cost 5 quid in phone credit and £27.50 to get it quick (as opposed to the £7 I'd pay if I drove into London, found somewhere to park etc etc).
Excitingly, I now get to travel into London on the train in order to get Daughter's passport in person. And pay for that. Probably with a big fat surcharge levied on disorganised people who find themselves needing their passport in a hurry.
Stupid Belgians.
