Lines

Mono Monday - Patterns

Pattern - system, order, arrangement, sequence, structure, scheme, plan, form configuration.

In architectural terms I think you can see where I was coming from with this one.

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Off to London today for the Russian Visa application. 

You queue to see someone who then goes through your form to check that it is all in order.  We were only queuing for about 20 minutes so at that stage things were going well. I nearly got the forms correct, which of course meant that they were wrong. At which stage the day takes on a flavour not unlike a scene from Dante's inferno.  Don't get me wrong, everyone was perfectly pleasant, its just the process itself that you could find frustrating.

It seems that I'd got the answer to one of the questions wrong (which was embarrassing for me).  Unfortunately it meant that we had to go away and correct the form. You cannot actually amend the form you have printed out.  Instead the process requires you to retrieve your application from their on-line system, correct the relevant element and then print it out again, using their computers. For which they charge you.  Oh yes, and for which you have to queue, because there are quite a few other people who have not been able to get the form right.

Fortunately I had a note of the application numbers and passwords and was able to deal with matters there and then.  I felt very sorry for the lady next to me, who was clearly struggling with the technology and didn't remember what her password was.  The staff just explained to her that as she could not remember it she would have to complete the form from scratch, or go away and come back on another day.

They also spotted that Cathy's photo was identical to her passport photo which was 10 months old and therefore not taken within the last 6 months.  So we had to go and get fresh photos for Cathy's application.

We then had to go back to join the queue to see the officials.  The chap in front of us (who had done something similar on his application form), had the misfortune to have originally been seen by someone who had now finished for the day, so he had to take another ticket and queue up to see a new official. We then managed to get lucky, because at this point the lady we had originally been seen by beckoned us over and dealt with us there and then (including the taking of our finger prints).

So with that (not entirely unexpected) lengthy stay in the Russian Visa section over, we had a little free time and raced off to see the Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and if you've not seen it and you are at all interested in painting you definitely should.  We loved it.  I would have taken a shot from that exhibition but they had banned photography.  So this shot is taken in the normal gallery space where photography was allowed.  

Time was by now pressing so we high tailed it back to Uxbridge where I had parked and drove home in the rain.