89 days

When we got to America we had to wait for ages to go through the passport gates, they are super uptight. I went first and the guy just barked at me to put my hands on the scanner, no Hi's or please or anything remotely friendly. Then he asked how long I was staying and I said 89 days.

He could not.fucking.believe it.

What are you doing for 89 days?
We're going to San Francisco and then getting a train back in a bow tie formation
In a what?
In the shape of a bow tie.

That doesn't take 89 days. 89 days is one day short of your visa, why are you staying for 89 days?

Umm, because it's one day short of the visa.
What are you doing for 89 days?
touristing it up
TOURISTING it UP?
Well, yeah, visiting friends, seeing sites, you know, being a tourist, with my husband, who's over there, it's an extended honeymoon.
For 89 days

At this point I'm like, dude, stop saying 89 days, I get it, you think 89 days is a long time.

Have you got your return ticket?
It's an E-ticket, I can show you the email.

He then barks at Josh to come forward and goes through the whole process again from the beginning. It seems the 90 day visa waver is just for show, you must be fucking mental to go to America for 89 days. Like, what the fuck are you going to do in a county this size for 89 days?For one thing I am going to spend some energy fucking HATING that dude.

so eventually, after some long pauses where he taps his pen on our passports, he takes all the paper work, sneers 'follow me' at us and chucks us in a room full of equally baffled people, hands our papers to some chump and barks at us to sit down.

We're thinking, but.. but.. we're English.

After a while this guy calls us up, You already get the idea about the 89 days line so I'll just give you the best bits:

Why are you guys in America for 89 days?
We're on an extended honeymoon
For three months? I never heard of anyone going on a honeymoon for three months
(you've never heard of Science either, don't let that be your guide).
When did you get married?
May
Pause, eyebrows, it's D E C E M B E R

Well spotted.


This goes on for ages, it's really embarrassing and more, Josh and I are both standing two feet lower than this tiny chump, thinking: Do not say anything funny. Do not take the piss. Do not apply sarcasm. Do not get angry. Do not tell him to go and fuck himself in the Americas. Hold. It. Down.

What do you do for a living?
We're both writers
Writers? So you write?
no we spit at things and cook. Jeeeeeeeeeeez
What do you write about?
Josh: I'm a music journalist
A music journalist?
Stop fucking repeating everything we say, it's making this nightmare take twice as long.
What kind of music do you journalise?
Wow, umm, new music mainly, I'm the UK editor of a music magazine in New York.

An you? What do you write?
Me: Feminist satire mainly.
F e m i n i s t   s a t i r e?
Yep.

And that's your job?
I also work in a gallery print house place
So what are they going to do? Just shut it down for 89 days while you 'honeymoon'
Umm, no, there are also other people who work there.


So, what are you guys doing for 89 days?
this again. Crickey.
We're staying in New York for two weeks, then going around and visiting people all over the country.
How come you have so many friends in America?
How do you answer that? Because... umm... It's a fucking massive country full of people

He started to get angry that we don't have a flat in London anymore, we realised we should have kept schtum on that one but when a little customs freak is barking shit at you it's really hard to lie, especially when there's two of you, and even though we should never have mentioned that we moved out, I think if we had got caught lying we wouldn't have stood a chance.

So you don't have an apartment?
We're staying at my parents
For how long?
Well, we're not staying there now, we're going on holiday
for 89 days?
Fuuuuuck offffffff.

Yeah, for 89 days, and then we're going back.
And then you're going back?
Yeah, we're going back.
And then what?
We were thinking of moving to Berlin
Berlin?
Yeah
Why Berlin?
...
It's nice
In Berlin?
Yeah
It's nice in Berlin?
Yeah
And it's that easy is it? You can just up and move to Germany, just like that?
It is SO hard to not take the piss out of this guy. It's the fucking EU you stupid bastard.

Then he says 'I'm sitting on the fence with you two' and we're running through the scenario where we get sent back to London and we walk into Glo Glos and have to tell everyone that fucking America wouldn't let us in and I think I might start crying, and wonder if it's worth the satisfaction of tell him to shove it up his illiterate ass and go and fuck himself. I don't even want to stay 89 days if it's going to be this cunty. We've been standing in front of the prick for nearly an hour at this point, and I'm starting to break.

Then he says, ok, you can go, but I'm going to watch you and you better be on that flight on the 21st of March, and you better not do any writing while you're here. I've got my eye on you.

Then he gave us back our passports and a tiny bit of me was disappointed because I've never wanted to go home so badly before.

It got better after that though.
It got drunk.

In other news

Our landlord is a massive crackpot. He moved in to the house underneath ours which is mainly why we left. The final straw came when he wanted to give our keys to the new tenants two days before we moved out. That's bad enough but instead of calling, emailing or ringing the doorbell, he just stuck his head through our front door and shouted up the stairs. Ewwwww old man get out of our house.

We've been having a fight with him about £100 for a tap. He ripped us the fuck off basically, in the last bout he said he wished he had charged us for the damp, because we hadn't circulated the air in our flat properly. Um, that's because we're not a ceiling fan and a draft. He said we'd scared away potential tenants with the funny smell. That was his final word, 'you stink'.

So, to give you an idea of the kind of batty old twat we're dealing with, when they moved in they obviously didn't have any curtains, so at night you could totally see all their boxes of stuff through the basement window. You could see it twice because they installed some very classy mirrored wardrobes. Anyway, I guess they got paranoid that someone would look in and see an immense pile of tacky crap so they wanted to block out the windows.

If that was me, I would have tied a bed sheet, towel or similar to the curtain rail from inside the flat. But our man in the basement had a better solution, and it looks like this:

Genius.

Goodbye Ernie

We left the building from which Ernie and I whiled away many hours staring at each other. But not before he bust out his winter wardrobe in full.  It consists of this one item, which Ernie is modelling for our farewell pleasure.

See you around Ernie.