Open Writing

Now that we’ve got a proper conversation started you should, according to the established etiquette of such things, enquire of me how this drastic about-turn came about. It goes without saying that, as you’re a reader, you aren’t bound by any such etiquette; you can walk away at any time and I’d be none the wiser. As the writer, and having got this far, I find myself forced to plough on, regardless of whether anybody’s ever going to read it. Hmm – maybe, before this philosophical knot gets any knottier, I’d better get on with that ploughing?

To put it in a nutshell, it was all my daughter’s fault. In itself, this might not have been unexpected – as Dads the World Over are all too aware, daughters seem to take a delicious delight in surprising their parents, so, really, should we be at all surprised when they do? That’s another philosophical knot that’s worth avoiding – this story is going to get complicated enough without having them muddying our waters.

Right; it all started innocuously enough. Our Hazel, bless her cotton socks, met someone who turned out to be her “Mr. Right”. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong in that – it is, after all, what makes the World go round, unless, that is, you’re a died-in-the-wool capitalist! But, at rock bottom, it was the only and entire cause of this unintended upheaval. In the normal run of things, this encounter would have been a bog-standard process – meet someone, fall in love, get married (or at least, as these things seem to go nowadays, form some sort of “partnership”), settle down, and confirm Pam and me as doting grandparents.

To be fair, that last one was in the bag already, because Hazel had Jake from a previous, failed relationship. This would have been, and indeed had been, enough to send several otherwise potentially suitable suitors scuttling for cover, but not our Mike. As far as he was concerned, Jake was part of the package. It doesn’t sound like there was much cause for major upheaval here, does it? Well, here’s the crunch. Mike was (and still is!) a Kiwi, in the UK on a two-year travelling visa. He had no intention of settling in the UK and, as many might be tempted to add, “Who could blame him for that?”

To cut this particular part of a long story short, when Mike had to go home, Hazel and Jake went along for a “holiday”, and Hazel returned convinced that she would be happy to settle with Mike in New Zealand. Soon, Mike came back to England, they were wed, the stork duly delivered grandson no. 2, Kian, and a little over a year later (July 2003), having conquered New Zealand’s strict immigration rules, off they all trotted – leaving Pam and me at something of a loose end. After all, grandparental doting is decidedly difficult at a distance of 12,000 miles, is it not?

Hazel, though, is not one to suffer setbacks, gladly or otherwise. She has responded to the worst that Life has chucked at her by becoming uncommonly resilient and determined, a daughter of which any parent would be proud. At first, she was racked by two opposing forces – her intense desire to start a new life with Mike, and devastation at the prospect of leaving her Mum and Dad at the far side of the World. But soon, true to form, she transmuted her pain into a plan – and executed it with consummate cunning.

Her insistence, that, once they were settled in, Pam and I come and visit for a month, seemed perfectly natural. Fans of “Last of the Summer Wine” will nod sagely when I liken us to passing innocents wandering into Auntie Wainwright’s shop for a quiet browse. At the end of January 2004 we emerged, clutching our “purchase”. Utterly unintended – by us, that is – this “purchase” was an “implementation plan” for following in their footsteps, sold to us on the strength of a whole pile of irrefutable arguments, and gift-wrapped in the tattered remnants of our trifling objections. Quite out of the blue, our future had been hijacked by that now ominous-sounding “Unless prevented”.

Back home in Brighouse, ever the obedient parents, we dutifully started on the plan. First came feasibility. I checked the NZ Immigration web-site, and there it was – for persons of independent means, zilch! When, some time later, I mentioned this to an old University chum who worked for the UK Immigration department, he raised a quizzical eyebrow: “Really? They must be about the only country that DOESN’T have an ‘independent means’ policy!” However, in our case there was an alternative: a policy designed to reunite families. I carefully checked the qualifying conditions. No problem there, so boldly on to Step Two: “Apply for Early Retirement”.

My company pension scheme operated a “rule of 85”, whereby (for those who don’t know about such arcane devices) once the sum of your age and your number of years pensionable service exceeds 85, you may apply for early retirement without loss of benefits. You may apply, that is, but unless you’ve reached the Big Six-Oh, they can turn you down if they’ve a mind to. I was nearly 57 and, having already sweated over whether we could manage on the money, I was now sweating with apprehension over whether they’d accept my application.

We had it figured like this. As things stood, what we would get for our house would pay for the whole shooting match – application costs, removals, air fares, buying a decent domicile, and setting up shop (car, white goods and so forth) – and still leave us a very comfy nest-egg to beef up the pension lump sum.

When – glory be! – the early retirement was granted, with effect from 30 September 2004, everything seemed set fair. We got cracking. I started downloading from the web-site all the documents we’d need, and Pam busied herself with collating the prints. The idea was to get all the wheels lined up, so that when the Big Day arrived all we’d need to do was give them a shove to get them rolling.

At this point, the Unexpected gave us a right poke in the eye. Looking in the Even Smaller Print that she had discovered tucked behind or beneath the Small Print, Pam found ANOTHER condition. The qualifying conditions we’d studied had said that we would have to be sponsored by the immediate relative (i.e. our daughter) whom we would be rejoining. That was fair enough, but these conditions had omitted to mention that the said relative could not do this until she herself had clocked up THREE YEARS’ residency. If this, rather than the web page, was correct, then we wouldn’t be eligible to apply for residency until July 2006!

Now, I know that some of you will be thinking, “The naïve twerp! Why didn’t he check thoroughly instead of going off half-cocked?” Well, with the benefit of hindsight, I DID check thoroughly, inasmuch as I followed the links down to the checklist of conditions, examined that and all the “further information” linked therefrom, and found no mention of this constraint. This we found only when we were downloading the PDF files, which were not referenced from the checklist page.

In mounting desperation we read, researched, cross-referenced, and then re-read. The apparent contradiction was finally resolved, to our immense dissatisfaction, by an e-mail query. Incidentally, I’m pleased to say that, since then, the web-site has been suitably amended, so it’s much less likely that anyone else will fall into this hole. Mike’ parents, bless them, offered to sponsor us, but – not unexpectedly – they didn’t qualify as sponsors because they weren’t blood relatives.

So, this barrier remained implacable: those wheels could not be shoved until I had been retired for the best part of two years. Nearly TWO years – to put it mildly, we contemplated this yawning temporal chasm with dismay. Luckily, at the time we didn’t know how much longer it was REALLY going to take, or by how much the “things” that “stood” would shift their footing in all that time.

The plan went onto hold, but with one modification. We decided we had better bridge the gap. Soon after my retirement, we went over for a full three months (December 2004 to February 2005), primarily trying to maintain some direct contact with the family, but also partly for a much-needed holiday, and partly to conduct an “experiment in living”. Gluttons for punishment – which some of you must be! – can read about this interim adventure in these three scintillating instalments:

http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2005/01/come_fly_with_m.php
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2005/02/do_they_know_ut.php
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2005/03/this_is_new_zea.php