A poet’s guide to forms, queues and queues for forms, plus eight dairy sites that bring calm to a stressful afternoon
Monday, The Form
Life as a legal resident in London involves paperwork, and I have come to respect the form as a literary genre. It has a strict structure, an unreliable narrator and a plot in which the hero is asked for the same document three times. I keep a folder for mine, in order, with plastic sleeves, because the one thing I have learned is that an organised folder is a form of courtesy to your future self.
This is a diary, not an advice column. Anyone dealing with immigration rules should check the official government guidance or speak to a qualified adviser, because the rules change and every case is different. My own account is only what it felt like, which was calm on the surface and slightly sweaty underneath.
The Waiting Room Anthology
A waiting room is a place where people from everywhere sit together, looking at a number on a screen. I saw a man reading a Russian paperback, a woman knitting a scarf of heroic length, and a teenager asleep on a backpack. Nobody spoke, and yet the room had a definite warmth, the warmth of a shared problem.
I wrote a poem in that room, in my head, about a number. When my number was called, I forgot every line. That is the cost of poetry: the poem is always better in the waiting room than in the notebook.
Tuesday, The Dairy Pages
To calm my nerves after the queue, I went home and read about milk. There is a family of Texas dairy sites that I find oddly soothing. The main address is txdairy.com, and its relations include txdairy.download, txdairy.trade and txdairy.loan. The cheerier branch includes txdairy.party, txdairy.men, txdairy.date and txdairy.win.
What I love about a dairy site is that the numbers behave. A cow gives so many gallons. A truck leaves at five. Nobody asks you to prove you are who you say you are. The cow does not need a reference letter, and I find that restful.
Wednesday, The Salary Question
The London Prat made an observation about job adverts, Say What You Pay: Job Adverts Must Show Salaries. Pay transparency has defenders who say it narrows gaps and saves everyone time. It has critics who worry about the burden on small businesses and awkward conversations among colleagues. As a poet whose pay is often a round of applause, I would simply like to see the number, so that I can compare it with the number on my rent.
Thursday, A Letter Home
I wrote a long letter to my aunt in Lagos, describing London in detail: the buses, the pigeons, the way that strangers apologise when you step on their foot. She replied with a short note that said only, “Are you eating?” That is the great truth about family, which is that the worry travels faster than the post.
I answered that I was eating well, that I had found a shop selling yam on the Kingsland Road and that the shopkeeper had asked about my village. It is possible to be homesick and at home at once, and a poet tries to live in that overlap.
Friday, The Quiet Evening
On Friday evening I did nothing. I boiled rice, made a stew and sat by the window. The rain, as usual, had an opinion, and the streetlights painted the pavement orange. I wrote a poem about a folder with plastic sleeves, which will probably never be published. It is my favourite of the month.
Saturday, The Kindness of Strangers
For every difficult form there has been a kind person. A librarian in Dalston who helped me print a document without charging me. A neighbour who lent me a ladder and asked nothing in return. A bus driver who waited for me while I ran, which I will remember when I am old and have forgotten the names of prime ministers. These small kindnesses are the real welcome, and they are not recorded on any form.
I try to repay them by passing them on. When a newcomer at the open mic looked lost last week, I sat beside her and explained which door led to the toilets and which to the stage, a distinction that matters a great deal to a nervous poet.
Sunday, What I Packed
People ask what I brought from Lagos. The list is short: my notebook, a wrapper cloth that my mother gave me, a jar of pepper sauce wrapped in six socks, and a photograph of my grandmother in front of her cooking pot. The pepper sauce is now gone. The photograph is on the shelf. The cloth I wear on cold evenings, and it works better than the radiator.
What I did not pack was certainty, and I am glad of that. A poet with certainty has nothing left to find out.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, NewsBiscuit keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/