My love of The Royal Mail.

And by Love, I mean deep rooted veangeful hatred.

Applying for a visa is stressful at the best of times. I'm not going to talk you through the process - if you know me, you've already been talked through it multiple times and if you don't know me then there's no reason for me to clutter your brain with useless information. Suffice to say that there's a lot of paperwork and beureacracy and it's generally one fat nightmare.

This is not helped in the slightest by multiple postal strikes, meaning letters from embassies are taking over a month to arrive and police certificates are MIA... All of this has nurtured in me a neuroses that wouldn't be out of place on Ally McBeal. The mere mention of post (trans. 'mail') causes palpitations and shortness of breath, and I've memorised the most recent statement on the strike, having read it 1000 times in the hope that this time it might say something positive. I haven't seen any dancing babies yet, but watch this space.

So far, the only balm to my neuroses has been various forums like britishexpats.com. As far as I can figure out, guardian angels sit at their computers all day long, just waiting for me to pose crazed questions. They then calmly answer them, referencing all sorts of supporting evidence, assuaging my fears and paving the way towards paranoia free sleep. Bless them, I say.

Goodness knows who can be bothered to soothe the likes of me - I'd be tempted to give the wrong information, like when tourists ask me where London Bridge is and I feel the urge to send them not towards Tower Bridge (what they actually mean by London Bridge) but towards Elephant and Castle. That'd teach them for disrupting my stride by walking slowly, standing on the left on escalators and taking pictures of street signs. But thankfully, these visa angels are much much kinder, patient and magnanimous than me and I am truly grateful for it.

Maybe the Visa Angels have been sent to balance out the Royal Mail Sods, either way the fragile equilibrium of Hannah is just about being maintained. For now.