Doom. (And not the slightest bit of exaggeration.)

So this weekend I got rejected for my Fiance visa...

...OK I'm exaggerating...

(but not as much as I wish I was)

When I left the embassy on Friday morning, I was expecting to feel elated, overjoyed, relieved, with a weight lifted from my metaphorical and literal shoulders.

That (literal) weight was my passport. You see, had everything gone to plan, I would have walked out of the US Embassy passportless, as my passport would have been sitting in the embassy, happily awaiting the addition of a fiance visa to its hallowed pages. As it was, I walked out of the embassy passportfull and not entirely thrilled.

Here how it happens:

The sods gracious, kind and (omniscient) magnificent ones schedule my appointment for 8am, which means I have to arrive at 7.45 am, which means I have to leave the house at 7.00am, which means that I get up and force courage-inspiring porridge down my nervous and resistant throat at 6.30am. I deprive myself of my all-essential morning coffee(s) because a) when anxious, coffee makes me more so and b) it makes me need to pee and, as I've confessed previously, I'm a nervous pee-er. I don't want to have to pee at the embassy because I know from past experience that the voice announcing the numbers does not extend to the toilets, so I decide it'd be a good idea to forgo all liquid.

I have to queue outside, but thankfully England has chosen to be kind and it's not raining / snowing / sleeting / hailing for the first time in decades. I'm then ushered into a decontamination zone where they scan and frisk and search and then into the main building where I am given a number and told to wait...

...and wait...

...and wait...

The waiting room in the embassy is just rows and rows of chairs, full of paper-clutching suckers (like me) listening intently to the recitation of endless numbers. All around the room are booths like you get in a post office, with the important booths at the far out-of-the-way end of the room. Each time a number gets called a paper-laden visa-hopeful scurries to the relevant booth.

In the middle of the room are TV screens which, along with flashing numbers-of-doom-and-consequence, have multiple photographs on repeat primarily of children either wrapped in, or faces-painted with, or marching formations of American flags. But I'm not going to get started here about the American obsession with the stars and stripes - it deserves a whole other blog entirely.

I have no idea how much time is passing because there are no clocks and I wasn't permitted to bring my mobile into the building. It feels a little like the sensory deprivation torture used in interrogations. A little... sort of.

Finally my number is called and I gather my highly-organised folder and walk/scurry with false confidence to the booth.

At first it all goes fine. I hand over my passport, my affidavit of support, Jeremy's tax returns and bank statements, feeling very pleased with myself as I slide the documents out of their neat and tidy poly-pockets... and then she asks for my birth certificate, which I duly hand her:

Visa woman: "No, not that birth certificate"

Hannah: "Errrr what do you mean?"

Visa woman: "I need your long birth certificate. That's your short birth certificate"

Hannah: "I have more than one birth certificate???"

Silence (in which I look at her in horror waiting for an explanation and she looks at me in total boredom)

Hannah: "What does this mean?" "Can I still get a visa today?"

Visa Woman shakes her head

Hannah: "So...."

After making me stew for a while, she finally tells me that it's OK - I can still have my interview but I need to order my long birth certificate online from the central-office-of-birth-certificates (or something) and once that arrives I need to send it back to the embassy with my passport, using their extra special(ly expensive) courier service and then and only then will they put my long awaited visa into it and courier it back to me.

I start to breathe again.

I'm then directed to sit back down again to wait some more, so I return to the waiting room and sit, checking my pulse to make sure I'm still alive and trying not to swear too loudly.

Then the last and scariest bit - my number is called for a second time and for the first time that day I speak to an American (this is when I know it's serious). The first thing I'm asked to do is to raise my right hand and pledge that I'm not perjuring myself, or something like that (I wasn't paying much attention to this bit 'cause I was concentrating on not laughing). I then give the entire potted history of Jeremy and I and, after she rubs it in that I have the wrong birth certificate etc etc, she says that providing I actually have a birth certificate then I'll be issued with a visa.

I then leave and return to the outside world. I realise I'm starving, dehydrated, exhausted, desperate for the loo and still have no idea what time it is.

So I go shopping.

1 shirt, 1 coffee and some false eyelashes later I go back to Sian and Marc's, call my mum and Jeremy, sob in shock that the Everlasting Visa Application is STILL NOT OVER (the clue is in the name, perhaps) and fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon.

More positive people keep reminding me that it's all OK. They didn't refuse me, this is just a minor hitch. I want to invite these positive people inside my mind, to let them hear the continuous shout of VIIIIIIIIIIIIIISAAAAAAAAAAAA that echoes there which wont shut up until this whole thing is over and then ask them whether they still think it's a minor hitch.

I know, I know, I'm a drama queen.