Another day in ye olde London town.

I arrived in sunny London just under two years ago (Feb 23, 2005) and not too long after I arrived, I came down with mumps, which – if you’ve happened to read my thoughts on the subject – you’ll note was not my finest hour. One thing that I missed during this particular time (aside from normal sized testicles) was my National Insurance Number interview. In the UK, you’re required to get a NI number, and it’s a key requirement for both health services and taxation reasons, but given the physical state that I was in at the time, I was unable to attend my interview, and rather than organise an alternate time date, I let things slip by the wayside, as I so often do with anything remotely linked to tax.

For the next few months after, I was in a constant state of travel and I think there was a three month stretch where I wasn’t in the country for a full fortnight without jaunts overseas. Consequently, the whole National Insurance chestnut slipped my mind until just recently when some random casual payroll woman demanded to know where my NI number was. First up, I was going to tell her to smeg off, when I realised that I actually didn’t have one yet, and I’d been in the UK for the better part of two years. Normally this wouldn’t worry me, but given that if I didn’t get my act together my company was soon to be fined – and I’d probably be given the arse, I decided that the best course of action was to finally get off my ever-increasing backside and try and sort something out with regards to an NI number.

I got in touch with NINO (not sure if related to El Nino at all) in order to schedule another interview to try and get myself sorted out with an NI number, thinking that it would probably take a few days to organise something and he comes back with, “Ok, we have an appointment on February 29th and then the next one on March 13th”. Typically, I’m not necessarily the sharpest guy around, but unless I’ve unknowingly been in a coma for a year (like the Geelong football club have been for the last 40 or so) this isn’t a leap year. I asked him – half seriously – if I really had to wait until next year for an appointment, because I thought that was bang out of order. He indicated that, “No, it’s roughly two weeks away….” Yesterday was the 5th! Rather than getting into debate with this Mensa leader, I asked if there were any alternate locations where I could possibly have an interview, that wouldn’t require me to wait “roughly two weeks” nor that would take place in a leap year.

After a few minutes of consulting something (I’m guessing he was reading tea leaves at this point) I was informed that there were several vacancies at the Camden office, which happens to only be about 45 minutes away from work. This sounded good! Not as good as Hugh Heffner throwing me the keys to the estate for a month-long free-for-all, but good news nonetheless.
So I organise to leave work early today, and I end up heading towards Camden town and arrive in the office at 3:59PM for my 4:00PM appointment and as I walk in the door a woman asks if “there’s anyone for a 4:00PM interview”, to which I indicate I’m such inclined, so she; asks me my name, finds a form with my name on it, then sighs and carries on for 2 minutes without breath complaining how she can’t find my name on the register, and it’s not good enough and……and at this point I tuned out, stared at her blankly and said in a tone Dolph Lundgren would have been proud of “where do I need to go now?” That seemed to snap her out of her near hysterics, and she told me to report to the reception desk on level one. Easy peasy, I can handle this.

I wander upstairs to the first floor and I encounter an absolute shambles!
There must have been people from every country in the world in the room, except Slovenia – but purely because that’s a fairytale make believe country that doesn’t really exist! I shit you not, there was representation from everywhere, and that was just the staff working there!! There was even an Albino! Fortunately, he was there for an NI number and wasn’t chasing the Holy Grail, so there was less for me to be concerned about.
I grabbed a seat and settled in, expecting a bit of a wait.

At 5:15 I get the call, after listening to some Eastern European guy struggle for 30 minutes trying to understand the questions that were being thrown at him. I was getting more frustrated than the interviewer having to endure listening to it, and what’s more I was dead last to be interviewed. Usually, in other situations this is either really good or really bad, but at this point I couldn’t give a shit, I just wanted to get things over and done with so that I could think about heading home! My ‘interview’ took 7 minutes. Record time! And for the first time since I’ve been here, I really thought that the UK should not be a part of the EU, it just makes life so much slower and harder for us Southern Hemispherians, and let’s face it, it’s all about us!