Visa's, Karate & the Congestion charge....

So, we've had a pretty busy time of late. We've basically been trying to fit in a years worth of Karate events into a six month period, so to say our schedule is a little full, is a bit of an understatement. We both work full time through the week & don't have a weekend free until we Fly to Japan at the end of June!


Anyway, after quite a bit of negotation with our employers, we managed to get a full weekend off work. We decided to travel to London for a sunday training course run by Sensei Sakagami & Sensei Peter May. Me and Amy would stay over in town and visited the Japan Embassy on the Monday morning. Simple enough plan!

All should have been well, however, Me being Me, i decided to forget my CV which is needed for the Visa. So, after some quick thinking, and a little bit of flirting with the cute Japanese embassy lady, i decided to call my (Computer iliterate) mother back in Hartlepool and try to talk her through sending an email with an attachment... then all i needed to do was find an internet Cafe in the poshest part of London, print it out, and we'd be done.

...if only life was that simple!

45 minutes later, and we've sent emails to every man and his dog, but not to me... eventually, we get it sorted, with the correct CV attached. We head off to an internet cafe at the bottom of a general store. Log into my mail account and guess what, the file won't open. Well, at this point i can't even contemplate calling the mother again so the only thing left to do is to re-write my CV before the embassy closes...

All is done, now all we need to do is find the car & get out of London, before the Sun goes down...


A few days later, we got a lovely letter from the then Mayor of London, big Ken, 'we are happy to anounce that you've been stung with a £60 fine for driving in my city, please come again'.

Just a quick question, how the hell are you supposed to know that you have to pre-pay for the congestion zone when you don't live in London? D'uh!

So, naturally, i will be protesting my ignorance/innocence via letter... despite always being a Labour supporter, i was quite pleased that Boris got elected, strange that...