It’s about time for an update as it’s been a while. To be honest my mind has been elsewhere as my Dad has been diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 63. It’s been a big shock for all of us and has meant things have been up in the air recently.
Anyway, not wanting to pre-empt fate I hadn’t obtained police checks etc prior to hearing back from Sydney, NS. So, to that end, I have been rushing round trying to get things done since receiving my 120-day email.
The
UK police checks seem a pretty straightforward process. I work with civil servants so it was no problem getting one of my long standing colleagues to sign off the identity confirmation. I sent them off last week with cheques to the tune of £105 (me, my wife and eldest son); hopefully they will be back next week sometime. The
German police checks weren’t quite so straightforward but nonetheless required as we were posted and living in Germany from ’89 to ‘96. First off having to pay the fee in Euro caused minor problems - In the end I went with the BACS bank transfer option, however, the bank stung me with a £9 fee which seemed a bit excessive on a €26 transfer. I also had to get the forms signed off by a solicitor which I got done at the same time as I had all my other documents certified.
Having read the ongoing debate about the need to have everything certified/notarised I was in two minds as to whether to bother or not. In the end the decision was made for me due to the aforementioned German police check requirement. I sent out a generic BCC email to all the local solicitors in my area asking about certifying/notarising approximately 20 - 25 documents. Talk about varying responses; it seems notarising and certifying are two very different beasts – when it comes to notaries I had quotes back which varied from £76 for the first document followed by £35 for each subsequent, however, for basic certification it averaged at £5 for the first document followed by £3 each thereafter. In the end I went to a nice chap called
Stephen Gisby & Co in Bristol and he did the lot for £35 all in – the stamp he used had ‘Public Notary’ on it too which was an unexpected bonus.
I thought I would hedge my bets a little for a change so I took another trip to the bank and ordered a Bankers Draft for C$980 to cover the cost of the PR fees. I know it doesn’t need to be sent through yet but I thought I would get it out of the way whilst the money was available. The cheque only took 4-days to arrive in the post which was good; however, the rate has dropped again recently and was a lot worse than when I submitted the initial application a few months ago.
All in all I think everything is pretty much done now; all that’s left is the record of employment which shouldn’t be a problem as I’ve been in the Army since before I was 18. Once that’s sorted it will be a case of waiting for the police checks to come back and then we can fire everything off to London.
Isn't it funny how life twists and turns - just when things seem to be going well, the jaws of unpredictability jump up and bite you in the ass. It was 4.15pm on Friday 25th Sep when my Dad lost his short battle against the scourge of modern society - Cancer. The time and date will forever be emblazoned in my mind; all we had was a mere 5 weeks and 2 days after diagnosis, and then he was gone.