The Home Office says...

"The Secretary of State is not prepared to exercise discretion in this case as he does not consider your circumstances to be compelling enough."

I received the letter in the post yesterday and now I have my passport back as well. Man, was I in somewhat of a state yesterday and hence the reason why I didn't post at all yesterday. I also had a REAL long day at the factory, so I was tired and mildly depressed and couldn't gather my thoughts for the Blog.

Well, time has passed and barring an excursion with Dirty Hairy Mouth in Colchester on Saturday night to find a wife, I will be booking my flight to Calgary on Monday.

Zoom Airlines will be my airline of choice 'cuz of the cheap prices... I'm looking at a first class (or their equivalent) ticket to Calgary in a few weeks (with tax & crap included) at just over £300. First class... free booze! Oh yeah! Not to mention more cargo room, which makes sense for me.

If you don't want me in the UK... I recommend you hitting the donate button further down the left side of the screen and pop a few pence into the account. You know... the sooner ya do it, the sooner I'm out. Ha!

Yeah, the decision has been made though, barring marraige, I will be booking my ticket home on Monday. Yay!! June 9th or 16th... it's kinda scary and still mildly depressing. I'm hating the thought of leaving, but I probably had to go home at sometime and I'm pretty sure I'll make my trip back anyways.

Not to worry Blog readers, the Opiated Sherpa will continue to produce some quality misery and humour back in Canada as well. I hope to have just as many pictures and exciting stories for the Blog site, but I might fall short of that. Nah... I will have to continue to document my progress for all the UK Dirty Hairy Mouths and build my Canadian division for world domination.


This was what I had to work with yesterday... just kidding, Tony. Ha ha ha... yeah, I got a few pics on my mobile yesterday, just to have a few for posterity. Tony and I stood in front of the stitcher for a good portion of the day, bored to tears.

Sorry to interupt the work story, how exciting it is, but Dad just sent me a whole load of Tegan's wedding photos via e-mail and man does it drag out my computer... crikey!!

Yeah, anyways... Tony and I were standing at the stitcher after lunch when Brian came in and handed me a large brown envelope with a Registered Mail sticker on it. The sticker kinda gave it away that it was my passport in there and what turned out to be my denial letter.

I can't say it really came as a shock, because I have been thinking about the whole marraige thing as a 'what-if' and I have been thinking about home as well.

The wave of disappointment was the thing that really hit hard. It then meant that I did have to think about doing something about my situation. So, I sent my text messages out to Lars, Naomi, my mate Graham and my ex-housemate and fellow Monty-ist Mark. I would have told Barry, but his phone was shot... you know, just in case you were wondering.

The hardest thing will be packing everything up and wondering how much it's all gonna weigh. If I do actually get that first class (equivalent) ticket, then I can only carry 30 kg with me. I think my CDs that I bought since I been here weigh more than 30 kgs... ha ha! Okay, probably not, but I have a lot of discs. I will probably have to call the airline and inquire about how much it costs to take more than my allotted space. Ah well, that'll all be worked out, I'm sure.

Well, I thought I would write a little bit now about what has happened, just for those keeping score. I think tomorrow in my time available to me, I think I will start racing Blog exchanges. I have a feeling that BlogSoldiers will do really well... I think I will race all the manual clicks to 100 credits each and then see who's the fastest and maybe who the best is. I predict BlogSoldiers, but I do like the content on BlogExplosion. If you want good reading, go to BlogExplosion.

Right, I will do a lot of writing I'm sure soon... gotta get all caught up. Remind me in comments about what I've missed so far!!