Last Sunday, I was ambling around Monet’s house in Giverny. I now sit in my childhood bedroom, sans passport, unaware of how the next few months will unfold. Despite some degree of jubilance at the swift procedure that was renewing it yesterday, the anxiety of how I will get my working visa for France, or more likely when, weighs heavy. But there is nothing to be done other than wait for motions out of my control.

So let’s take a step back, shall we?

After almost two glorious months in Paris, working for an utterly wonderful website called Semaine.com (check it out, you’re missing out) I took the rightly romanticised Eurostar back to my home town, hoping to secure my Visa for the rest of my French adventure – Aix-en-Provence, working in a gallery till March.

This was followed by my equally romanticised journey to Wandsworth Town to the glorious dream-crushing hub know more formally as the ‘Visa centre’. I thought this excursion would be followed by an anticipated croissant and iced coffee at Gail’s bakery, nestled among the early rising Saturday public. Yet my hope of new beginnings and yet a further escape from this somewhat broken country was cut relatively short.

As I step into the Visa centre, armed with too much organisation and photocopied documents, I sit down and await being called. Eager, I pass my passport through. “There’s a rip, we won’t be able to accept this passport.” I hear the woman opposite me proclaim. As I stood in disbelief, I realised this would not be the day I had expected, planned, or thought of. She checked, no they would not, passport returned. The only option, to apply for a new passport and reapply for my Visa, seemed a little too daunting after having a relatively stress-free time in the city of love for the plupart of the summer. My minor breakdown was accompanied by a gaggle of stares from workers and those also applying for what ought to be a relatively straightforward process.

Tears were shed on the Jubilee Line. New passport pictures were taken.

And so, after only two hours, I sat at the pub with a pint in hand after applying for a new passport. Fast-tracked, although I wish I could have fast-tracked back to the point where there was no rip. Visa on hold, with a high likelihood I’ll need to re-apply completely for my work agreement.

And so, thanks to a rip in my passport, I am bound to this country and thus ought to appreciate the green hills, yellowed thanks to climate change; the election of our new Prime Minister, selected by the minority; rising costs of living and confronting the very people I was probably running away from in the first place. But that is life, and for now, there comes some appeasement. After the passport fiasco, the sunny streets of London seemed a little less dominating, and it became part of the plot that is 2022. At the end of the day, one might call it content. There exists a minute degree of emotional trauma, embroiled in a dispute between actuality and the lapping waves of the beaches in the South of France. This new passport, with its garish blue cover that is yet a further reminder of our exit from the European Union, has a story to tell.

The Paris diaries, albeit published after the event, will slowly be written up. As my screen time increases, a return to a slightly more precarious reality than before ensues. Old wounds ripped up, much like the folds of my passport. The prospect of a prolonged period at home seems rather backwards after this expanse of freedom in Paris, but for now there is a degree of appreciation that steps are in place. I am certainly not the first, I am certainly not the last. Uncertainty, for sure. But there’s certainty in the changing seasons, and maybe a few reasons to stay.

eleanor x