Miss Love-Mason has received a letter from the Home Office acknowledging receipt of form MN1 "Application for Registration of a Child under 18 as a British Citizen", the supporting documents and the fee of £460 (!). Alas the Chief Casework has been "away" so it is delayed. Our lawyer was "away" for almost all of August too so goodness knows when he will be back.
As for the house we have had something worse than before. We dropped the price to a level as low as we could go to drum up interest and to some extent that worked. The problem now is that we received an offer 10% below that level. Who knows, maybe they would have come anyway at the old price and we would by now have accepted an offer and have something to hope for? Or maybe they would never have come at all and we could have been spared this anguish. They are mulling our rejection over this weekend so we will have to wait and see. In the meantime our nightmare neighbours have been worse than usual. The leaves on the drive now make the screeching of their tyres louder and leave a permanent marker of their activity.
But as for Miss Love-Mason, she is continuing to eat extremely well. Breakfast in particular is a feast since she has a whole banana along with her porridge. It means that she is back to sleeping well at night and though she cannot be completely unaffected by our current despair we are doing everything we can to shield her. Weekends are so precious for me because it's only then that I get to see her at her most inventive and adorable. She has an awareness of the world that she shares openly with a child's transparency.
The next big step is probably for her to crawl. She is extremely mobile in the walker but still lacks that final tiny movement that will propel her by herself. It will come soon - so let's just hope that we can all be a bit more mobile and get the hell out of here.
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair
Blake
