Before I can send the £900 package off to collect dust in a corner of the Border Agency, I will need to inform the SA government of my intentions so I can keep my South African citizenship. Thinking this was the best place to start I started filling in this form, but noticed halfway through that a step actually preceded this one. I have to get proof that I haven’t already somehow achieved British citizenship, as if by accident. (Like there’s some kind of statehood ‘lost and found’). 


Feeling bogged down by the red tape I was grateful that I’d already done my Life in the UK test for my previous application, the results are still relevant, but turning my attention to the Border Agency website, I saw a glaring warning that appeared above my appropriate application form link. The rules had changed and I was obliged to prove I could speak English. I was not impressed. 


Now I have the privilege of sitting with an examiner for an allotted ten minutes making sure I can string sentences together. Not only will this be the most expensive ten minutes since I bought my GHDs, but there’s a little prep work. I have to fill in a form, titled with my own chosen topic of conversation, along with five subtopics over which I am to converse. Do they not know trees had to die to make the paper to write this nonsense on? This part forms the first five minutes of my test, followed by five minutes discussing a topic of the examiners choice.