I awoke to Jen lying smiling next to me. She was softly telling me to wake up and get out of bed. It was far earlier than I usually wake up - my puffy face showed this. 7am. Rolling out of bed is still slightly disorientating – we have only been in our new flat for 3 nights now. Though it's strange not having Jack and Isje around anymore, the incredible flat always makes an attempt to make up for it. Breakfasting on your 4th floor penthouse balcony with views of all of Edinburgh including the famous centuries old Castle, can do that to you.

So, out of bed and into the shower. Jen leaves for work just minutes after my eyes have fully adjusted to the light. How strange that human beings wake up so early. My mind ponders early wake ups for a second whilst the water heats up to steamy. I don't think about it too long because my mind is packed full with all the logistics necessary over the forthcoming hour. The early wake up call was because of a meeting in Glasgow at 9:30am with Richard, an immigration lawyer. Richard will be the one who will solve all of my permit issues and will be instrumental in my not far off now application for an unmarried partner visa for the UK. He's tight with the home office and his services are almost mandatory when lodging an application such as this.

I make my way out of our new ensuite bathroom and, after I choose my clothes for the day, head straight to the cupboards which have been storing all of Jen and my “paper lives” for the last few days. The stack is intimidating. Three folders full of bank, mobile phone, and internet provider statements; pay slips, personal letters, photos together, cards and ticket stubs from previous travels. It's comprehensive. It's invasive. It tells a story - A story about us.

As I flick through each paper-separated month, I stumble upon nuggets of our personal paper trail – boarding passes from one of our trips to Italy; a stub from the Edinburgh Beltane fire festival; photos of us from Rhodes graduation; the card Jen gave me for my 21st birthday. It's been tough gathering all of this information and anyone who's been involved in that, and is reading this, I'd like to thank you again.

I'm running out of time so I stuff all the folders into my backpack, throw my Eee PC in the bag for good measure and dash downstairs to get my bike. I have only 20 minutes to cycle to the train station – there's no way I'll make the 8:31. I push myself – months of cycling has made me quite agile on my bike and I've learnt just how hard I can push myself and what my capabilities are. I ride up the large Edinburgh hills, sharing lanes with buses, cars and other cyclists. Skip the Leith walk turning circle – it will take too long. Almost there, just one hill to go. I know I've missed it when my cellphone alarm starts going off in my pocket – 8:30, my usual time to wake up. As it blurts out an irritating song, too tightly stuffed into my jeans to be able to be switched off whilst riding at the same time, I think about how much I sound like an ice cream truck driving, though cycling in my case, and wonder how feasible it would be to run an ice cream service on a bicycle. My mind wanders...

Once I lock up my bike and purchase my day return ticket to Glasgow, I grab a roll from the Upper Crust. £1.25 for a bottle of water – oh how they take advantage of the worker on the move. I make sure to be at the platform when the train arrives to ensure I get two seats for myself – I'll need the second one for the document sifting that will need to take place for the 45 minute duration of the journey. The train sets off and I text Richard to let him know which train I'm on.

I dig in straight away and amongst the sifting and sorting, I pause to take bites from my “Breakfast Bacon” roll. The journey progresses. By now I'm elbow deep in documentation ranging from personal bank statements to the invite I gave Jen for my 21st party. The British sitting around me seem to glance every so often at the piles of paper work surrounding me. I stop and think about whether they vaguely realise that all this paperwork is some (hopefully all) of the evidence necessary to grant me working rights in the UK. They most probably see the South African passport pop up every once in a while and curse under their breaths that it's “yet another immigrant. If it's not the Poles, it's the South Africans.” I chuckle to myself as I pass over the photo of our circle of friends at our Rhodes graduation as well as one of our hall balls. I ignore the people around me because they are not the people in the photos. I carry on sorting.

The meeting with Richard goes well – we chat for 2 hours about multiple scenarios which may arise from the outcomes of this application. Backup plans, forward plans, Stockholm in the Summer and Iceland in the winter. We move off from the Costa we'd sat down in and I head towards the train station to board the next service to Edinburgh Waverley. Now parted with all my documentation – so that Richard could look over it – the burden that the application has placed on myself, and Jen, is physically and metaphorically off my shoulders. The train ride back will be fruitful – with the Eee PC in my backpack I'll most certainly get enough time to write a story about the happenings of today and post it on Ducklight. And here it ends.