Every year I suffer a little peak of stress when my visa renewal comes around. 90% of this is caused by the knowledge I will have to descend into the bowels of hell that is the immigration office and queue, often with people who have clearly not washed for a while, for several hours. And 8% is caused by the fear that immigration might say “no”, and I will have to leave this fine country which I am so lucky to call my home. And 2% is rounding errors.

Usually, I resolve the queuing issue by being outside immigration at least half an hour before they open. I’d rather 30 minutes in the open air, than a couple of hours in the fetid interior, sat next to Boris in a Chang T-shirt who is systematically extracting black stuff from between his toes. But this morning I was forced to wait until the British Council opened their office at 0900 (0904 actually), so that I could collect the expensive piece of paper I ordered yesterday.

So it was almost half past nine before I made my way into immigration and the man behind the counter gave me number 666. “Ah, the number of the beast!”, I bantered. He gave me one of those looks.

I sat down and perused the flashing numbers board, the closest number I could find was 578; it was going to be a long wait. Luckily I had with me the latest book by Richard Dawkins, with a healthy 400+ pages to pass the time. But no sooner had I started absorbing why birds are more likely than insects to fertilise red flowers, than 666 was called and I was at the desk of the man whose face I have seen every year for five years. He perused the mound of paperwork I offered, relieved me of 1,900 baht; and I was then sent to the next chair where the supervisor did another check of my submission and asked me the same question she does every year, “do you own or rent?” This year I was ready with my condo book which I waved in her general direction and before I knew it I was out in the street with a numbered card which I take back on Thursday to collect my passport. Total time, about twenty minutes.

So, there we are, permission to stay. Personally I am most relieved, and I think Wigandays.com would be considerably less entertaining, for me anyway.