I ought to start this at the end and work backwards. So, here's the answer:

I got the visa.

I see now why there are no American saints, however. They wouldn't have the patience. When America says you have an appointment for 10:30, the nation is good enough (no irony intended) to add that it may be four hours before you walk back out of the embassy. It is equally good to say not to arrive more than 30 minutes early because space in the building is limited and waiting room with it.

What happens in fact is that you arrive at 10 for 10:30 and you find two lines of other people, one the length of the wide front of the building and the other half that length. Both snake round the corner. Nothing moves. The spirit is resigned and frustrated. These are people who have waited a long time for an appointment, perhaps travelled many hours. In short, once on the pavement between the rows of security fencing, they have no further choice. And so they - we, I - wait. And wait.

London in early March is cold. Yesterday was below freezing, with a harsh wind. Today we are luckier: nothing freezes in the chemical sense but it is still cold. There is no chance to walk about and keep warm. There is nowhere to shelter, no warm drinks, nowhere to sit. We console ourselves that it isn't raining because few people would have thought to bring industrial weatherproofs.

And so we stand, outside in the cold, for two and a quarter hours. In that time we move 50 metres, watched by policemen carrying what I'd call sub-machine guns. It amuses us that of all the people in London having a worse time than us, they are head of a very short list. They have nothing to do. They can walk a few paces, it's true, but otherwise their job is to wait for a riot, an attack, that doesn't happen.

You look around in these circumstances. You notice that the Polish embassy on another side of Grosvenor Square is smaller than the buildings on each side, as though invaders have nibbled a bit off that over the centuries just as they have taken lumps out of the homeland. We can't quite see the Italian embassy but that looks as quiet as Poland's.

What we really notice, though, is a snapshot of the world situation. Grosvenor Square is just that, a big London square of wonderful houses built by Lord Grosvenor on the edge of the city. There is a park in the middle with a war memorial and some trees and worn grass and a giant statue of Franklin Roosevelt with a pigeon on his head.

The American embassy occupies all one side. The parallel road holds the Canadian embassy, with its Italian neighbours. The Canadians have an older building than the Americans but not that much smaller. But that's where the similarities end.

Look out the American embassy and you see first the bomb-proof windows, then the narrow roadway round the building. Then comes a row of concrete tank-blocks well disguised as something less threatening, and beyond them a low wall of heavy concrete blocks lowered in place by the contracting company whose phone number still appears on the side.

Then comes a metal fence with at its foot, a further, shallower fence constructed in box form by what, if they were to restrict sheep, you'd call hurdles. The public pavement is on the other side of that and that's where you stand to wait. But to call it "public" overstates the case because the road past the embassy has long been closed to traffic. It is blocked off, as are other nearby streets, by continuous concrete barriers. A further metal fence runs much of their length.

The once glorious front of the embassy, surmounted by its spectacular golden eagle, looks long abandoned. The only person who stands now on the steps leading to the land of the free and the home of the brave is a policeman wearing a flak jacket and carrying a machine gun. He looks out over the rows of security fencing at colleagues also carrying machine guns but free, at least, to send each other for coffee now and then.

And why all this?

Because on the Canadian side, there is nothing at all. Canada doesn't even post a man on the door. You want to walk into Canada (the embassy is foreign soil, after all), you just push the door and stroll in..

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There's not much more to this story because it doesn't take long to describe hours of waiting. A bit after noon, we get into the embassy for our 10:30am appointment. It's warm, we're dealt with pleasantly if neutrally, there are chairs and coffee and we sit, hundreds of us, watching giant TV screens which tell us who's due to go to which interview window. It's like playing bingo, in that same all-engrossing, mind-numbing way, and almost welcome because there's nothing else to do and because the numbers come up at close to random. You're straight in for a few moments of checking and taking the documents that you've brought, and then you sit and listen to the numbers for another two hours, exchanging war stories with neighbours.

I'm next to a Jamaican guy in his late 20s. His wife is British and he and their daughter want to visit America for a week to see their relatives. We get on well and he tells me that he works on building sites, paid by the day as a fixer. There's a formal word but that's what he is: he fixes jammed locks, squeaking doors, windows that won't quite close, that sort of thing.

Nathaniel, his name is. He needs a visa for a week's visit because he's Jamaican. He's entitled to British nationality, thanks to his wife, but only after three years' marriage. Those three years aren't yet quite up, so he needs a visa while his wife doesn't.

I make encouraging sounds but I have doubts. Knowing the immigration officers are more concerned about illegal immigrants than terrorists, I suspect they'll see Nathaniel as a prime target. Yes, he has a home in Britain, but he's not a British national. Yes, he has regular work, but by the day and with no commitments on either side. The sort of guy who'd be welcome on any building site... including an American one.

Worse, though he hasn't realised it, he has said he wants to visit relatives. Saying you have relatives in America is clearly, from the questions on the form, not necessarily A Good Thing.

Nathaniel goes in ahead of me, even though he has a higher number. Moments later he is back, to shake my hand and say goodbye. We have become friends. He smiles, he takes my hand and says "No luck, I'm afraid" and just as I start to sympathise, he turns and walks off. I've no idea whether he had the motives that the interviewer suspected but he is too upset to talk. Just asking for a visa has cost him a day's wages. Waiting for it has cost him another. Nathaniel isn't the kind of man to afford that easily.

When my own time comes, it's obvious that I'm in. A little, pregnant woman in glasses tells me by the smile on her face. It's the one smile I've had all day, other than Nathaniel's smile of bitterness. Moments later I'm back out on the street, four and a half hours after I first got there.

The twist to this is that America has kept my passport, to sort out the right stamps and send it on to me. Which means I had no passport to get back to France. Well, Toulouse was going through a security exercise when I got there and a male and a female soldier were standing in front of the border desk, each in battle dress and carrying the sort of gun the London policemen had had. And with that same bored expression.

I told the border policeman that I had been to London and that the Americans had kept my pasport. I offered him other identity instead.

"Tell me again," he said, mystified. "Where's your passport?"

"The Americans have kept it at the embassy", I say.

He hesitates, makes a "pfff" noise, the problems with passports being well known to people who make their living from them. He says nothing but pushes his eyebrows suddenly up and makes a sharp backwards nod.

It didn't need words. The gesture said it all.

"Americans, hein?"