My passport needed renewal. My heart always sinks whenever I have any forms to fill in. I trundled dejectedly to my local post office and joined the queue. There are always people doing the most difficult lengthy transactions if ever I join a queue. This day was no exception. There was a man with many parcels of varying sizes that all needed to be weighed before any stamps could be issued. A man who moved with infinite slowness as he eased each parcel from his sack his parcels destined for the far corners of the galaxy. Eventually, I was there at the counter and asked for a passport form. “We don’t do those here,” I was told. He rattled off a long list of those post offices that did, all many miles away and then he shrugged his shoulders.
A day or so later I went to the town centre post office. It is a universal truth that if ever I am trying to get any kind of form that there must be obstacle after obstacle placed in my way. This time the main post office unbeknown to me was undergoing renovation. This meant that part of the building was cordoned off and a queue snaked out of the post office and away down the street. Everyone was in that queue; people of all nationalities, women with monstrous buggies, men from Timbuktu, grannies without teeth, and all languages being spoken except English. All had mobile phones in which they were informing the entire world in broken English that they couldn’t do x y or z as they were stuck in a long queue for the post office.
Added to this it was also bitterly cold. The queue moved at a pace slower that the widening creep of the Atlantic Ocean.
Madness set in very quickly.
They have a voice that tells those nearing the counter which window to go to. Its sing song repetitiveness rather than giving hope that you are getting closer always makes me want to run. And there is the tension. If you don’t step off smartly in the direction of ‘Cashier number seven, please’, you feel some of the mob behind you might give you a quick impatient prod.
The precious form then sat on the table for several days before I could steel myself to fill it in. I found it easier than I feared, and happily realised that I didnt have to have my photos countersigned after all.
I dash off to the local supermarket and sit on the cold seat of the photo booth. It is full of a man and a woman’s sing-songy automated voices. Raise the seat, close the curtains, and align your eyes. Pay £5. Then snap, snap, snap, snap.
I now have to choose the best one. They are all true likenesses and all absolutely hideous. I plump for the last one. A cross between a Neanderthal and John Prescott; realising all too late, that it also has the stretched sinews of a turtle’s neck.
It bears no resemblance to my previous passport photograph at all. I’m guessing it will need countersigning, but I take a chance I put in the envelope together with the cheque for almost £80 and then lick the seal.
It doesn’t stick.
I have to dash back into the supermarket for sellotape. Then I finally put the envelope in the post.
I’m expecting them to write back and say kindly, ‘This cannot be you. Please take more authentic pictures at once and then get them countersigned.’
But they don’t.
A week later there is a courier at the door.
‘Sign here’ He has my new passport.
It is beautiful, other than a rather sickly maroon colour on the cover and a frightening picture of someone purporting to be me on one of the inside pages. There are wildlife scenes on the different pages and holograms over my photo.
But it is here, and I can cross another worry off the list.
And I am utterly delighted!
World here I come!
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