Today I had to renew our passports. Now, I've become very fond of my old passport - it's seen me on some great times over the last ten years - and the photo is quite pleasant - I look all smiley and remembered to lift my chin so I look reasonably pert, and even have normal hair. However, because I spend most of my time away with the fairies, all the new changes to passports had somehow passed me by. Blimey! What a shock...
First there was the photo. No more arranging yourself decoratively in the little booth in Woolies and messing around with the orange or blue curtain to see which background looked best, and then posing coyly while the flashbulb blinded you four times as you smiled and preened and tried to get your best side on display with no sags, bags and double chins on show. Lord, no. Now it's like something out of Big Brother (the George Orwell one - if it had been the other misfit telly one I'd have probably passed without any probs) - with Very Severe Instructions on How To Proceed. First - there is to be NO smiling at any point during the proceedings. Secondly - there is to be NO hair obstructing the face. Thirdly - there is to be No Posing in attractive positions. In short this is a Prisoner Cell Block H photo.
So, with my hair scraped behind my ears (aaargh!) and my fringe tucked up into my hairline (double aargh!) and my lips set in grim non-smiling line (oh - please don't ask...) - I faced the screen. More Severe Instructions appeared. Your eyes had to be Dead Centre. Mine weren't - not even when I wriggled the seat a lot. I'd reached this great age without realising that I have crooked eyes! So I had to tilt my head slightly to the left to get my eyes level. Then the top of your head had to be within one line and your chin within the other. Mine only met this criteria if I hunched my shoulders which was tricky with the aforementioned tilting. So, eventually and looking like a very bad Quasimodo, I pushed the button. Booomph! One searing flash - and that was it! Just the one hit. No second chance to make a first impression. Four identical pics from one press of the button - oooh, there's progress....
So, I tottered outside and waited for the results to slither from the chute. Ohmigod!!! With the booth's full-on illuminations (no nice air-brushing or misty fading here) and the lack of my usual Boris Johnson hairdo to hide behind, every single wrinkle was exaggerated into a yawning crevasse; every pouchy bit was an overfilled saddlebag; every frown line was highlighted like a ploughed field, and I had more crows' feet than - well - crows... Not to put too fine a point on it, I looked like some octogenarian serial killer who'd just had a stroke. Now, I'm not a vain person but I swear I'll kill anyone on any passport control who looks at me and then at my photo and equates the two.
Feeling very, very old and very, very ugly, I plodded off to the Post Office with my completed form (and yes, that had been another minefield - but then I'm not good with forms especially ones that make you write inside the shaded area under pain of death should you stray outside the little box) and the foul photos tucked deeply into my handbag. Suffice it to say that after half an hour's queueing I got the Officious One. The Post Office was very hot and very full of damp pensioners. I was feeling at my lowest ebb. I didn't need the Officious One. He - damn him - looked at my photos and then at me and chuckled - then laboriously checked my form. There was a lot of tutting and cross-checking, but eventually and grudgingly he said it would pass muster. Sadly, I wasn't so lucky with the Toyboy Trucker's application...
The Toyboy Trucker, being born into an army family, had popped into the world on Foreign Soil. There have been problems with this before - but he's got all the relevant bits of paper to prove that yes, okay, he was born outside our sceptred isle, but it was to Brit parents, in a Brit military hospital, and he was and is and always will be a British Citizen. And anyway he's had a passport for ages, so I assumed the renewal would be a piece of cake... Wrong! The Officious One read through all the relevant certificates, paperwork, looked at his earlier passport and pushed them all back to me. "He's not British", he said, sneering happily. "Yes, he is" I snapped back, pushing all the gubbins back under the security grille. "No, he's not," the Officious One thrust it all back at me. "He'll have to have a citizen's interview". Now I won't write down what I said at this point, but let's just say I lost my normal relaxed and let-it-be attitude. Pointing out rather tersely that he was a) British, b) had already got a British passport, and c) was going on hols in a few weeks and therefore need the passport pretty damn sharpish, I shoved the paperwork back again and asked to see someone in charge... Yep, the Officious One was in charge.
Still smarting from my own gruesome photo and knowing for sure that I didn't, as I've so fondly believed for years, look anything like Lulu, I was ready to burst into tears. The Officious One and I stared each other out. He won. I snatched back both applications and ran, hot and sweaty, out of the Post Office.
I went home, stuck pins in a wax model of the Officious One, had three cups of black coffee, and returned to the Post Office. It was still hot and full of damp pensioners but the Officious One was missing. This time I got a Nice Girl. I didn't mention the previous encounter just in case she checked a list of People Blacklisted from the Post Office for Using Profane Language. She whizzed through both applications, sympathised over the cruelty of the new photos, skimmed through the Toyboy Tucker's paperwork, declared everything in order, and said the passports would be with us in a week. I could have kissed her and would have done if it hadn't been for the security screen and the fact that I haven't kissed another grown-up female (apart from Elle)since I stopped kissing my Great Auntie Alma when her whiskers gave me a shaving rash.
So, we'll have our new passports before too long - and the Toyboy Trucker will once again officially be a British citizen. I just wish they could do something with my photo in the magical processing and make me look like Lulu...
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