A new passport

My UK passport, issued ten years ago in January 2010, expires in just four days' time on 12th October and I want to renew it. I've no plans to go abroad in the next few months, but it's the best paper ID you can get, and so I want a new one for that reason. 

It'll be one of those new 'blue' passports. Believe me, I didn't vote for Brexit just to ensure that the colour of my next passport would be different! Even so, it'll be nice to get back to the colour that passports used to be, although I'm sure the thing won't be quite like my very first passport back in 1972, which resembled a small, slim book and conjured foreign officials (in august language, redolent of Empire) to treat me like visiting royalty. Times change.   

I've had a quick look at the official government website, and how to apply online. They warn of a four-week wait, and tell you this is the quick way to apply, and that an application using a paper form will take longer. I don't mind. With no urgent need for a new passport, it won't matter to me if the thing doesn't arrive before Christmas, so long as I know it's approved and in the pipeline.

One thing that surprises me is the modern streamlined procedure for giving the passport people a current photo of myself. That's most welcome. My last application in 2010 was a nightmare in that regard. It was of course a paper application on a long and complicated form, and I was sending a printed photo. That photo print had to satisfy all kinds of size and content specifications, and I had to get my doctor to sign the back of it, to confirm it was indeed a picture of me. 

Nowadays I can submit a digital photo taken by myself, and while the rules on showing a neutral facial expression, and not wearing a hat or sunglasses, and having a plain background and so on, remain unchanged, the passport people will crop the shot to their liking, and I won't have to fiddle around getting it just so. Nor, it seems, will I have to get somebody respectable to confirm it's me - well, they already have my old photo and supporting documentation from ten years back to make comparisons with, and they will also have access to my 2019 driving licence renewal application, and the biometric monochrome photo taken then by the Post Office. And no doubt they have plenty of other ways of checking that Lucy Melford of Mid Sussex is a real person with a real identity, doing real things. (I wonder if they'll check out this blog?)

I don't mind one bit taking a picture of myself at home. It'll be a pleasure. I just reprise the method I used when taking a self-portrait in February 2016 for a Rail Photocard. This was the best of the shots taken - still the one I carry around, in case needed when buying a train ticket. I also show a picture of the home setup I used.

Simple. 

Gosh, I was getting rather stout in early 2016, wasn't I? Thank goodness I joined Slimming World later that year, and followed their guidelines thereafter. I don't look nearly so bad now. 

In some ways this is not a great time to be taking a picture of myself that will be my official image for the next ten years. My hair hasn't had a professional cut for ten months. And I still have a mark under my nose where lichen-covered North Devon granite nearly bashed the front of my face in, en route to a spiky repose in the midst of a gorse bush. But a bit of concealer will cover that up. Well, so long as the photo passes muster...

So, later today, or whenever the lighting conditions in my study seem good, I'll be fixing the little Leica - or perhaps my phone - onto the tripod, and giving myself star treatment. 

I just hope that I really don't have to get a person of local standing - who knows me well enough - to confirm anything. I mean, I don't know any teachers, nor policemen, nor councillors, nor MPs, nor generals, nor serving church ministers. It would have to be my doctor again, or maybe my dentist, and they are hard to see in these pandemic times, and will no doubt want a fee.