Passing the port
Sep. 13th, 2006 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWith due care, you could probably go a lifetime without ever having to use the emergency process to get a passport. I've done it twice.
When I was sixteen, my mother took me to Paris. I don't remember the details, why it was just the two of us (and the daughter of some friends of hers). It felt very grown-up, and I asked whether I needed my own passport, now I was sixteen. "Oh, no," said my mother, who was never less than confident about anything. But a few days before we were due to leave, I was leafing through her passport (all printed matter comes under the heading of Something to Read, doesn't it?), and discovered the small print in the back which said that children of sixteen and over did, indeed, need their own passports.
I remember the day we spent securing my first passport more clearly than I remember anything about the holiday itself. The real challenge was obtaining photographs, but we headed for the bowling alley in town which had a photo booth. Luckily, one of the cleaners was the mother of pupils at my mother's school, and she took pity on us and let us in before opening time. Then off to a friend who was Chief Education Officer for the town, which gave her, we felt, enough status to certify that the photos were indeed of me.
We were close enough to London that the next step was to take the train in to the city, and go to the Passport Office in Petty France, an area whose name I had never heard before, and by which I was totally charmed. There my mother assured the officials that our journey was urgent and necessary, that if we were unable to travel, a teenaged girl would be stranded alone in Paris. I really don't know whether this was true, whether her travel plans were such that she would have traveled without us; and if she had, my mother could presumably have gone without me to meet her. I suspect now that all that was required by the Passport Service was the thinnest semblance of a case. For whatever reason, my passport was granted.
I've had a valid passport ever since, and always taken care to know when it would need renewing: currently it is valid until March 2007. But yesterday, when we received the itinerary for our trip, there at the bottom was the information that Romania requires that your passport be valid for six months beyond entry to the country: I had five and a half months.
Forty years on, so many changes: we checked on the internet precisely what the Romanian requirements were, and what the fast track system was for obtaining a passport in a week. Luckily, I still live within easy reach of a Passport Office - this time, indeed, within walking distance - and I phoned them and cursed their infuriating sequence of recorded phone messages, referring us to their web site, inviting us to press buttons for options. And eventually I was given an appointment for this morning and a list of required documentation.
Once again, the photos were the real challenge. Digital photos would be acceptable, we were told, provided they were of a certain minimum resolution, against a white background, with no reflection on the glasses... I posed in the bathroom, against a white sheet hung out to dry. I posed outside the front door, against the reverse of the Guardian's poster guide to How To Recognise Trees From Quite A Long Way Away (the expurgated version, without the larch). On our way down into town, I posed against the white wall of the shopping centre. But when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler printed up his photos this morning, these were all declared unsatisfactory, mainly because of reflections.
Further research on the internet revealed that "You might find it easier to remove your glasses" - we did indeed, although a picture of me without glasses is not going to help anyone to identify me. The Post Office provided the application form, I went to the library and filled it in, we went to the Passport Office - and oh, no, these photos wouldn't do, they weren't high enough definition, they wouldn't scan (hang on a minute, we are printing out digital photos so that they can be scanned? Yes, it seems so). Fortunately, there is an exorbitantly priced photo booth at the Passport Office itself, which takes photos cropped in so close to the subject that it took us two attempts to produce an acceptable result - and if I sound unduly querulous about this, bear in mind that removing my glasses and flashing bright lights at me is a reliable way to make me extremely jittery.
Although the experience as a whole was stressful, the office staff were uniformly charming, friendly and helpful. My supporting documentation was dismissed with a cheery "Oh, your old passport is enough identification...". I paid my money and I was promised a new passport in seven days time.
I'd expected to be posting about The Ukulele Orchestra at this point: but what can I say? Life is full of surprises.
When I was sixteen, my mother took me to Paris. I don't remember the details, why it was just the two of us (and the daughter of some friends of hers). It felt very grown-up, and I asked whether I needed my own passport, now I was sixteen. "Oh, no," said my mother, who was never less than confident about anything. But a few days before we were due to leave, I was leafing through her passport (all printed matter comes under the heading of Something to Read, doesn't it?), and discovered the small print in the back which said that children of sixteen and over did, indeed, need their own passports.
I remember the day we spent securing my first passport more clearly than I remember anything about the holiday itself. The real challenge was obtaining photographs, but we headed for the bowling alley in town which had a photo booth. Luckily, one of the cleaners was the mother of pupils at my mother's school, and she took pity on us and let us in before opening time. Then off to a friend who was Chief Education Officer for the town, which gave her, we felt, enough status to certify that the photos were indeed of me.
We were close enough to London that the next step was to take the train in to the city, and go to the Passport Office in Petty France, an area whose name I had never heard before, and by which I was totally charmed. There my mother assured the officials that our journey was urgent and necessary, that if we were unable to travel, a teenaged girl would be stranded alone in Paris. I really don't know whether this was true, whether her travel plans were such that she would have traveled without us; and if she had, my mother could presumably have gone without me to meet her. I suspect now that all that was required by the Passport Service was the thinnest semblance of a case. For whatever reason, my passport was granted.
I've had a valid passport ever since, and always taken care to know when it would need renewing: currently it is valid until March 2007. But yesterday, when we received the itinerary for our trip, there at the bottom was the information that Romania requires that your passport be valid for six months beyond entry to the country: I had five and a half months.
Forty years on, so many changes: we checked on the internet precisely what the Romanian requirements were, and what the fast track system was for obtaining a passport in a week. Luckily, I still live within easy reach of a Passport Office - this time, indeed, within walking distance - and I phoned them and cursed their infuriating sequence of recorded phone messages, referring us to their web site, inviting us to press buttons for options. And eventually I was given an appointment for this morning and a list of required documentation.
Once again, the photos were the real challenge. Digital photos would be acceptable, we were told, provided they were of a certain minimum resolution, against a white background, with no reflection on the glasses... I posed in the bathroom, against a white sheet hung out to dry. I posed outside the front door, against the reverse of the Guardian's poster guide to How To Recognise Trees From Quite A Long Way Away (the expurgated version, without the larch). On our way down into town, I posed against the white wall of the shopping centre. But when
durham_rambler printed up his photos this morning, these were all declared unsatisfactory, mainly because of reflections.Further research on the internet revealed that "You might find it easier to remove your glasses" - we did indeed, although a picture of me without glasses is not going to help anyone to identify me. The Post Office provided the application form, I went to the library and filled it in, we went to the Passport Office - and oh, no, these photos wouldn't do, they weren't high enough definition, they wouldn't scan (hang on a minute, we are printing out digital photos so that they can be scanned? Yes, it seems so). Fortunately, there is an exorbitantly priced photo booth at the Passport Office itself, which takes photos cropped in so close to the subject that it took us two attempts to produce an acceptable result - and if I sound unduly querulous about this, bear in mind that removing my glasses and flashing bright lights at me is a reliable way to make me extremely jittery.
Although the experience as a whole was stressful, the office staff were uniformly charming, friendly and helpful. My supporting documentation was dismissed with a cheery "Oh, your old passport is enough identification...". I paid my money and I was promised a new passport in seven days time.
I'd expected to be posting about The Ukulele Orchestra at this point: but what can I say? Life is full of surprises.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 09:49 am (UTC)India, eh?
no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 07:04 pm (UTC)If the passport office is your idea of fun you are in need of help.