Passport photos

For the last 10 years I knew my passport was going to run out next month. But I still haven’t sorted out a new one. I finally put on a nice shirt and made it out to a photo booth today. I don’t have a good history of looking great in passport photos, ever since I got my first one when I was 15, for a family holiday in Majorca. The pictures that dropped out of the booth in the Chesterfield branch of Woolworths were possibly the most horrific ever taken, not helped by the bright yellow sweater I was wearing at the time. It’s difficult to see where my complexion stopped and the wool began. Passport photo machines have changed. You now get to approve the shot before it’s printed. No stool to turn around, no choice of orange or grey curtains as background. No loitering nervously outside the booth for five minutes like while it prints the pictures and then holding them out to dry for another 5 minutes. The new ones aren’t too bad I suppose. It’s more the terrifying prospect that this is how you must look to customs officials when you go abroad for the next 10 years.