The recent coverage of the passport, backlog scandal was presented with such OMG-ness by our national broadcaster, with such red-top zeal, that it made one pause for thought. They reliably informed me that the passport office was as fit for purpose as the Titanic, post its brush with an iceberg. The commentary was hysterical beyond belief. It appeared that holidays were the new subsistence diet of the Irish people and that a passport blight would create an emotional, human catastrophe not witnessed since the eighteen forties. It seemed, that in this post vaccine world, the lockdown would be extended indefinitely for many.
The over-egging of the story, coming as it did from a reliable source, caused this reluctant traveller to stop for a moment and think. Something about it bothered me and then I remembered what. There had been a German wedding on my far horizon, only, somehow the horizon had crept into the neighbouring landscape when I was not paying attention. The timeline had shrunk from months to weeks. An oops thought sent me frantically digging in drawers for my passport. Double oops; if my passport were an Italian sausage, it was so far past its best before date that eating it would have caused a serious case of botulism.
The warnings were dire. ‘A ten-week passport tailback,’ we were told, was the shortest tailback in town.
It was a very dispirited man who visited the passport website. Hope was gone. The wedding would have to proceed without me. Life would never be the same again.
Once online, there was a simple list of requirements and a sample gallery to show what was expected from my photograph.
Having read the instructions, I filled in the online forms, uploaded the least cadaverous picture of myself, the not-quite autopsy-slap shot, the most animated (but not smiling, no teeth please,) in my collection. One could call it the ‘portrait of a zombie,’ and no Hollywood, makeup artist would quibble with the description. Fee paid, I sat back, with my feet on a stool, and drafted an apology to explain my absence from the upcoming German wedding.
Feet nicely elevated, I thought of other times, ones when the passport mug shot was taken by professional photographers. In those bygone days, travel for its own sake, was exotic. The passport photograph was a portrait, one designed to make you look good. In a recent trawl through a box of family pictures, I unearthed two ancient, green hardbacks, each with a harp on the cover.
Opening them revealed an elegant, young woman in a discreet polo neck, and a dashing young man in a suit and tie. We are talking nineteen fifties glam here, a time when my parents were single and curious to see more of the world. How things have changed in the passport universe since then; and not for the better.
I unearthed my father’s, that young man’s, final passport too, and was faced with a grotesque caricature of a human being.
The picture, somehow, managed to be even more horrible than those normally produced by the automated photobooths, still occasionally seen at railway stations. And it was not the displayed ravages of age, the sagging jowls, the receding hair line, the signs of stroke, the frailty that comes with age, which struck terror in the soul. This was a Francis Bacon meets mutant-movie, special-effects photograph; and should have carried an over eighteen’s certificate. Worst of all, to my eye, there was nothing of the man I knew in the shot. It could not, under any circumstances, be called a portrait, unless you bore the name Frankenstein.
After all, a portrait should capture something of the person sitting before the lens; a light in their eyes, the hint of a life yet to be led, the story of parties attended, experiences survived, and lessons, possibly learned.
These are the signs of life, as are laughter lines around the eyes, a disapproving droop around the lips, or perhaps a frown of discontent etched into the forehead. Better however, is a smirk brought on by a half-remembered joke, or the hint of a smile on a lived-in face.
And yet, for all the sad comparisons between the first and last passport pictures, here was a man who was very much alive.
A man who was yet to party in Germany, be a tourist in Rome, holiday in Spain, and barbeque in the US. Like Lazarus, this apparently dead person, had a few miles in him yet.
On the fourth day of waiting, the mailbox received an express delivery. The fourth day! Not the fourth week, for the lucky few, who knew a man, who knew a man in the passport office. Not the fourth month, the expected arrival date. The fourth day! Ordered on a Monday, delivered with Friday’s post. Where were all the journalists now? Where were the story retractions? It took God six days to make the world, it took the passport office a mere four to set my world to rights.
But what of the photo? Yes, it was as bad as expected. My jowls seem far worse than when viewed in the shaving mirror. The hairline, ok, so there is none. And, as for my face, it is as one dimensional as a frying pan. No one could call this mug shot a portrait. Looking at the picture, one could not say that here is a writer; a disfigured monster, maybe, a homicidal maniac, perhaps, one might even be persuaded that this is the picture of a fast-order chef. But then, what does a computer know of fast-order chefs? Or teachers? Nurses? Or Doctors?
Looking at my new passport and remembering my father’s final one, I can see him now clapping his hands with relish at the idea of a trip to Germany. I can close my eyes and imagine him licking his lips, while talking in hushed tones of German beer and chilled white wine.
Whatever it makes of me, I sure hope the German, passport-control computer raises no objections to my jowls and allows them, along with the rest of me, into the country. I have a sudden urge for cool German wine.