Being British

The easiest way to prove you are British is with a Passport. To obtain a passport requires patience. Patience is the art of being British.


HOW TO APPLY FOR A PASSPORT


A form can be obtained from your local passport office. (LOCAL), is a term used by the Passport office to mean a facility or building up to 120 miles from your home. Nearby denotes a facility from 250 to 600 miles i.e. Inverness is nearby London. Most big cities will have a passport office, so if you live outside London the passport office is nearby i.e. London. Although London is well served with an office, city dwellers don't need to use it, as a cheapish passport can be obtained from most street vendors, in what ever name you are currently using. ON LINE You can go online to obtain a form and fill in the details. Most form applications cost around £300.00 from the search engine top hits. If you press next to around page 64 you will find the UK Government passport application page. It is free to apply for a form but the passport will obviously cost, and not just time. The government web page should only crash half a dozen times during your time on line but could be more during busy periods i.e. daylight hours 365 days a year. Frustrated with the online experience and with a new Nigerian General as a friend, you could try the post office.


APPLICATION THROUGH THE POST OFFICE


The Post Office supplies a local service to its customers. A local post office can normally be reached within a return distance of 50 miles. Not all Post offices are equipped to handle passport applications but all have the application forms. The forms are not available in a convenient rack where any toe rag can access them. You have to prove you are serious in wanting an application, which can only be accessed through one of the counter staff. The counter staff are protected from the public by a grill there is a space below to slide money under. Money, is not small change, but notes. To ensure the cashier can receive them correctly they should be pushed through one at a time the grill is too low for a finger to fit under, so great care must be taken. To ensure you can complete this manoeuvre to a satisfactory standard you can practice page feeding a Hewlett Packard printer, the frustration achieved, can be vented in the comfort of your own home, not at the Post Office counter.


PROOF OF IDENTITY A passport proves you are you. It will have a photograph of you in it. So you need to get a passport photograph. A passport photograph can be obtain from a handy coin operated kiosk normally situated in a local large supermarket or shopping arcade. The large supermarket is known as local if it located within an eighty mile return journey. The term convenient (which it obviously isn't) is for a supermarket in excess of an eighty mile return trip. You can not pre-book the photograph kiosk so have to make the journey on the off chance that it is working, switched on, and not in use as an illegal drugs dispensary by the resident collectors of Anti Social Behaviour Orders. On that extremely rare occasion that you do get to use the kiosk for the purpose intended, you must not smile. This should not be difficult, as until now you would have have nothing to smile about. Wearing sombre clothing and not smiling you should look like a police photo-fit picture on the police most wanted list. On the plus side people that know you would never recognise you from the picture, However you have to persuade them that Al Capone, is really you, and they should sign the photograph stating it is a true likeness, or they will wake in the morning, with the severed head of their favourite pet.


THE RETURNED PASSPORT


if you have completed the procedure correctly, submitted the appropriate forms in good time your passport should arrive by post a few weeks after the planned flight. On rare occasions it will arrive prior to your intended journey, by minutes. Being totally stressed out, when starting your holiday, means that nothing further on the holiday can upset you. Staying next to a building site or staying the same week as two stag parties and four hen nights will be we within your updated comfort zone.


There are of course forgeries, but you can always tell a true Brit. They will be the ones with a black expired UK passport. Being British they can not be bothered with the replacement procedure. They will not be able to travel abroad, but are content to soak up the fleeting sun on Cambois beach in waterproof clothing. Although still in the UK they will have the British tea bag in an inside pocket or handbag. That is truly being British!