Without Let Or Hindrance

On the inside cover of my passport, it says "Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary." This evokes images of the British Empire, of moustachioed gentlemen, immaculately dressed in three-piece suits - and behatted of course -trailed by porters wheeling their steamer trunks down a gangplank as they disembark at some sun beaten foreign port in the vein of Phileas Fogg in Round The World In Eighty Days.  Waved through passport control and customs by admiring locals, they proceed imperiously on some diplomatic mission or to run the family's tea plantation. In reality its presence is more ornamental than of any practical use; I imagine that one would get fairly short shrift if you cited it to speed your journey through immigration at some foreign airport - or British airport come to that - as any traveller will be familiar with the queues that snake around arrivals halls at most airports, which can only be dealt with by allowing them to take their own sweet time to clear.

David Niven (left) as Phileas Fogg, the quintessential Englishman abroad.

The longest delay I can recall encountering was at Cancun airport a good number of years ago - if the pictures I have seen online are anything to go by, they seem to have tarted the place up a bit from how I recall it- where immigration took a couple of hours, time that was spent queuing in what can best be described as a superannuated shed. Of course even returning to the UK and landing at Stansted or Gatwick is not much better as you join what seems to be an endless line of travellers that ends at the automatic passport gate, where instead of some bored UK Border Agency official giving your document a cursory glance, you have to wait patiently, shuffling and turning your head at random angles to try to get the ePassport gate to recognise your photograph.

The reason for my mentioning all of this is because I recently renewed my passport, and the experience was very much different from either my previous renewal, and more especially, from the very first application I made for a passport back in the 1980's. Prior to then I had used a British Visitors Passport  for my occasional forays overseas (usually just day trips to France or Belgium).  The British Visitors Passport, which could be obtained from the Post Office, was valid for a year and was only accepted in Western Europe. It consisted of a single piece of cardboard, folded in three. It was dropped in 1995 as it did not meet security standards.

The British Visitors Passport

This time round, my application was processed completely online. The Passport Office kept me up to date by email and text, telling me that my old passport had been received by them, that my application was being processed, and that my new passport had been despatched. The first time I applied for a full passport, in 1987, staff at the Passport Office went on strike literally the day after I had posted off my application. My passport arrived in May, just weeks before I was due to go on holiday, but in the interim I had had no idea if I was going to get it in time to go on holiday. In 2007 we booked a holiday to Tobago and I suddenly realised that my passport needed renewing before we went. That time I went for the Premium service - you get your passport in one day, but have to go in person to a passport office and it is eye-wateringly expensive - which involved going to Victoria, having my application processed and then kicking my heels for a few hours while they produced the document.

First step in renewing my passport last week was obviously to get a new picture taken and it was probably naive of me to expect this to be trouble free. When Val renewed her passport a couple of years ago, her photo - which was a physical copy sent off with a paper application - was rejected by the Passport Office (they said she was smiling and smiling is not allowed as it makes it particularly difficult for ePassport gates to recognise you apparently) so despite the claims of stores like Timpsons or Snappy Snaps that they are experts at taking passport photos that comply with all the rules, I guess I should not have been so cavalier as to expect my photograph to be accepted without any problem. 

Sadly, Snappy Snaps' claims on their website proved over-ambitious.

The first attempt was, I admit, a bloody awful picture, but then again most passport photos are pretty terrible. Yes, I did look like an serial killer, but it was me, and it was taken professionally, so what could go wrong? I uploaded it - and it was rejected. "There's not enough space round your head," said the error message, before going on to say, "We can't find the outline of your head." Back I went to Snappy Snaps, but this time - in case the hooded sweatshirt top I had been wearing was partly responsible for the rejection - I wore something different. They took a new picture - which looked marginally less like a man bent on disembowelling someone with a rusty breadknife, but not much. I uploaded it - and it was rejected.  Apparently this time the software could find the outline of my head, but there was still insufficient space around it. As you can imagine, I was not a happy bunny, being forced to return to Snappy Snaps again. This time they manipulated the second photo and checked it online with the Passport Office to make sure it was compliant - why they didn't do that in the first place (and I didn't know they could) is beyond me. Naturally, this time when I uploaded my photo, it was accepted.

For the sake of your sensibilities, I have excised the offending picture from this screenshot of the website that rejected it. 

Even though the Passport Office website says that it will take three weeks to renew a passport, my application only took seven days, I did it all online and it was entirely hassle free, which is more than can be said for getting the new photograph that I needed for it in the first place. Because renewal applications can be done entirely online, there is no need to have a photograph printed, and if my experience is anything to go by, I would recommend that when you next need your passport renewed you get a friend or relative with a smartphone or digital camera to take your picture rather than get it taken professionally. Since the Passport Office website checks whether the photo complies with the rules,  you can keep taking photos and uploading them till you get one that is accepted. Or you can make multiple trips to Snappy Snaps, like I did. Given the choice, I would go for the first option.