A cherished ticket to freedom...

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I can’t imagine my life without travel. ‘Find a job you love’, so the saying goes, ‘and you’ll never work a day in your life’. In the last ten years I’ve been lucky enough to visit more than 30 countries and my constant companion (the only thing that I know for certain has been on all of those trips with me) has been my passport.

We have a lot in common, me and my passport. As we’ve travelled together, we’ve aged together; the cover has gradually become weatherworn and wrinkled, not unlike my face. The stamps and visas emblazoned on the pages inside trigger memories of places visited and friends made. We’ve spent so much time together I think, by a process of osmosis, we probably share the same DNA.

So this week was a sad week – it was time to renew. Arriving back from Stockholm late on Wednesday night, I slid my old passport face down for the very last time into the scanner at the Heathrow border. And as the glass gate opened in front of me, I said a quiet (but still quite audible) ‘thank you’ to my little maroon friend. It was loud enough for the Border Guard in the booth opposite to send me a quizzical glance but a friendly smile on my part put him off the scent and I was once again allowed back in to the country.

And so today I went to the Passport Office in London to get myself a shiny new permit to travel! Appropriately, the process is not unlike getting through an airport. It’s a bit of a faff; you queue to go through security (they took my little scissors off me), then you check in for your appointment, then you sit in a lounge waiting for your number to be called. Everyone was very British and very nice and, as is often the case in airport queues, I struck up a few conversations with some very interesting people.

The man in the security queue was originally from Hong Kong, the couple in the reception queue from Nigeria and the lady in the waiting room from Antigua. They all had a travel story to tell and like me they all treasured their passports. For me it’s my ticket to travel the world, for them it’s their ticket to enjoy the freedoms and benefits of being a British and (for now at least) EU Citizen.

I’ve asked the Passport Office to send my battered old passport back to me when they issue the new one. It will join the other four (teens, twenties, thirties and forties), bound tight in a thick elastic band at the bottom a shoe box in the corner of the attic. Forty years of entry stamps and exit stamps, visas and permits. Another decade of doing the job I love. If only I could renew myself every ten years and start again with a fresh new cover.

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