A passport is just a glorified bus pass
Abhijit Naskar
I should have put a warning for those of a nervous disposition about looking at the photograph above. It's me at almost sixteen in my first passport photo. What is that saying? 'If you look like your passport photo, you are not well enough to travel'.
I share the photograph as last week I renewed my passport and, in preparation for doing so, came across all my old passports and, looking through them, could not help but chuckle at the grim visages within. The passport just issued will be my seventh—more than you would expect for someone not yet seventy years old. But my first passport was only for five years, and I also had one stolen.
To quote my wife Sarah when she saw all seven photographs, "Good God I wouldn't have recognised you ... not sure I'd fancy you at 16 you look quite sinister and like a murderer in second one - photo fit type you see on the crime programmes."
I'm not going to impose all seven on you, but Sarah's correct (and she met me by the time I was on passport number four - so I guess in real life, the sinister look had faded somewhat). The only thing to add to the bottom of my passport photos is the crime ID number. They all show the blank-eyed expression of the one above. Reminiscent of the grim and menacing photographs of those arrested for some offence or other. There's definitely an element of "don't mess with me" in all of mine. I look like a 'heavy' from some type of crime group in my latest one. These days, passport photographs are the nearest thing we have to those sombre captures of the early days of photography when the subject had to sit very still for some time.
My first two passport photographs are both black and white. I guess colour photos in passports must have started around the early 1980s. My passport photos reflect the rise and fall of my weight over the decades. Also, my ageing features and the fact I'm not smiling have brought more prominence to the scar along my upper lip. In the photograph above, it's not too evident, but in my most recent one, the distortion is clear to see.
That scar resulted from a collision between my mouth and a pavement kerb when I was around ten years old. I've written before about playing football with my friends on the terraced street where I lived in northeast England. It was a street that carried little traffic. In the early sixties, no one who lived in the street could afford a car, and maybe one or two vehicles a day would pass down the street. If you've read earlier pieces of mine, you might recall my friends and I couldn't afford a football, so we used an old tennis ball instead, and our goalposts were someone's jacket or pullover laid on the ground. On the occasion of my accident, I went for a 50:50 ball with a slightly bigger lad, and he reached the ball a split second before me and with more force. The result was that Harry went headlong over the other lad's foot with no time to get my arms up in protection. The next thing I knew was the blinding pain in my mouth, followed rapidly by the ironlike taste of my own blood. My top lip's 'Cupid's Bow' was lost forever.
Back when I received my first passport, it included your 'occupation'. I was so concerned that mine would read 'schoolboy'—an accurate description but one that did nothing for my mid-teenage ego. I recall being incredibly pleased when the passport arrived and said 'Student'. I felt a level of maturity I was yet to reach in real life (some might offer I still haven't)
I also mentioned I had a passport stolen. 'Lifted' by a pickpocket when in the flower market in Amsterdam some ten years ago while on a trip to celebrate my birthday with Sarah and our youngest daughter. My interaction with the Dutch police station sergeant to whom I reported the theft still raises a smile. My opening line to him on entering the station was, 'Do you speak English?'. His twinkling-eyed reply in perfectly spoken English was, "Yes, and German, Spanish and French too. 'Now, how can I help you"? He then gently took me through the crime report, offering several humorous asides as he took the details of the crime. On the report's completion, he made a great show of handing the document to a detective with a wink in my direction and a reassurance they were now "on the case". However, he added with a philosophical sigh that the chance of my passport’s return was not high. Nevertheless, his light-touch approach was just what I needed to put things in perspective and remind me there are far worse tragedies than a stolen passport.
Yet, for the past ten years, I was constantly reminded of the theft whenever I used my passport or showed my driving licence. They carry the photograph taken in a photo booth in Amsterdam Centraal Station later the day of the robbery. The British Consulate in Amsterdam required the picture to issue me a temporary passport. Then, the UK Passport Office and the DVLC used the same photograph for the replacement documents. Not surprisingly, the image is probably the unhappiest of all my unhappy passport photographs.
Obtaining a replacement passport after the theft meant I was subject to the 'third degree'. Firstly, at the consulate in Amsterdam before the issue of my temporary passport, which was valid for only the return journey to the UK, and then another grilling to obtain a replacement one on my return. The second interview meant a trip to the passport office in London. My interviewer robustly challenged me about the circumstances behind the theft (or, as he called it throughout the interview, the loss) of my passport. I had not realised that, at the time, Amsterdam was something of a hub in the trade of stolen passports. But also, that some people were earning money by selling their passports; they must have been desperate, given that, for example, replacing a UK passport would cost some £300. Half of that was the cost of the temporary passport at the consulate, and the other half was to pay for the replacement once you returned. It doesn't seem like good business to me, but then again, if you are desperate ….
Anyway, by the end of the 20-minute interview, or I might write an interrogation, it was clear to my interviewer that I was simply the unhappy, innocent victim of a crime, and he OK’d the issue of a new passport. It's that with my soulful Amsterdam photograph that I've just renewed.
Until the UK left the EU, UK citizens did not receive a stamp in their passports when travelling between the EU states, although I think you could ask for one. However, some years before Brexit, a French passport control officer, living up to that country's reputation for romance, stamped Sarah's passport when she and I travelled for a celebratory trip to Paris on her birthday. Accompanying the stamp was a winning smile and a "Joyeux anniversaire madame". In contrast, I received the steely interrogatory look that one expects from such an officer and no stamp.
Many years ago, I entered Italy without showing my passport. In the late 1980s, I travelled to Genoa a lot on business. At the time, I worked for the Marconi Company, whose roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, the so-called 'Inventor of Radio', in 1897. The company I joined had grown massively since its founding, and communication systems were only one of many different market offerings, including aerospace, rail, defence, power stations, and even consumer goods such as lightbulbs, furniture and TVs. At its peak, Marconi comprised over 140 operating companies around the world. Despite the Italian name, it was headquartered in the UK, where Marconi had taken the first patent for radiotelegraphs.
As an aside, Marconi was not only an engineer and inventor, he was also a shrewd businessman. He did not sell the first radio telegraph systems but leased them to companies and supplied the operators. Marconi’s company taking a proportion of the price charged to a customer for each message sent. It’s thought by some that this model contributed to the tragedy of the RMS Titanic. The Marconi radio operators onboard were too keen on sending private messages and earning money for their employer from those on board to pay enough attention to the ice warnings being received. Also, one of the Titanic operators cut across the operator from the ship, the SS Californian that might later have come to the Titanic’s rescue, telling him to ‘keep out’ as the Titanic operator was busy sending private messages. The Californian operator then went to bed, thus not hearing the Titanic distress calls as the Californian’s owners could only afford one Marconi operator. Another person on Californian who had an interest in wireless picked up the headset to listen into the ‘traffic’, but he couldn’t understand Morse code well, and thus, the distress messages meant little to him. The saying goes for want of a nail a battle was lost. In this case, it was the loss of a ship for the want of another Marconi operator.
Anyway, back to Genoa. Given the parentage of the Marconi company, it will not come as a surprise that they had several offices based in Italy. One of these was a significant employer in Genoa. On this particular visit, I was about to go through passport control at Genoa Airport. As I approached the officer on duty, I opened my jacket to take my passport from an inside pocket. Clipped to my pocket and visible was my company ID with the prominent company name, my photograph, etc. On seeing the ID, the officer smiled broadly, offered me a "Buongiorno signore", and waved me through. My passport never having left my pocket. Ironically, it was quite different when I arrived at the company site. My company UK ID was insufficient there, and I had to surrender my passport as proof of identity and gain entrance. Only in Italy! And even in Italy, it would not happen today.
Anyway, I am now the proud possessor of a new passport, and the world has gone full circle in that it is back almost to the colour of that which holds the photograph above. The UK’s dalliance with the Burgundy passports of the EU is now over. Something that appears extremely important to a section of the British public. I wonder what they might think about the fact that a French company produces British passports! Oh, the irony...
For balance against the first photo, here's the next one I have of me taken some three years later. I have no photographs of me in the period between these two. These were the days before everyone took selfies every other minute. This happier photograph is from the end of my first stag do in what was once the 'New Inn' on Tottenham Court Road in London. The friends pictured (left to right, Adrian, Ernie and Bonnie) and I look remarkably fresh given the event (Kelvin to my immediate right - less so - I wrote of my dear friend Kelvin in my piece Old Friends. The passport photo at the start of this piece was still valid at this point - would you recognise me from it? Anyway, at least in the photograph below, I don't look like a serial killer...
You've got so many stories, Harry. It's wonderful. I wonder whether it is that you have kept the stories well, in your memory or that your life has been more interesting than average.
We got my first son a passport when he was still a baby.
Previously, children up to a certain age travelled on their mother's passport. But the rule changed and we had to get him a passport for a planned trip.
He was barely 6 months old (I remember this because he'd not been sitting steadily for too long and I was so worried that he would topple over and fall off the stool on which he was placed to take the passport photo)
For the next 10 years (that's how long we hold passports), he had to live with a passport that had his 6-month-old picture. Of course, he looked nothing like it by ten.
Also love the stag-do photo. I'd read your essay about Kelvin some time back. He's black, right? Didn't realise he was black. Interesting. I always thought I could pick up on when the person being written about is black even when it is not mentioned. Goes to show how little I know. :-)
Thanks for this.
Excellent post and great to see you got the band together