New Passport

James and I applied for our new passports on 9th December. They don’t actually run out until March but what with Brexit we decided to reapply early in case there were delays. Mind you, now that we have been locked down for many weeks to come, there really was no hurry after all. We applied online, uploading photos of ourselves that we took of each other. The next day I went down to the Post Office and posted our old passports to the addresses provided. I say “addresses” in the plural because strangely I was instructed to post mine to Liverpool while James was told to post his to Peterborough. And that’s where our troubles began; I just posted them using normal second class post, rather than recorded delivery. We heard nothing for weeks, and the message on the passport renewal website simply continued to ask us to send our old passports. James became increasingly convinced that the passports were lost forever. When Cat then applied for her passport to be renewed, and used recorded delivery to return her old passport, her new passport was issued swiftly and efficiently. At this point my name definitely became Mrs Mud in the eyes of my dear husband. Finally James got the message that his old passport had been received and just after new year his shiny new passport arrived. This took the edge off his reproaches but by this time even I was getting a bit twitchy about the lack of updates on the website. At last I got the much awaited message that my new passport was on its way, and it arrived this morning. What a relief! It had taken more than a month since I posted my old passport but all has ended well. 

Let’s hope that we get to use our passports this year!