Zurich - Renewing my UK Passport

So Much Effort for This Uninspiring Photograph!

There were a few things I needed to get sorted on my return. My tax return was one and another was to renew my UK passport. One problem with going to Egypt so often is that the visas have taken up all of the space in my passport and I have no spare pages left. It’s a bit annoying as it’s not due to expire until 2021. On the plus side, maybe by renewing early, I’ll manage to retain a European passport for another ten years rather than having a UK-only passport.

You can now renew your UK passport online, which is so much better than having to go all the way to Bern to the British Embassy (and I think from there, the passport was sent to France, which I always thought was a bit bizarre). In this digital age, they’ll now take a JPEG as your photograph. This is a good thing, but it also puts greater pressure on you to get a good photograph. It’s impractical to stay in one of those booths until you get a good photo, so I’d always resigned myself to having to settle for whatever came out after the first attempt. However, if you can do the photograph yourself it doesn’t cost any money to take photographs over and over again until you get one that you like. And there’s the rub.

I was beginning to despair. I’d done quite a few selfies in Egypt, but they all made me look so old. Am I really that old? Oh, don’t answer that. I got Ann to take a few photographs of me after I’d dressed up for Kathryn’s party. The first few came out making me look red-faced and drunk until I realized that the camera was still on underwater mode. Once we’d corrected that, the photos just came out making me look old again. That was surely wrong?

One possible solution was that I needed my hair cut and maybe that was the problem. I hadn’t had time to go to the hairdresser during my last months in Egypt. I hadn’t been happy with my previous haircut in Zurich and didn’t want to go back there, so I did a search online for somewhere nearby. To my great surprise, the hairdresser who had just won some kind of world championships of hairdressing had his salon just round the corner from where I live. The salon had five-star reviews on google. Incredible. I didn’t even know it was there.

I strolled over to see if they had a free appointment and my luck was in. They were able to cut my hair straight away. The salon itself was quite funky and two other people were already having their hair done. Winning trophies were lined up along the reception desk. The hairdresser kindly complimented me on the beautiful colour of my hair, which I appreciated since most hairdressers are keen to advise me to get it coloured when they see all the grey. Besides, I hate being upsold (but I know it’s their job).

I left feeling happy about life. Finally, I might get a decent passport photograph. Once home, I looked up how to use the self-timer on my newish camera. It was easy. But, lo and behold, when I saw the shots, I still looked old. Surely not! After analyzing the photos, I decided that the problem lay not with me actually being old, but rather due to having light shining to the side of my face and highlighting unwanted features. Maybe if the light was evenly dispersed, I would look like my youthful self?

This did actually work. Well, OK, I still look a little old, but I guess that can’t be wholly avoided. I would have carried on trying for something better, but I must have done something to my camera, because it started to take only out-of-focus shots. I’m not sure what I did there. Maybe the camera was trying to tell me something (ie, that my brain’s out of focus with reality?). The out-of-focus shots looked pretty good.

Anyway, this is an example of how a “small” admin task can explode into a whole series of other tasks and take forever to do as a result. The rest of the application process was really very smooth and I’m impressed with it so far. But I haven’t sent my old passport off yet and nor have I got the new one, so there’s still room for error. However, for now, I’m happy!