h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Apart from the fact that my mouth felt like the bottom of a bird cage all yesterday and I woke up with an absolutely STINKING cold today, all was well until I tried to fill in the form for a replacement passport - the old one expired some time ago and I never got round to doing anything about it.

I am not 'good' with forms, especially British embassy type ones but I thought I was doing quite well, with few mishaps other than the fact that one is expected to write the address and telephone numbers of people to be contacted in case of an emergency (you dying) in a font smaller than 6, and got to the penultimate section, This the last section the applicant has to fill in, and I signed it with a satisfied flourish (using Quink Ink with a Parker pen) in the 52.5 x 11.5 mm yellow box ONLY to read after it (where every other of the previous seven sections says continue to section .....

Important - Keep within the border
Failure to comply with this instruction will invalidate the application.

There are seventeen characters to my 'name' and 52.5 x 11.5 is barely enough to write 'John Smith'.

So - all the way back to Rabat for a new form (because the consulate here is not allowed to give them to you for some reason) and then try and find some unsuspecting British passport holder here who has known me for five years!!

There isn't anyone.

Oh well, I didn't really want to go to England in November, even though it would have been an expenses paid trip. Now I have a cast iron excuse not to.

Cant you come in november and stay till feb?


Wont a doctor or similar work? for verifying the passport I mean.

Though if they have to have a UK passport you may well be stuck, thinking about it.



Looks like you'll not be coming then!

Oh - I have just come across another cracker.

I have to produce my Birth Certificate - and quite where the hell that is I haven't a clue. I last (knowingly saw it in 1966 when I first applied for a passport and I have certainly never had it (nor needed it) in the thirty something years that I have been living abroad.

Apparently two previous passports are NOT proof of my identity but a copy of a Birth Certificate (which I am told I can get by e-mail from the registry office in Plymouth - where I was born) IS proof.

I9t would be funny if it weren't so completely stupid.

This is bl**dy ridiculous Pedantic

So is an awful lot of the workings of the F&CO.

Although you've given them all these details before and you can be *sure* they're on record somewhere, you just *have* to show them your birth certificate again.

After all there's every chance your parents may have changed in the meantime, isn't there? And your place of birth may have moved.

What the hell is a passport if NOT proof of identity? Do you have to show you birth certificate these days when you enter Ol Blighty. Getting a NEW birth certificate is a cinch. All you have to know is your name, date of birth and parents' forenames and they'll give (email) you a new one for a small fee.

I can think of quite a few people about whom I have that basic information.

Ah, an OUT OF DATE passport, by it's very status cannot be proof of identity, surely?

It's like the 'rule' throughout the entire Middle East that; 'The number of photographs, copies of documents etc, that you require to complete any administrative formality, is always one more than the number of photographs, copies of documents etc, that you brought with you.

They relented on the Birth certificate (eventually) which rather begs the question, 'if you don't need to provide a copy of your birth certificate, why do they tell you that you do.