Passport

My first passport pictured with my current passport. Forty five years between them but they are both blue, British passports. Which rather puts our membership of the EU into perspective!
But there the similarity ends. In 1978 I had to fill out a paper form, get some photos from a Photo Booth and have two of them certified to be a true likeness of me by an upright pillar of society such as a doctor or bank manager (I’m not sure a bank manager qualifies as a pillar of society these days, always assuming you could find one!) and then send the whole lot off to the Passport Office in Liverpool before waiting for the passport to be posted to me in a few weeks time. The only way of speeding things up was to go there in person and queue up for several hours. And, in a pre-equality age, I could have added my wife to my passport, thus ensuring that she could not leave the country without me!
How different it was applying for this most recent passport. On Tuesday morning I had a digital photo taken and was given a code. Said code was then put in an online form, which was uploaded on Tuesday afternoon. That evening, my previous passport was sent off to be checked. Interestingly, although I did Mrs C’s application at the same time, we had to send our old passports to different addresses. Which might explain why her new passport was received yesterday and mine today. Considering that a turnaround time of “up to 10 weeks” was quoted, I think 3/4 days is pretty impressive!
Security measures on that first passport were limited to an embossed stamp on the corner of the photo. The new one is much more high tech, with embedded photos, raised printing, holograms and UV readable designs, not to mention the biometric chip that enables the holder to use the automatic gates at Border Control.
But the biggest change, as far as I am concerned, is the wording inside the cover of the passport. That first one - and all our subsequent EU ones - stated “Her Brittanic Majesty’s Secretary of State etc.” The new one says “HIS (my capitals) Brittanic Majesty’s etc.” And, given the current line of succession, that wording is going to continue for a long time to come…