The Past

Where's My Passport?

Oh no, here we go again. Flight booked for Stockholm tomorrow morning. The snow started yesterday; by now it's probably six feet high in Stockholm and iced over. Maybe I had better call that insurance line - Insure and Go - and pay some money just in case I fall over in the snow. I approach the whole concept of travel insurance in the same way as I do buying a lottery ticket but then again insurance works in a different way - if you buy the insurance nothing happens and if it does you are not covered anyway. Still the whole purpose of insurance is to make me feel assured that nothing will happen to me.

Ten minutes later and ten pounds lighter - insurance is booked. Now to pack the suitcase. I start to throw underwear and toiletries into my still unpacked suitcase from two weeks ago when I visited my mother. Oh good it's already filled with the stuff I didn't use last time including a hair dryer that I have never seen before in my life. Hang on that's not a hairdryer. What the heck is it? Oh yes, it's a gun. A replica I hasten to add. Phew, good job I saw it - that would have held things up at the airport. It would have been worse than the incident at Moscow airport when I was stopped for carrying a brick in my luggage. Actually it wasn't a brick but an ancient architectural relic from Bangladesh that I wasn't really sure I could take out of the country.

OK, so insurance booked, suitcase packed, contraband removed, Ryanair print out rescued from recycling bin and positioned in handbag. I start to relax and congratulate myself on my organisational skills. Then I open the middle draw of my dressing table to reach for the passport that has been kept safe since that trip to Rome in November. I can't find it. Suddenly I'm plunged back into the memory of the trip to Barcelona in 1999 when with perfect timing two days before we were due to fly I discovered that I had indeed irretrievably lost my passport. I had also lost my birth certificate, my degree certificate and my husband (but that's another tale). To acquire a replacement passport in two days stretched my mind, finances and mood but I did it. Oh no, not again. This time I knew that I would not be able to achieve such a feat and after a frantic search I began to resign myself to abandoning the trip. Leaving the drawer and its contents ripped out on the bed to the consternation of Tom who was endeavouring to get in his twenty three hours of feline sleep necessary to maintain his appetite I staggered downstairs to explore the drawer of documents lurking in the hall whilst harbouring a pessimistic premise that there was no way my passport was going to be there. It wasn't. What handbag did I have in Rome? Was it the one that I sent to the charity shop?

Hang on, a glimmer of light in my 5-HTP, work-stressed, addled, feeling fat and having no clothes brain. Didn't I need my passport to register with my work agency in December? I unclearly recall sending it off in a big, sellotaped envelope together with other detailed documentation proving my every movement for the past 15 years. It must have been returned mustn't it otherwise I would have remembered. Is it lurking on my desk in the tower of doom 5 miles away? Or is it with the slope of crap holding up the Halliwell's in the kitchen? A quick search ensued, my heart beating rapidly in the red, Gap fleece dressing gown, central heating full blasting, face flushing, temperature rising - imminent cerebral vascular accident. Oh, unmanageability your name is me. And then I see the blue folder filled with plastic sleeves containing my certificates, diplomas, dog tags, tattoos and all the other stuff I need to prove I exist. And there nestling in a window of plastic is MY PASSPORT. Oh joy, and how impressive that I am so organised. There's nothing like a little drama to help me feel good about myself.