‘Gosh, is that you?’
Don’t you hate it when a friend, flicking through your
family album, blinks at the beaming young blonde on the page and then looks back
at you with a look of vague incredulity?
I couldn’t believe what I saw either - when the
woman in the photo shop in Fleet handed me my newly taken passport photo. My
face fell, even more than that of the middle aged, po-faced, jowly woman
staring back at me.
In school I
used to be called sulky Helen because my face, in repose, has a kind of hang
dog expression.
‘Miserable as sin’ was Granny’s response to that
kind of look followed by the God-fearing admonition –
‘If the wind changes your face will stay like that.’
The photographer gently awoke me from my gloomy
reverie and said, with her best counselling- support voice –
‘Don’t worry love, nobody likes their passport
photo.’
Now, in all my years of crossing country borders I
have never, ever, been challenged or questioned by the powers that be.
Not once.
Was it my
goody two-shoes innocent expression? If
they only knew...
Or did they just not really look, like that
journalist who stuck a photo of a horse’s head in his passport and was waved
gaily through.
I’ve tried my best to get noticed and challenged,
just for the hell of it. My claims at the Dutch border to be a rabid Welsh
nationalist about to commit arson on English owned holiday homes in Wales were
met with guffaws of laughter.
Attempts at cracking jokes with East Berlin border guards
backfired badly. A stony silence from them was broken by a furious hiss from
the British Council representative (accompanying us students) –
‘Shut up for God’s sake.’
And so, since my passport arrived I have embarked on
a new regime:-
Mornings I contort my face à la Eve Fraser’s facial
exercises in front of my boudoir mirror, curtains drawn slightly in case the
post man sees and remembers those NHS stroke alerts.
Afternoons consist of light exercises and weights.
My new fitbit, welded to my wrist, duly records my 10,000 daily steps. No
alcohol has passed my lips for a fortnight. This is despite a daily, (around
7pm), involuntary twitching of my left hand towards an amputated imaginary
glass of Chablis.
Looking back morosely at the family album I found a
picture which would have had a good laugh at my older self’s predicament. Here I am, non- passport approved.
I’m off to Russia on hols in a fortnight. I really
hope my new regime has had some effect.
Despite these times of international tension I long
to be taken aside at border control.
For the passport official to look up with a
look of vague incredulity and exclaim –
‘Gosh! Is that you?’
