A while back, I needed my passport for ID purposes. But, it couldn’t be found.

It turned up a few weeks ago, but it’d since expired.

A few days ago, I submitted a renewal application. There wasn’t an option to post the decade old passport approved picture, left over from I don’t remember what purpose.

So I uploaded a new picture. Well, it wasn’t exactly new, but an old Glastonbury ticket picture surely would work. After all, it looked a lot like a passport picture.

So that didn’t work. All was not lost though; I found an old photo, which was fortunately in the right format. It existed in paper form only, so I took a picture of the picture and uploaded it. It looked fine and was accepted by the passport picture robot.

After a couple of days, I received an email, asking me to upload another picture. It seemed that my picture of a picture wasn’t acceptable.

This meant that I needed to either take a new picture or seek a photo machine. With little fair in my selfie prowess, I opted for the machine.

It’d been a very long time since I’d used such a machine (I probably need one once more in my lifetime). Such machines had been largely unchanged since I was a child, so I was somewhat confused by the controls. After successfully taking pictures of my head, I realised that the machine only accepted cash. All was not lost though; a cash machine was located just a few yards away. I needed a £10 note because the £5 in my pocket was insufficient.

Returning with my tenner, I repeated the process, only to find that I needed the exact money, £8. I’d noted that no change would be given, but had assumed that the parking ticket principle would apply – I didn’t mind losing £2 just to get the process over with.

And, so, I spent 79p on a Fry’s chocolate orange. It was the only vegan chocolate in the shop, although It was only purchased to give me change.

I had a slight concern that my £2 coin might not be accepted, but my doubt was unfounded. I completed the process once more, only to be faced with a charge of £24. It seemed that my previous attempts had been retained.

With no cancel option, I did what any other man would do. I went for a pint of beer to wait for the machine to time out.

Obviously, I needed to allow enough time for this to happen. After one pint, the machine had still retained my head. Realising that this would start the process again, I returned to the pub. After several pints, the machine worked perfectly.

I do wonder how my new picture could be acceptable. The old one is pretty close, but the thug in the new one only loosely bears a resemblance.