Fun and Games at the Passport Office!

[Guest]

I went to the post office, and straight away I knew I didn't like it here. For start, there were stairs leading up to it! I mean come on! What if all I needed was a stamp? What if I was 90? What if I had a fear of stairs?

Ten minutes I blocked the stairway for, while I was churning this around in my head. There amassed a queue of nearly twelve bemused 90 year olds with un-stamped envelopes waiting to go medieval on my ass. I promptly moved.

Once I got up there, it was a strange new world. Half WH Smiths, half post office. I felt like I was in the future so I did an anti-gravity walk to the back of the queue. The queue which was like a chubby snake of doom. The slowest moving predator in the world. So I promptly entered at the back.

One by one, pensioners were ejected from the snakes mouth. A bit crap for a predator, but then would you eat a pensioner? At the front, there was a mysterious voice. "Cashier Number 3 Please" the ghostly phenomenon bellowed. I felt it was a bully as there was one old lady who was moving too slow, so a flap opened below the curious computer creature and tasered her.

One less person in the queue.

A half an hour passed, and I was finally at the crappy snake's mouth. "Cashier Number 5 Please". It was almost hypnotic, if not a little sexy...

I waited half an hour to say this following passage. I'd waited all my life to say this, but when I did it seemed a bit of an anticlimax. "Can I have a passport form please?"

Without saying anything, the clearly stressed post office cashier handed me an envelope. I also got a postal order to pay the clearly exorbitant amount for my passport. I shot her a look that clearly said 'What, no kiss?' when I had received my order. I was escorted from the premises.

A Week Later

A letter arrives at my house, with a curious marking on it. I examined it, and I thought it was some kind of seal. It turned out the postie had a cold. I opened the envelope and threw it away, as I was slightly put off by what the postie had left on it, and read the contents of the letter:

"All new applicants for a passport must attend an interview. It is the law. We are not kidding. If you come we promise to give you some custard creams"

Totally official government letter right there.

So the day came. My big day. Tuesday. I didn't know where the place was, so I printed off a map, which was fun to colour in. I did yellows, oranges, greens and reds, and did some arrows to point me both to the place of my interview, and to a random place up by Duke Street. Just to provide a little adventure.

I got there, and pressed the button to go in. The voice over the intercom was scary. Strangely in a good way...

I went up to the interview rooms, and the lady at reception started asking me questions about my address, name, age and structural integrity. I said "I am big like house, no?" in an eastern European accent. She frowned.

Once she was done measuring me, she gave me a small laminated square with a number 26. 'Oooh... randomly ominous' I thought. It wasn't.

From like a mile away, I heard my number. I had to walk all the way down to the end of the country to get to booth 6, where there was an unashamedly cheery woman waiting to quiz me.

Once I sat down, the lights went down and Chris Tarrant appeared, then he was escorted from the premises by force, and the lights were turned back on.

The lady took her seat. She damn near slashed my face off with her eyelashes! And that was before I realised she was more orange than Dale Winton and Robert Kilroy-Silk's lovechild.

She came loaded with a question-shotgun, and pelleted me with question bullets. The questions ranged from my parents date of birth to the size of my ancestors farmland.

Once she'd finished peppering me with questions, she asked me if I had any, so I got this little question-grenade from my utility belt. "Where are my custard creams?" She looked at me, gave a big scary grin, and said "You've already eaten them". I looked down, and lo and behold, there were crumbs all over me. It turns out that the questions made me nervous, and I ate all the biscuits in one mouthul.

Once she finished, I tok my top off and brushed all the crumbs in her face, before re-clothing and making a break for the exit before I was tasered.

Two days later, my passport arrived, again with a strange mark on the envelope.

So the lesson is, if you want a passport, throw crumbs in the face of your interviewer.