As @cakeorbed is about to embark on her adventures in NYC & has said I am welcome to visit I have decided it is about time for me to actually get around to renewing my passport.

I did begin to do this last summer when I was planning a trip with another friend but for various reasons this fell through & I never sent off the application.

The thing that bothers me about this renewal malarkey is not the bureaucracy of all the form filling etc. but rather the knowledge that the photo I send off with the application will haunt me for a decade if I don’t like it.

My current photo is awful! It was taken when I was 16 & somehow the photo machine gave me black roots, blonde mid lengths & red ends on my hair. This was back in the days before I became a sometimes redhead & my hair was naturally blonde so this has always baffled me.

When I was beginning the renewal process before I had 2 sets of photos done. The first was at a ridiculously expensive place in the West End & although I paid £11 for the pictures I decided before even walking out of the shop that I would never show them to another living soul.

The girl in the shop taking the photo was much shorter than me & as such the photo was taken from below chin level & is supremely unflattering. I tried again a couple of days later at a photo booth in a supermarket but being that it was during the heatwave in August the pictures came out with me all shiny. After that the trip was called off & as I had no immediate need to finish the process I gladly put the vile images away somewhere.

Now it is time to consider the subject again. I have had three days where my skin has been lovely & clear, my hair has behaved itself & I have felt that I would take a decent enough picture that I would not hate having to produce my passport. It is sod’s law however that on all three of those days I have been distracted from getting the pictures done.

I keep telling myself that nobody likes their passport picture (or their driving licence image) but I keep finding myself obsessing over it. I know I am not alone out there as YouTube is full of videos tips about preparing for these photos. Does anyone actually like their ID photo?