Grrness to passports

[Guest Starmongoose]

Okay,

so I'm getting my first adult passport. I went to the Post Office and got the necessary documentation, filled them in, paid £8 for photos (I had to do them twice cause my fringe is not in negative numbers and they wish to identify me by the creases on my forehead)

Then I found out I need to get these photos certified, something that they could have told me the first time round, no?

So I needed to find someone with the required level of qualifications to certify that I am who I am. Even if they don't know me.

So I thought, right, doctor! Easiest bet, just a signature here and it's all done and dusted right?

NO!

He was wanted to charge me £50!

Daylight FUCKING robbery!!

So I let the nice doctor know where he could shove his signature before storming out of the building.

After some brief (there really should be more information on this) searching on the Internet I found out teachers could also do this service...for free.

Now, I did not leave on the best of terms with my school. (Something about telling 1st years that the principle is a pedophile, the details are hazy.)

So those teachers were out of the question. Luckily my next door neighbor teaches high school biology and she signed it free of charge.

So, I have the documentation, the pictures, the money, the signature.

Can I leave the country now?

Maybe ill just have to catch one of the illegal immigrant vans and hitch a ride.

It's probably easier than trying to get a passport in this day and age.

[PorkChopExpress86]

Wow, that sucks. I just got my first non military passport and my experience was the exact opposite. Granted the fees are a bit much, the government shouldn't be charging me anything more then cost to give me a document that lets me travel when I want to, but it came in 10 days, not the 4-6 weeks I was told. The Japanese government gave me my certificate of eligibility for a work visa within about the same time and the Japanese consulate took about 2 days, 3 days shorter then I was told, to process my visa. All in all I was quite pleased with the way things went.

[Kanashii]

Boy, you do have it bad in the UK. (I noticed you mention pounds in your post so I'm assuming you are from the UK).

I got my first non-military passport just two years ago (even though I'm 45, I just don't leave the country that much) but here in the US we don't have to have a photo certified, it just has to meet certain requirements for size and view.

Here, you can walk into nearly any drugstore(pharmacy), photo shop or even other places and get "passport legal" photos for fairly cheap.

Sorry that you had to go through all that. I know in the US they were backlogged for awhile, because unlike our friends overseas, we haven't needed passports in the US to go to Canada or Mexico or the Carribean forever. It only started up after the 9/11 attacks over here.

Warmly,

Kanashii