The telegraph

£ 360, 800 miles and an emergency night sleeper – just to get a renewed passport

We booked Easyjet flights to Portugal on Monday and, with the novelty of overseas vacations and the general excitement of seeing maybe a patch of blue sky in a week, we were super organized. Yesterday, coming back from my sister’s birthday brunch, we even decided to check in on our flights. A week earlier. What foresight. So we blew the dust on the family passports and suddenly a disaster happened. Our 14 year old daughter, Olga, has a passport that expires in October. It was very good. But since January, this is no longer the case. You now need a minimum of six months on your passport to travel to any EU country except Ireland. The government’s passport validity checker confirmed our fears. Without a new passport, she will not be able to fly. Stressful, we thought, but not the absolute end of the world. Because Olga is under 16 – presumably for reasonable child protection reasons – the date has to be in person. I work in Victoria in London and, in fact, I can see the aptly named Globe House Passport Office from my window. Even though I have to show up in person to get a rush job, I can just indulge myself at lunchtime, right? Except when I got the gov.uk website wrong, it seemed impossible for me to make an appointment for a new passport application anywhere in England, let alone in London. A helpful soul in the government payroll confirmed this – surprisingly, there are people to talk to online, even on a Sunday. A meeting in Peterborough was there for the taking, but only on Wednesday. Much too late for us. The choice was a Monday morning slot in Belfast or Glasgow. Obviously, we’re not the only vacation-hungry family to have considered the validity of their passport in recent days, just in time for a mid-term vacation… or not. It’s been so long since we’ve thought about airports, airplanes, check-ins and baggage allowances that we’re hopelessly rusty. And then there are the new Brexit regulations that have changed the bureaucratic landscape for all travelers. I went in the rain with Olga to Snappy Snaps for passport photos. Poor thing. She has unwashed hair before the exam and a slightly panicked expression that will raise eyebrows at every border she crosses for the next five years. Meanwhile, my husband was trying to decide between flights to Belfast and driving to Scotland, with a night in a Travelodge at Preston Services. Eventually, he decided to sit completely on the night train to Glasgow, leaving Euston at 9 p.m. last night with a hard-boiled egg picnic, a ham sandwich, and a thermos of coffee. And so, 25 minutes ago, a nice lady from the Glasgow passport office took away Olga’s old passport with the very questionable photos of her. My husband settled in to work remotely in a café in Glaswegian, while waiting for the train back. The 24 hour nightmare has cost around £ 360 in train tickets and apps so far and as the flight is a bank holiday on Monday even though we have paid for the seven day service there is no guarantee that we will get the front passport. the plane takes off from the Stansted runway. No complaints from me, however. It is totally our fault. But please do check your passports before you show up at the airport yourself for your first sunny getaway in 12 months …