London Calling…

So after a round trip to Cork with my father, most of which I will admit to having slept through, I was back at home, and ready to catch my scarily expensive 4pm flight to London Gatwick. However at that point, the price of the flight had been the least of my worries for quite a while. It continued to be the least of my worries when my father suddenly decided that he wanted to take a family photograph before I left.

Leaving aside the fact that I looked like utter crap after our morning of Operation Passport Retrieval, there was also a slight issue with this. Time happens to be linear, and check-in for my flight was opening in about 30 mins. Having had one close call over the summer, and having paid a fortune for the damn flight, I was a little paranoid about being late. Nevertheless, the man had just driven me to Cork, so I let my sister do all the bitching and objecting. I don’t think it was being photographed that she objected to, merely being photographed when she wasn’t ready. Naturally the ensuing argument was steadily eating away at her already limited getting ready time. Vanity overcame principle with alacrity, and all that remained was for my father to arse about with a camera for a while.

Once we finished the bout of cheerful disregard that constituted a photo shoot, I finally got underway. My parents both came with me, to my mild surprise, and when we got to the airport gave me a lump of money, to my extreme surprise. Not an obscene lump of money or anything, but a substantial one, and one which I certainly wasn’t expecting. Which boosted my financial situation from “OK�, to “Cool�. After a brief airport meal with them I headed for the departure lounge, re-assuring my mother that London was in fact on this planet, and that I was no harder to reach there than in Dublin, and various other things which didn’t seem to make her any less upset. My father duly warned me that if I did not get a phone number instantly his life would be unendurable as a result.

After much hugging and assorted disgusting public displays of affection, I started off on my intrepid journey. By intrepid, I mean about 5 minutes worth of walk down to the gate. But it was a significant 5 minutes. During which I was interrupted by a nice woman with a clipboard, who asked me a very simple question, which at literally any other point in my life I would have been able to answer. “What is your country of residence?� is not a very hard question, unless of course you are about 100 yards from the plane at the time.

After some flying, some train catching, and some tube getting, I was finally at Queen’s Park, calling Agnes. The tube has a remarkable number of stairs which I completely failed to notice until I had to carry heavy things up them. Agnes met me at the tube station, and we headed to her place, where I was given a surprise “Welcome to London� crepe party. This was incredibly adorable of her, and most delicious, and after 4 months of desperately trying to understand Swedish, I found myself surrounding by French people. And a Russian. Who spoke fluent French. Argh. I suck at languages.

At about midnight I went to bed, utterly exhausted, and suddenly realised that at no point had I had time to worry about the new job. Every complete disaster has a minor balancing plus point. Apparently, mine was a combination of sporadic peace of mind and crepes. Winner.

I think it is possibly my basic assumption that I’m clever that really screws me on occasion. Because this assumption means that when I do something phenomenally stupid, I can’t just let it go. I dwell on it, I feel strong temptations to kick myself repeatedly. In the case of this particular stunning display of idiocy, I considered suicide solely as a tribute to natural selection.

What did I do? I lost my passport. Not that bad, one might say. At this juncture I will point out that I am perfectly aware that a passport is not necessary to fly to England. The several hundred people who pointed this out to me mid-crisis were, I am aware, attempting to be helpful. However, seeing as I don’t have a driver’s license, and seeing as I need a damn passport to a) open a bank account b) apply for a NI no. and c) start my job, this information was not so helpful as it might otherwise have been. Why was all this so phenomenally stupid? Well, for a start I suspect I lost it a week prior to the day when I actually realised I had lost it.

Here is what you do when you lose your passport, the day before moving to a different country, where you have no address, and no valid identification. Oh, and the next 2 days are bank holidays, and you have just gotten 3 hours sleep after going to bed at 8am on New Years Eve.

Step 1. Leap into action, there is no hangover cure like instant blind panic.

Step 2. Google for “emergency passport ireland”. You will find the number for the emergency passport guy in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Telephone him and calmly state your ludicrously badly planned dilemma.

Step 3. Depending on your location you will be called back by either the Dublin or Cork passport office, who’s polite and helpful manner will reassure you that there are many stupid people in the world, and they are used to dealing with this kind of disaster.

Step 4. Find a friend or relative willing to drive you to Cork/Dublin at 7am the next morning, or if you are fortunate enough to have a car, go yourself.

Step 5. Reduce previous panicked state to one of merely fretting.

Step 6. Follow instructions of passport office, and collect your emergency passport.

Step 7. Move to England