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To cut a long story short is a phrase that reeks of a lack of self-confidence. However, when I tell you that I am cutting this story short, it is because brevity is required. So how to summarise the administrative passport and Royal Mail hell the past 5 months have been?
Let’s see: I have been through Royal Mail cyber hacks, having my passport and birth certificate go missing in the mail for a whole month, multiple panicked calls to the Irish Embassy, several mad dashes to the post office, one or two exasperated calls to the British passport office (which has been on strike ( just so you know)) and one very tiring journey to Dublin.
READ MORE: ‘I visited the only pub on a London Underground platform and the pint was more expensive than a train ticket’
Like many in the UK, I am, fortunately, eligible for Irish citizenship. In December I received my certificate of citizenship after almost three years in limbo thanks to Brexit and the pandemic, which saw the Irish shut up shop for months and months at a time.
With this, I could now apply for a passport, which I promptly did back in January. The average turn around for Irish passports is 30 days according to the website, so allowing for delays and transport times for my documents I surmised that I would get my nice shiny new passport by the end of February.
I packaged up my passport, my birth certificate, my left kidney and half of all the money I have ever earned in a big envelope (ok, not the last two but it was the most important letter package I have ever sent) and took it to the post office. I got my letter tracked and handled it over like a baby I had been cradling in my arms, I almost kissed it as the cashier took it away.
(Image: Getty)
After getting my tracking code I went home to wait for an alert from the Irish government that they has received the most important documents I own. Days went by, then a week, then two weeks. I checked my tracker. It said that my letter hadn’t left the post office branch.
Concern etched on my face I called Royal Mail. The friendly voice informed me that Royal Mail had suffered a cyber attack, which had affected international shipping. All well and good, but where was my birth certificate? They didn’t know and asked me to go to the branch where I dropped it off.
I made the 10-minute walk, hoping that it was there. Nothing. Royal Mail couldn’t tell me where my documents were for over a month meaning I was walking around with a pit in my stomach for…well…over a month. Finally, it showed up arriving in Dublin in late February – the latest I thought I would be getting my Irish passport.
The fun doesn’t stop there though. After taking a month to process they found an issue with one of the documents and requested I send another. Fine, I thought, this should only take a few weeks, no big deal. I sent the follow-up documents in mid-March thinking that the absolute latest I would get my Irish passport would be early April.
How wrong I was. How almost catastrophically wrong I was. While this drama was going on my flat decided a trip to Barcelona would be a nice way to celebrate the early May bank holiday. I decided that there was plenty of time to get my passport sorted and get them back to me in time – booking flights and accommodation for around £400 in early March – that would be plenty of time I thought. It wasn’t.
Checking the Irish passport portal, I was floored to find that day my passport was due to be processed was not in a few weeks as I had anticipated and, after several calls to the Irish administrators in Dublin, had been assured it would be. Instead, it was due to be printed just 4 days before my flight to Barcelona was booked at the end of April.
Panic set in. My four-month Odyssey was going to end in failure and a massive non-refundable hole burnt deep into my pocket. I called the British passport office, maybe even though I didn’t have my British passport I could get it renewed as it was due to expire soon.
I looked at emergency appointments, called offices (which again, were on strike), and attempted to book said appointments through the government’s atrocious portal that’s about as easy and transparent as being drowned in the Thames. When I finally found a slot I could book for an emergency British passport it was too late.
This left me with three options. Pray that the passport was printed on time and trust Royal Mail (the company that ‘misplaced’ my birth certificate for several weeks) to get it to me in the four day window. I could get someone to pick up the passport for me and use a special courier service, however, this wasn’t the easiest option either.
Thirdly, I could fly to Dublin and collect the passport myself. After finding a return Ryanair flight for only £39 the decision was made, I was going to fly to Dublin to get my passport and make my trip to Barcelona.
Naturally, because of the cheap price, the flights were not exactly at the best times for sleep. Having to get to Stansted for my 6:45am flight meant leaving my house at around 2 in the morning, meaning I was running on around 2 hours of nervy pre-flight sleep.
Landing in Dublin, I felt like I had come home….tired after a night out. I immediately went to the passport office to collect my precious document. It was a nervous wait as the man behind the glass searched several boxes full of envelopes, returning twice to confirm my name before flicking through another box.
Finally, mercifully, he retrieved my passport. I could have done a jig if I hadn’t been so exhausted. Unfortunately for me, because of the cheap flights, I had another 9 hours in Ireland’s capital to fill before I could go home and rest.
To cut a long story short, if you need a passport for a holiday coming up soon, get it yesterday.
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