Grim and bear the jowly reality of time

The last time I got a passport was the first time it dawned on me that the next time I needed a passport I’d be looking at the last one wistfully. If you know what I mean? Basically that was in 2007, and I was still in my thirties, I looked at the photograph for my new passport and thought, “Eek, I look old in that picture.” But the worst thing was that I was aware in advance that I’d be looking back at it in 2017 and thinking, “Oh, I looked so young.”

The kids both need passports as well. Under 18s passports only last five years so while the Boychild will be getting his first 10-year one and he does look younger in the 2012 photo, it’s not wildly different. The Girlchild is ecstatic to be getting rid of her 11-year-old face, round and childlike and very different to the more sculpted one she has today. But a decade having passed notwithstanding, I still think I look old in the 2007 picture.

It doesn’t help that 2007 was my first retinal scan non-smiley passport picture. Whatever about not smiling in photos and looking moody and interesting when you’re young, once gravity hits your face you really need to smile into lenses. Smiling hoists your jowls, a bit, and not smiling just looks grim and forbidding. And like a mugshot. When I think of it I can be found wandering around grinning inanely. I’m not nice or friendly, just vain. I’m trying to hoist my jowls. Those bloody non-smiley passport photographs however mean that my one piece of internationally useful ID makes me look like an old, grim, crabby, jowly criminal.

It was either not grin and bear it or never leave the country again so I got the grim pic. And although I still think I look old in the 2007 photo, I can see I look older in the 2017 one. I have no idea what I’ll be thinking in 2027.