Date: 28 January 2007
Time: 20.30
Location: Immigration (UK Passports), Terminal 3, Heathrow Airport
Crime: Attempting to enter one's own country
Report for submission:
Subject, half-dead from exhaustion, valium and Immodium, hands passport to immigration official.
Immigration official swipes the passport. Immigration official looks puzzled. Immigration official swipes passport again.
Immigration official to half-dead British subject - Has your passport got wet, madam?
Subject - I don't know.
Immigration official - The edges are damaged and so is the back of the photograph. It must have got wet.
Subject - Er…
Immigration official, with suspicion - Don't you know the background to this passport?
Subject, looking and feeling guilty - Er, well, yes, er, well, er, IT'S MY PASSPORT. It must have got wet.
Immigration official, with yet more suspicion: I suppose it's OK. You can go.
Immigration official lets subject bearing legal passport into subject's own country. Subject departs for baggage retrieval feeling like a criminal for having a wet passport. Subject mutters for the ensuing twenty minutes, repeatedly, “Officious twat. Don't I know the background to my passport? Yes my passport was born in 2002 and has three kids and is O negative. Officious twat.” Etc.
Subject feels thankful subject's tan wasn't even darker. Subject also expresses gratitude (internally) that immigration official did not notice the passport stamp from the government of Saddam Hussein (dec'd).