there is something quite exciting about going to have your passport photo taken.

and the tension between it being a formal headshot and a smiley see-me-as-you-do-everyday picture is overwhelming. and of course the desire to just go apeshit and look like a hobo or a dragqueen with feather boa and all.

the FLR(S) form - that’s the extension of student visa form to everyone else - advises that i must be content with the photograph because it’s going to be stuck in my passport on my visa extension thingie. good advice, and stops me from wearing a spiderman mask in the photobooth.

but then it also tells me to attach 2 photographs to one photo-square - do i glue them together and then onto the paper? but then how would they be able to remove one to put in my passport? or do i glue 1 of them, and slip the other into some sort of plastic baggie and staple that to the paper? or do i blu-tack them to the form? or what?! no guidance on that anywhere, not even on the internet.

right.

so off to the photobooth now, change jangling in my pocket to be changed into one-pound coins.

i miss the photobooth in berlin, with its black and white strips, a real glass lens and that rotten-egg smell of developer wafting out the collection hole.