July 7, 2016

An unexpected trip

Tweeting on Monday, “This week is the week” I hadn’t realised that it was going to turn upside down real fast.

Travel-wise, anyway.

It all started on Tuesday, I was planning to meet a friend and wanted to take some pictures for the day, so I went to get my camera where I usually put in a drawer with other “everyday” things. Opening it, I was mortified to find that everything was soaking wet. I kept some letters, notes, camera, my passport and usually my bullet journal (but I was using it so thankfully it wasn’t in there at the time.)

I realised that my laptop cleaner spray top broke and spilled all over everything in the drawer including, yes, my passport (and camera, but it’s a robust little guy!)

Trying to be all optimistic, I repeatedly tried to convince myself that it’s okay, it’s not THAT bad, they’ll let me on the plane, I can get my nice golden tan and be near the ocean eating fresh fruit…

After asking my friends, sister, parents and the post office people, this all came crashing down.

With my travels on the 20th,  I needed a new passport comfortably before then. After much research (and ice cream) I found that I had to visit to a passport office to get a new passport sorted out.

The closest passport office to me is at Liverpool but they hadn’t any appointments available that day, so I ended up booking one at Peterborough.

I hadn’t heard of Peterborough before I started working at my current job, I had a colleague who told me about it as her hometown and how no one in the world ever knows if she’s making it up or not ? To put it in perspective, it is close-by Cambridge. I’m now awaiting the “ahhh” moment from everyone.

Luckily, I got my train tickets really cheap and left my city just in time – it was forecasted to be rainy (just like every day, I suppose.)

You’d imagine me to be pretty stressed out and on the verge of having second thoughts on my holiday but surprisingly, I was pretty calm about the whole situation. It was mostly my parents who freaked out.

I kept reminding myself to breathe with the constant thought of “It was an accident, there’s no point dwelling on the past to try and prevent it when all you can do is find a solution” It’s times like these that I have really seen a difference in my life since starting meditation! I am more thoughtful rather than jumping into irrational decisions and emotions. Yay for visible improvement.

Once I got off at Peterborough, I rushed to the office, got it sorted in under an hour (honestly the fastest and friendliest service I’ve ever had), was reassured more than twice that my passport would be with me by next week and then explored the city before my train back.

Let’s make this a positive, stress-free memory

Despite the incident, I wanted to make my trip worthwhile and see much as I could even though the main objective was to go to the passport office.

One of the most iconic places in Peterborough is the cathedral. When I got there, there were groups of kids on a school trip. Their teacher was explaining the history of the cathedral. I was close by to the group so got an earshot of a history lesson as I took pictures.

One thing I can’t forget the teacher saying was that parts of the cathedral were deliberately set on fire at one point. A kid then asks, “Where? I can’t see any burnt parts?” Where later discussions followed that were along the lines of, “It’s a cathedral Ben, not toast.” Ah, the life of a Y7.

The town was quite small but it meant things were closer together so I bet shopping is easier! I really like the “old England” style throughout the city centre. I always find it interesting and sort of fun seeing branches of stores surrounded by different architecture (like the bank below) giving off a different vibe from the outside at least.

I had a lovely walk around the town centre and surrounding areas, also did some last minute holiday shopping whilst I was there. I enjoyed the day and was happy to successfully turn an initially stressful day to a positive memory! Hopefully my shiny new passport arrives next week so I can tick that off my worry list ?

I guess I’m somewhat happy this happened because I got to change my 16 year old passport photograph (where I had a draw my eyeliner on with fat black crayon phase) into something much more decent and more current i.e. an improvement of the eyeliner game.

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Have you ever damaged your passport before you were to travel? (I’d love to hear stories/experiences on this, I read some interesting ones on TripAdvisor ha!)