It's a funny life with Megan: Passport photo immortalised for 10 years

I've given up on the search for the elusive passport and have made the decision to 'fess up to the authorities that it's lost, and I need to get the gorse out of my pockets and pay for a new one.

My husband found his in that handy little storage space on the passenger door of a car. Of course he did. Quite why it was there we will never know. Unfortunately, mine wasn't with it.

I've been through every old box of school stuff, through all the Important Document places in the concertina filing box. Nothing. I did find my 5-year-old swimming certificate when I got first place for the best starfish, but no passport.

Now, just a word of caution: if, like me, you need to renew or replace your passport, get on to it quick. There's a bit of a backlog.

Here's a great wee thing to know though. If you can't make it into town to get a passport photo taken by a professional - and I highly recommend you do - you can take a pic on your phone.

Someone has to take it for you and there's a bit of a process to make sure it fits their criteria but you'll get the hang of it. I did my children's pics and after three hours of submitting photos, I finally got one each that they accepted. For my own, I thought great, I can be totally vain and wear my best clothes and go full-on with hair and makeup so I can look like a Kardashian on my passport pic.

I'll look so good, I thought, that photo checkers in the passport office will gather around to get a co-worker's opinion on the fact that I can't possibly be as old as what my date of birth says because my pic is so good.

I didn't take into account "resting face". The face you never see. The face you only know about from your ancestors because it took so long to take a photograph back in the day, that they were all totally over it, and never smiled.

My resting face is terrible. It's lopsided, jowly, sallow, just awful. But the passport office accepted it, so there it is, the worst Megan Banks pic immortalised for the next 10 years.

After the Fiji trip, this passport might just get put in a very very "safe" place too.

This article was first published by Hawkes Bay Today and is republished here with permission.