Pass the crisps!

It's nine-forty-six pee-em and I've just finished watching a film called The Holiday. It's a film about how if you're a size 6 you'll end up with somebody like Jude Law, whereas if you're a size 14 you'll end up with Jack Black.

Apparently women get some sort of kick out of wathing things like it. At a loss to see why, I must assume that it's because it simultaneously makes them feel crappy about who they are (because, judging by who they go out with they can't be knockouts and women love nothing more than a reason to hate themselves) while also reassuring them that there is a hierarchy of the beautiful and the ugly, that they can do nothing about being near the bottom, and that they therefore can sit back and help themselves to another bag of crisps.

I got this so-called "feel good" movie out only because I'd had a crappy day and thought that for some reason watching people fall in love would cure it all - I know, in hindsight I need my head examined. Besides, curled up on my sofa with the cat at arm's length and my hair just greasy enough to solicit questions about whether I'd dyed it recently, I was merely a glass of red wine short of being Bridget Jones.

Although to think of it, the glass would have come in handy - if nothing else for chucking it at the television thus ridding my living room of Jude Law's smug face. I hope Ms Diaz has enough sense to fire the nanny.

Bah, humbug. Why so glum, you might ask? Well, amidst crappy weather and problems with lost car keys, it seems that my boss in London has succumbed to paranoia and says I can't write for the Guardian anymore. At least not on education and Africa, which let's face it has been a nice little cash cow until now. It's bad news. It's such bad news that I can't be bothered to be upset about it. I just hunch my shoulders and let the gloom wash over me.

Maybe I should look at the bright side. After all, there are other magazines I could write for. Hear Worms Weekly are looking for a correspondent on annelids that live in poo.

Bloody useless.

Something else that irks me is that I have to renew my passport. The Swedish authorities found it fitting, a few years ago, to start giving out passports valid for eight years but that would only hold together for about two.

It's like this. The face page is made of plastic. A needle is used to sow that page in with the rest. The needle makes a sort of perforation that rips when a border guard so much as looks at it. Not so comforting when you're travling in third world countries, where things like stamps and passports and visas are taken seriously. (Actually, I'm impressed the Blair administration haven't thought of this - it's a great way of keeping track of people, making them file for new passports every time they leave the country.)

Of course, it wouldn't have to be so bad. I'm getting a new passport for free, which is nice. But since I live in a third world country they don't have photo booths for taking passport size photographs. Instead, they offer this service in photography shops. Stand just here just under the lamp that will make your skin pallid like a corpse's, Miss, and smile. CLICK.

I don't know about you, but I don't like that. The beauty of photo booths is that you walk in, pull the curtain, and pose. For as long as you like! The lighting is great, you can relax. You're in control.

Now, there's a reason why most people look like shit in most pictures they're in. It's because, as soon as somebody you're not completely comfortable with points a camera at you, you pull a face. It's no coincidence that the only pictures most of us think we look good in were taken by boy- or girlfriends - people we are pretty sure thought we looked alright at the time of taking the picture. And, deep within, we all know our good and bad faces.

So a few minutes with yourself will leave you looking pretty hot, at least in your eyes, which at the end of the day are ones that matter the most.

But were I to put the make up on by the trowelful, I know that walking into Kodak and being paraded in front of a minimum of five snivelling retards on minimum wage will end in disaster. I underwent the whole humiliation once down here, to get an emergency passport (hours before I found my real one), and ended up looking like somebody who'd just been rescued from Bergen-Belsen. I swear, had I not found my proper passport I would have stayed at home. I'm not handing that picture over to anybody with eyes.

So what, you might ask. It's just a passport photo. Well, it's time to own up to my vanity. It's like this. I look seriously good in my current passport, to the point where border patrol people raise their eybrows and sneak an extra peak at me as I go through. And every time they do, I feel great about myself and let me tell you, after 14 hour cross-continental, nay, cross-hemisperal flights, you need something to feel good about.

An end to those little perks would not only ruin future international travel. Since passports are called upon numerous times down here to confirm that I'm not Osama Bin Laden, that picture represents me - to the bank, the car sales people, the estate agents, that is who I am. The me that goes to work, and who wakes up every morning knowing that the sleep in my eyes and grease in my hair that meets me in the mirror is only a temporary veil that hides my charms.

And it all mounts up. Moan groan boo hoo. Poor wee me. I know it's indulgent, but let me for a moment, all right?

Hmmm... I just had a terrifying thought. Maybe this is all the success I'm entitled to, according to the Holiday rulebook of life and happiness. I've been a cute girl with a column in the Guardian for long enough, now I'm doomed to a future of greasy hair and worms?

Pass the crisp packet.