County Hall

If you ever apply for a passport, you'll find that Her Majesty's Civil Service really don't wish you to leave Britannia for sunnier climes. (Such as France, for example. I recommend France. Or Ouilly-le-Basset, Normandy, where my family hail from. It lies in the North West of France. Or did. Whatever. Basically I'm suggesting France.) Or at least Her Majesty's bureaucracy particularly didn't wish I myself to leave Great Britain, it appeared. Possibly it was because I'd recently contacted the British Embassy in Bejing on Facebook and attempted to slyly initiate a trade war with China. (China kept exporting cats to me that frankly went tragically wrong. The head became detached from one in the post. China told me to glue it back on and refunded me 89 pence for my inconvenience. Then China sent me a lucky waving cat who refused to wave. Lastly, and most heinously, China sent me a budget smartwatch with the screen display set to Mandarin. Which mildly irritated me. So I naturally thought that the British Embassy should be kept up to speed on all this.) Or perhaps the civil service still remember that they once interviewed me for a junior management post in the Dept of the Environment back in 1993. At which I accidentally answered a question about the impact of the Channel Tunnel on Britain's economy by claiming the tunnel would make no difference whatsoever to me personally since I adored a hovercraft and didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Anyway, my lengthy passport fiasco concluded with my being summoned to City Hall for an interview to see if I actually was who I claimed to be. Things did not start well because I put my last £1.50 into a coffee machine which dispensed coffee but not a cup. (Also they required me to sport a name badge. I never sport name badges at work. I go by the principle that the people who count always seem to know who I am anyway. Even if I'd much rather they didn't?) That said, I was ushered into a tiny room containing only a laptop and left alone with it. A lady from Edinburgh materialised on the screen and regarded me sternly. It was all rather James Bondesque, or perhaps more reminiscent of Mission Impossible. I expected Mrs Edinburgh to ask me to assassinate someone especially annoying then tell me that The Secretary disavowed any knowledge of my actions. And then the laptop would explode in slow motion and some pigeons would look mildly surprised. What actually happened was that I discussed UFOs with her for around a quarter of an hour. She appeared to be interested in UFOs. She appeared quite keen to ascertain what exactly I knew about them. I assure you that I know rather a lot. I even have a website about them. Then she disavowed any knowledge of my actions and various objects exploded in slow motion. I abseiled down the side of County Hall, jumped into my gyrocopter, and then remembered I had forgotten in my haste to destroy the coffee machine. Who even has a coffee machine that dispenses coffee but no cups? Someone very evil indeed. So I'm knocking one star off for that.