Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Most-read 2021: The joy of my new British passport

[Photo: Paul Maguire / Alamy Stock Photo]

We’re ending the year by republishing our most popular articles from 2021. Number six is from Jeremy Clarke’s Low Life column in January. He writes about the joy of receiving his new black British passport.

‘Anything you want?’ says Catriona on her way out of the house to go to the shop. I’m standing at the hob stirring a first batch of Low Life’s 2021 Pandemic Second Wave green tomato chutney. (My outdoor homegrown tomatoes stopped turning red just before Christmas.) The wooden spoon stops revolving while I google my brain for things I want.

No results. Materially, I have everything I need. Too much of everything. What I once looked on as too few clothes now strikes me as insane excess. I’ve got a Honda Jazz that starts first time parked down in the village, lent to me by a friend for as long as I need it. I’ve books, pens, paper, ink, fags, gin, tonics and there’s ice and a lemon in the fridge. We’ve logs and last year’s pine cones for kindling and a newish box of long matches. In the bread bin is a fresh crusty loaf and the last time I looked a half-box of chocolate fingers. I’ve 100 Tetley teabags in hand and a blue-top bottle of French half-fat milk. My razor blade remains sharp and there’s an unsqueezed tube of toothpaste in the bathroom cupboard. The house is a little on the small side, but if I feel hemmed in I can go outside into the dusty garden featuring giant palms, ferns and cacti and the mimosa is coming out. And on most days I have sunshine. I only have to step outside and turn my face to it and I can feel the warmth of the sun on my cheek.

My new, black passport may look and feel a bit cheap, but it fills me with joy to know I am British once again

‘Nope,’ I tell her and resume my stirring with the anxious concentration of a green tomato chutney virgin.

‘But if you see anything on the shelves marked ‘gaiety’ get half a dozen, will you?’

For we’ve been feeling the strain a bit lately.

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