the more golden than red ticket

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It’s a weird feeling when you go to book a flight somewhere but can’t go through with the final step because the standard everyday, black and silver passport you have used your entire life won’t suffice.

Until my early to mid twenties, I never realised the true beauty of my mother being English. I will forever be grateful for being brought up to speak what my mother calls ‘properly’, without the kiwi twang, for the introduction at a young age to sherbet lemons, hula hoops & walkers crisps and the amazing department store Santa’s grotto’s at Christmas time – but it’s the realisation of the meaning behind my dual nationality that really takes the cake.

Until her final days, my grandmother – who I dare you to find a woman more British than she – called my sister and I “Pom-Iwi’s”. This amalgamation of slang was something we grew up perceiving as weird and something we never really understood or cared about. I now see what her term means and how it personifies the official paperwork that will help form my path over the next few years.

With my passport currently at Her Majesty’s Passport Office in Liverpool awaiting renewal, I can see that it’s pure existence changes things quite drastically for me;

• I don’t need to apply or nervously wait for acceptance of a two year visa
• I can walk in to England through the citizens line at customs
• I can apply for any job I like
• I’m not bound to the two year restriction with the fear of not being sponsored if I wish to stay on
• I can flee back to little old NZ if I get homesick, and return to London years down the track without having potentially wasted my precious visa and limited my chance of living the London life

I grew up being told by my father, who is as Kiwi as my grandmother was British, that my not as pretty red passport would one day be my ticket to the world. Now that I am at a place in my life where I am eager to make the move across the globe, I see the little 36 page book that I once viewed as meaningless and associated with brussel sprouts and the cold, as more of a golden than red ticket.

I can’t wait to get it back in my hands, ready to use to book my flight – my one way flight! Ah!

There has always been a glittering gold on the legal documentation of my Pom-Iwi heritage, it’s just taken me 27 years to see its sparkle

Sarah x

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