Thread by @EnswellJones

When my VERY REAL GIRLFRIEND and I started seeing each other, she lived in London. I was born in London, and it’s my favourite city in the world, excepting the acid attacks and knife culture. I’d happily fly there once a month to see them both, my loves old and new.

I always took the same flight, Toronto to Heathrow. I flew on my Canadian passport, and most of the time the customs line for foreigners wasn’t too bad. But one summer evening, I arrived to a customs line that was FOUR HOURS long. There was zero wait for UK citizens.

I had my old British passport on me, but it was expired. That’s… an understatement. I was 45 at the time. My UK passport was from 1988, when I was 15. It was an old black hardback, and my very common name was WRITTEN ON IT IN PEN. All the security features of a tent.

Still: Worth a try. I confidently approached a customs official and handed him my Dead Sea scroll with a flourish. “What’s this?” he said. And I said, “That’s my passport. I have a Canadian passport that’s not expired, but I also have that one, which is… slightly expired.”

This is roughly what I looked like, standing in front of him. Behold, Fat Gandalf:

And this is what I looked like in the passport, although I have no recollection of ever looking like this:

“Blimey,” he said. “Hang on.” He fetched his supervisor, a woman who looked and sounded like an irritated Margaret Thatcher, only less approachable. He gave her my passport. “Haven’t seen one of these in a while,” she said with a sniff. At least she recognized it as a passport.

(A quick aside: I have had some memorable exchanges with British customs officers. Once, my VRG and I were returning to the UK from a European adventure. Guy looked at me, looked at her, looked at me, and said, like a warning: “You’re punching above your weight, son.”)

Back to Maggie. She opened my passport to the picture. Her face looked like she’d been hit with a rotten stench. “Oh, crumbs,” she muttered. “Hey now,” I said. “A lot has happened since then.” She pursed her lips. “Where were you born, exactly?” Newham, I said. East End.

“What’s the tube stop?” she said. (This story sounds insane as I type it out. But I swear this all happened. In Heathrow. In, like, 2017.) “It’s Plaistow,” I said. She nodded and handed me back my passport. “Go on then,” she said. “I know you’re British.” MAGGIE LET ME IN.

Modern passports have all sorts of micro-technologies and tracking devices. I had a paper book that could have been forged by an industrious child, and a reasonable knowledge of the London Underground. And that was enough to get me through the gates of Fortress Britain.

Anyway, that’s what people mean by white privilege.