Looking at the various press items over the past week we learn that credit and debit card fraud is falling but that identity theft is becoming more sophisticated and we are warned within an inch of our lives that there are enough people out there looking to steal our identity and have their way with our details to make us almost paranoid.

Well thankfully no one has stolen my identity and I religiously dispose of all personal and sensitive correspondence in the best way I know – it makes great fire lighters – but this week I realised that I almost don’t exist.

Why….. well my passport expired in December and as we didn’t take our usual winter holiday I overlooked sorting out a replacement, so guess what, solicitors acting for our business wanted proof of my ID as a new client to their firm, and I didn’t have any!

“Can you let us have a copy of your photo driving licence?” I was asked – No, I still have a paper one issued in 1978 with the two minor hiccoughs for speeding in the 80’s and 90’s. Having not moved house, there has never been a need to change – what else could I use?

Now we are no different as an organisation in that we need to ‘Know our Client’ so I know what is required, but since I have never been in a trade union, worked for an employer for the last 21 yrs, or shot bright orange bits of clay out of the sky for the past 10 years I don’t have anything with my picture on any more, so a bit of frantic searching came up with some alternatives, at least I wasn’t trying to borrow money, they would have wanted loads more.

There is a generation out there for which identity documentation is almost non- existent, my parents have no passports, the solitary bank card, no mobile phone or regular pc access, no photo cards at all and the challenges they have had giving a bank their money to look after has been horrendous, I hope I am not getting like them.

So this week I will mostly be getting myself a new passport, because you never know a lottery win this week might force me into going on holiday before Easter, and I don’t want to be held up.