new passport

I have some very mixed feelings about this.  First - relief!  It is here!  Renewing a passport In The Time of Covid is no joke - and I've been scared silly that there would be some emergency call from England requiring me (heavily masked) to brave an airplane and head back to see my father - and I'd have no legal documentation allowing me to travel.  Happily - no such phone call; anxiety vastly reduced.  I have to say - the British Passport Office have been exemplary in keeping me cheerfully up to date with its progress, sending me text messages at each stage of approval and processing.  Since these were arriving from Durham in the UK, they tended to arrive at 3.15 a.m., or some other hour when the last thing one wants is a sound emanating from one's phone (cf: emergency calls ...).

BUT.  Look at it.  It says British Passport.  It does not, of course, mention the European Union.  And it is blue - like the passport I went round Europe with as a teenager ... (though not quite the same blue).  It is, in other words, a Brexit passport,  It is depressingly insular.  Inside, actually, it's impressively high tech, and compared to any other passport I've ever seen would surely be a nightmare to forge.  That doesn't, however, stop its outside from being dismayingly retro.  In other words, it's an object that carries completely contradictory affects.