What a steaming pile of manure. The imbeciles at the passport service won't give me a passport until I get the name of my American passport changed from Pete to Peter. Peter is on all of my documents.

I vaguelly remember there being a question about this when applying for the Finnish passport too. I simply told them that it's the same name, just shortened. They're sensible people at the Finnish passport service so they provided the passport.

I mean, the Finnish people wouldn't even be expected to know this as it's not a Finnish name. But surely an English person knows that Pete and Peter are the same names. I asked is there nobody there who can exercise some discretion on this matter and he said no, the names have to match exactly.

So now this is going to take an age to get a new US passport, send it to the British passport people, then wait for them. At least I have spare photos, I guess. So that saves time. And apparently this service is free which I find surprising.

Of course, this assumes that it actually is a name change. It's not really. But if it is a name change, the form wants a whole bunch of documents that I don't have. Who has documents that have their birth date on it? Actually, maybe I do from the hospital.

So it's not really clear even what to do. So I called the US embassy. It's just a recording saying to enter the four digit extention number or go to the website for information about passports. Can you believe that? This is the same number that they give for emergencies. You can't get through to anyone.

If you're smart like me, you just press "0" and it takes you through to somebody. But would everybody know that? And in the case of an emergency you might not be thinking clearly. And anyway, the person I spoke to just referred me to the website. No help there.

So I emailed through the website. I also emailed somebody else...I don't know...the State Department email address, I guess. Total nonsense. This is going to take forever now.