I travel a fair amount and my passport was due to run out next month so I sent off my passport after my last trip abroad with a four-week window before travelling to Antwerp last weekend.

Why we still need passports within Europe defeats me but… My old clipped passport was returned with a week to spare; but, of the new one, no sign, so I rang the passport helpline.

I rang repeatedly over three days to ask where my new one was on the assembly line. They couldn’t tell me. On Thursday, two days before my trip, I was told it was at Peterborough Passport Office. Could I use the old clipped but still valid one? No.

Could I go to Peterborough to collect it? They gave me an appointment in Peterborough at 8.30am the following day.

In Peterborough on Friday, I was told it had been sent out by courier on Thursday and would arrive ‘next Monday or Tuesday’. I was booked on the Eurostar the following day. At first they wouldn’t tell me the details of the courier, but I eventually got far enough up the decision making chain to get that information and the reference number.

I contacted the couriers and eventually the payment of an extra fee ‘guaranteed’ me delivery before 1pm on Saturday. My train was booked for 4.10pm. It would work.

Except, of course, the passport did not arrive by 1pm, or 2pm, or indeed 3pm. I missed the train. My umpteenth phone call to the couriers, after repeated assurances it would be there any minute, moved up the decision-making chain once more and I was told I could go to Colnbrook near the airport and pick it up at 4.30pm.

The driver was new to the area and couldn’t find my house – despite having my phone number for that very reason.

I collected it and headed for St Pancras and the expensively re-booked Eurostar. A mobile crane was blocking the entrance to the station car park I had booked and the detour took 25 minutes.

I arrived at the station barrier breathless and stressed at 6.55pm for the 7.04pm train to be told I was too late. Something in my demeanour made him check on the radio. They let me in.

I ran, hauling out my new passport as I wheezed through the platform checkpoint – they barely so much as glanced at it.