Amid the storm and drang of hospital stuff, here is a still, small voice of calm.
I need to renew my passport. I expect misery, pain and delay. Not so!
His Majesty’s Passport Office has a very good web site. I follow very simple procedures and subsequently send my old passport back to Hemel Hempstead.
On 10 December I get a brand new passport – all the way from exotic Hemel Hempstead.
Great job folks at the Passport Office in sultry Hemel Hempstead! Thank you.
Rule Britannia!
The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond 
Good to see that you have managed to renew your British passport! Be a sad story if you had forgotten about it. Hope that you can recover enough and quickly to make some use of it.
Something strange about it though. There are numbers missing in various places. The passport’s number is missing several digits whilst your birth year has disappeared as have the issue and expiration years. If this an attempt to make it less easily faked then it doesn’t work as all but the issued/expiration numbers are available elsewhere on the page!
Hope that you are feeling a lot better now.
Yay Alan!
Happy New Year when it comes! Hope you had a great time at Xmas.
I also hope I get to use my nice new passport. More security minded people than I, told me to blank out numbers but ,as you point out, I messed up. Oh well there goes my savings!
Be well
Neil