A TINY RANTETTE

About, ooh, eight to ten months ago now, with regard to my late mother's Estate, we exchanged various documents between ourselves and various companies with regard to her finances.

Documents were requested, sent, and returned, and letters were received informing us of what we did or did not owe, and what was owed to us.

All of this was handled through my address, and everything proceeded, well, if not exactly swimmingly, then at least according to relatively low expectations.

Then, later on, we came to do the tax return and discovered that one of my mother's pensions (Lloyds, because why should I disguise them?) had failed to supply a final statement, other than a letter pointing out that they didn't owe us anything.

This was in May.

I rang them and was informed that they would have sent out a P60 to her last address despite the fact that they had been using my address in all of our correspondence since they had seen the deed of probate and death certificate ("different department" they claimed) and, of course, by then the Flat had been sold.

Very patiently, I requested a statement of account, and then waited until it was getting a little bit ridiculous, made a guess off the bank statements as advised by the tax form helpline, and sent the wretched form off anyway.

Today, THREE MONTHS later, a rather anonymous letter arrived from Lloyds acknowledging my request but pointing out that they couldn't possibly supply such information without being sent a deed of probate to view.

And so the merry dance begins again.

Sadly, (or perhaps wisely) the letter also failed to have a contact telephone number printed upon it so that I could ring them up and shout at them.

Idiots!

So, instead, I find myself ranting at you, oh loyal reader, in the hope that this will calm me down a tad, for which I hope that you will forgive me.

There we are...!

Rant over...!

And all of the veins in my temples still seem to be intact.