CALL US AT YOUR CONVENIENCE

A quarter of a century ago I bought my first home, a tiny little, one-bedroomed flat which was all I could afford at the time, given that salaries for newly acquired underlings were pitifully small and that monetary institutions were still being sensible enough to only lend borrowers amounts that they were probably able to afford to pay back. 

Such is my talent for property investment that, eight years later, I sold it at a 15% (or more) loss because, by that time, the housing market had crashed and, believe it or not, it is possible for a home to be worth less than you actually paid for it…

Actually, I've always believed that house prices were fairly abstract thing which are more dependant upon what someone is actually prepared to pay and which involve money the value of which is not "real" in any real sense of the word other than a means to an end because you have to live somewhere. If you totted up the cash value of the bricks and timber making up the average house, would than sum really move into the half millions…?

Still, that's probably a very different debate to what I had in mind for today, so let's move on before people get upset and start telling me what their house is "worth…"

Getting back to that tiny flat which I once called home, because I'm a perverse little sod, I kept up the monthly payments on the endowment policy which I had taken out to "cover" the mortgage, even though I no longer needed it. Now, against the better judgement of 20/20 hindsight, I took out an endowment mortgage because, well, that's what everyone advised you to do back in those days, and that's pretty much what everyone did.

However, when I moved, I moved into a rented room (and that sad tale has yet to be told, I think, in these particular pages…), and so, alongside a small legacy, the debt was paid off and the policy never claimed, being put instead towards the next mortgage which financed the purchase of the crumbling pile which I now call Blogfordshire Towers.

Anyway, to stretch a short story longer, after twenty-odd years of letters bearing legends like "WARNING: There is likely to be significant financial shortfall on your mortgage" thanks to the overpaid incompetences of various bankers, I switched my mortgage deal over to a repayment mortgage but, again being perverse about such things, still kept up the payments on the policy, viewing it as a small, if significant, bit of life insurance.

The point of all this is, however, that, twenty-five long years later, the policy is on the brink of maturing and I have recently received a letter informing me of this and wondering "whether I still had an interest in the policy…?"

You can bet your sweet bippy I do, matey!

Whilst I still expect that I would have more money today if I'd shoved all of those meagre payments into a mattress, I'll be damned if I'll let you hang on to it at use it as a downpayment on a new set of tyres for your youngest child's spare Porsche...

So, I had to ring them "at my convenience" although, despite this being a requested call with no other contact options being mentioned, it was still just the customer service number which meant that I still had to go through the automated process of being offered three utterly inappropriate options three times over, and furiously keep on having to dial "one for this, two for that" and so on for about ten minutes before a real person told me that they'd also written to my mortgage company asking them much the same thing.

A couple of days later and I had to ring them up too, and go through the "You will now be offered three options… Your call may be recorded for training purposes" procedure all over again, but at least we've now managed, as far as I understand it anyway, to accertain that, whatever this pittance turns out to be, it is, at least, going to be "Mine… All mine!!!" (Wha-ha-ha-ha-HAHHH!!!)

I don't yet know quite what it's going to be worth, although it will be significantly less than the riches I was led to believe it would lead to when I first signed the papers way back in 1989, it still might enable me to buy an extra loaf of bread or three. Honestly, I still believe that if I'd shoved it under the mattress I do genuinely believe it would probably have been worth more…

Meanwhile we had a bit of an altercation with another bank regarding my late mother's insurance policy which I'd failed to keep up the payments for after her accounts were frozen upon her death…

Strangely enough, given that we were advised that the relatives would in no way be expected to suffer financially under such circumstances, the bank seemed to think that we were somehow obliged to keep on paying them. They were, interestingly enough, the only one of the many companies and institutions which we have dealt with over this past few months who failed to understand the system of Probate and who were not prepared to wait for their money, which is ironic, really, given that they're part of the very same banking group which currently holds all of my mother's pitifully few frozen assets in their vaults.

There have been problems in issuing the Deed of Probate, but, in general, apart from this bunch of clowns, people are being very patient.

Still, at the risk of another hefty bill, I rang the solicitor who offered to ring them. Now, I've never had to instruct a solicitor to act on my behalf before, but it didn't half feel good to be able to do so.

At least...

Until, that is, I got the reply which, basically, added up to pretty much what we'd already managed to find out for ourselves anyway and suggested that we just pay it.

Sigh!

Anyway, in the end, I bit my lip and decided to just pay the wretched thing and picked up the phone and spent another ten minutes deciding which of the three options that I needed to choose, over and over again, before being fleeced of my own hard-earned cash by a git in a suit.

Well, I may be being unkind there… After all I can only assume he was wearing a suit.

FREE CASH (NOT REALLY)

When you walk around town, you see a sign like this and you find yourself thinking "if only it were true..."

Am I right, boys and girls, or am I right...?

Now I wonder what my chances are of making a claim citing the Trades Description Act...?

NO POINT SAVING

I apologise in advance because this is going to be one of those short but perfectly ranty pieces which is hopefully going to help me to let off some steam. You see, I heard something on Monday evening which made me feel utterly furious and I just thought that I’d like to share it with you, you know, not because I’m feeling generous and want to share the fury around or anything like that, but because it left me with such a sense of powerlessness and rage that I thought that perhaps I was missing the point and you might be able to enlighten me.

Anyway, I was sitting in a car park on Monday evening, waiting for a train to arrive as I quite often do, and I had the radio on, listening to Eddie Mair and the Radio 4 “PM” programme, when the news of the day turned, as it would, towards the Cyprus bailout story.

You’ve probably heard the anger that this has triggered amongst the ordinary people of Cyprus who have been told that to get their country back on track, anyone with any savings on deposit is going to  have just over six percent of it immediately taken off them, and anyone with more than 100,000€ is going to lose more like ten percent of it.

In other words, anyone who’s been careful enough with their money to put some aside and save it, never easy under the current world financial situation, is going to be taxed on having done so.

Now whilst that is, to be honest, a quite appalling idea, purely on the grounds that the more profligate citizens who have not put away any money for a rainy day get away with it scott-free whilst the careful ones appear to be punished for being careful, that wasn’t what sparked my ire.

What triggered my fury was the discussion between two British financial experts upon the subject, or rather the opinions of one of them, because the woman who was speaking was quite rightly outraged at this breach of the bank’s promise to protect savings under 100,000€, whereas her opposite number, who sounded, quite frankly, like one of those City “Wide-boys” with a flash car, sounded like precisely the sort of idiot who got us all into this mess in the first place.

He believed that it was perfectly fine to tax people’s savings to bail out the banks because anyone who has savings on deposit in a bank is taking a risk, apparently, and is really just giving their money to the bank to play with for a while, and that all savings are, essentially, a risk.

This is, apparently, why we get “interest” – it’s the bank’s way of thanking us for letting them gamble with our money for a while.

In other words, instead of banks being a safe place to store any extra cash you might have available (or, indeed, your wages), which I naively always thought they were, whenever I put a few quid into my savings account it’s exactly the same as if I was putting it into a fruit machine, and I shouldn’t be at all surprised to not find any of it actually there when I try to get it back again.

I presume, of course, that he was talking about the kinds of “high interest” accounts that offer big rewards for short-term savers with pots of spare cash just lying around their mansions, and not just your ordinary Joe or Jane Public who has a few hundred left in the account at the end of the month (not that there’s all that many of them left) but this seemed a truly high-handed and arrogant belief for someone trusted to take care of other people’s savings to actually have.

Tosser.

Luckily, the woman with whom he was debating was grounded enough to try and remind this idiot that most ordinary people who are lucky enough to be savers (i.e. those of us without six-figure bonuses to play with) really don’t think like that, and they just want somewhere safe to put whatever savings they might have, but I got the impression that this moron left the studio, clambered into a car which probably cost more than double what my house is worth, and just went merrily on his way towards earning himself another fat bonus and leaving the rest of us paying for it.

The upshot of all this is that everything I once thought I knew is so obviously wrong that it hurts. Wise heads used to speak to me about the wisdom of saving and putting a few quid away in a bank when I was a young whippersnapper, but they were obviously completely misguided to trust these institutions and, if you do have any money at all, it seems that the mad old eccentrics were right after all and you might as well just stuff in into your mattress.

At least that way the thieving bastards in the banks won’t get their hands on it.

A DAY AT THE QUAYS

As they have a habit of doing, another Sunday came around and with it the usual routine of heading off somewhere once again to find ever more bizarre ways of parting myself from my meagre savings. If in doubt, as the wise person once noted, go shopping. That particular “wise person” was quite possibly me, so I wouldn’t count on anything that was said having much in the way of actual inherent wisdom per se, but the spirit does, at the very least, remain willing.

So, the economy might very well be getting flushed down the toilet, but there’s nothing to stop you going right on down with it. Anyway, those jolly economists keep on telling me that the only way out of recession is if we all keep spending like there’s no tomorrow and I tend to believe that they know what they’re talking about because they’ve never been known to get it wrong, have they? Of course I do ask myself whether that particular philosophy wasn’t part of the problem that got us all in this mess to start with… but I’m sure all of those lovely chaps running those banks will be terribly understanding when the cheques start bungeeing about all over the place.

Anyway, certain clothing supplies were deemed as being necessary by my beloved, so off we toddled to the Lowry Outlet Mall. This is quite a trek for rickety old Blinky nowadays, but Blinky seemed to negotiate the challenge with a certain amount of relish, and, after just over an hour of trouble-free but alarming sounding motoring, we arrived early enough to grab a spot in the car park without too much frustration, overlooking the sparkling new broadcasting centre known, I believe, as “Mediocrity”.

I myself had no plans to make any purchases, which meant that, as I idly wandered around the clothes shop whilst waiting for various clothes to be tried on, I naturally spotted a jacket that immediately leapt right to the top of my personal “must have” list and I tried it on, and found it to be good. Naturally, a pair of new jeans were suddenly an imperative to go along with its non-faded darkness, and, well I had been after a decent new pair of shoes for a while now, so whilst I was there…

Pretty soon the plastic had once again taken an unexpected battering. I say “unexpected” because to be terribly truthful, I’ve never been much of a one for clothes shopping, preferring instead for my worn out old rags to be literally falling off me before I have to go through the indignity of venturing into a clothing emporium and finding something new to wear, and certainly the hell that is a public changing room is to be avoided at all costs. Luckily, I’m pretty sure about what my measurements once were, although my recent dietary choices might make those seem generally optimistic once I get the trouser of choice back home, but I’d still prefer to take that chance than to endure the full clothes shopping experience that seems to come so naturally to so many others. Once upon a time I used to watch Alvin Hall’s programmes about turning people’s finances around and it always shocked me how much people felt was the minimum they needed to set aside for clothes shopping every month. The monthly average figures they would quote would often be more than I would consider spending on clothes in a couple of years, which probably explains why I used to have so much trouble getting served whenever I went into bars in the posher parts of town, the first impressions I give possibly resembling those of someone living on the streets. Quite often, now I come to think about it, I have been asked if I had any “spare change” by people generally better dressed than I am...

So I bought my “hip and trendy” new clothes. Actually there’s nothing at all “hip” or “trendy” about them at all (although, I suppose the jeans would have a certain hip aspect to them because that is where they hang from), just slightly newer variations on the same tired old look I’ve been sporting for more than thirty years now. It’s strange how fashions, especially men’s fashions, haven’t fundamentally changed from the same basic format for so long now. Early to mid-era Victorians who had been young in the Georgian era would have seen a complete restyling in the general form of the clothing they wore as garments like socks and knee britches made way for the more recognisable trouser that we know today, but the jeans and jumpers that were worn when I was young broadly resemble the jeans and jumpers I wear today. Actually, I confess that I may still be actually wearing some of them every once in a while...

I suppose my new shoes were of a brand that might once perhaps have been considered “hip” or “trendy”. Not any more though. Now that your author is capable of sporting a pair, their “street cred” will have plummeted below the scale. I’m a barometer for fashion, I believe. If I’ve got one, then it must, by definition, be no longer fashionable. I should consider taking payments from companies like Apple or Ferrari to persuade me not to purchase their products, or to seek out their competitor’s versions instead, not that I was ever in the income bracket where me buying them was ever that likely anyway, which is, I suspect, where my cunning plan falls apart.

Anyway, once the shopping was done, it was time for lunch which was pleasant enough even if it did involve the use of a “2-for-one” main course voucher that we got out of the box one of the recent pizzas we bought was sold in. I know that the company fully expect you to use the things, but I still always feel rather apologetic whenever I do, as if I am somehow confessing to some dark secret poverty, or some deep inherent meanness.

I toyed with mooching around trying to take some pictures, as I have often planned to do but seldom get around to actually doing, of the various exciting, unusually shaped and generally rather photogenic buildings that have sprung up in that part of  the world in recent years, but it started to rain so, despite the fact that I had actually remembered to bring a camera along with me for once, instead we headed homewards with our bags of exciting new clothes stashed in the back of the car, knowing, at the very least that the country’s economy was now feeling much more robust, even if our own wasn’t quite so much.

GENERIC BLOG POSTING NUMBER 164

I’ve been worrying rather a lot about Betelgeuse this week. The red giant that lurks at the top left hand corner of the constellation of Orion could go ‘bang’ at any time they say. Of course, on universal timescales this could be at any time in the next million years or tomorrow. It’s the uncertainty, you see. That and, whilst I’m told that for a while it would be almost the brightest thing around and for an undetermined period of time would sit there like a distant Tatooinian second sun (“Get out of town before the twin suns set…”), I’m struggling to find out for quite how long we should expect it to burn. A fortnight? A thousand years? The blink of an eye? I struggle enough with my sleep patterns as it is. I wondered whether I should Twit a message to Prof Brian Cox but thought better of it. TwitWorld is not, after all, a Q&A device for interviewing celebrity astronomers.

I need to occasionally remind myself of this, actually. The TwitWorld is sometimes so intimate that you really can persuade yourself that you’re having a one-on-one conversation with the person whose little nuggets of life you’re  following, and it’s sometimes just too easy to find yourself typing out a personal question as if you’re on some kind of forum and forget that it would be drowned out by all the other thousands of Twits surrounding you. It’s probably not unlike trying to have a quiet word with the manager whilst standing in the middle of the crowd at the World Cup Final and I really, really must stop it.

On Friday morning as I was driving back from the railway station I saw a grown man obviously on his way to work sporting a red nose and I was reminded that it was indeed “Red Nose Day” again. My first thought, of course was: “I bet that he’s the comedy lynchpin of wherever he works”, the quintessential “A good laugh” (shudder!) and made a mental note to stay well away from such people. Luckily, as I work alone, staying away from the “fun” people isn’t difficult. I did wonder whether BBC Breakfast are missing a trick by not converting the “Red Button” to a nose for the day, but I can’t see anyone else caring about that. I also wondered whether my HAL9000 spoof that morning counted as at least a vague attempt at being funny, as it did kind of have a red nose, didn’t it? I don’t suppose anyone noticed anyway.

Of course, St Patrick’s Day the day before  managed to pass me by fairly unnoticed. It always seems odd that in England it seems to get more than its fair share of attention, but St George’s Day and St David’s Day both seem to be almost wholly unremarkable. Maybe St Patrick had a better press agent. I was asked a couple of questions about Ireland earlier this week in that “we asked 100 people” kind of a way and never even realised that it was probably a St Patrick’s Day related thing. I very quickly realised that I didn’t really know much about Irish culture despite having been there quite a few times and most of what I did know came from watching “Father Ted”. The only Irish landmark I could think of, for example, was the Giants’ Causeway and the only Irish female singer was Dana. Maybe it’s an age thing. I was asked to name an Irish sportsman and was completely at a loss, despite eulogising over Kevin O’Brien at the World Cup only a couple of weeks ago. How soon we forget.

England (and Wales) are managing to stumble hopelessly on in their less than convincing attempt upon winning the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011. Listening to their games is still proving to be a bit of an emotional Rollercoaster, although you could at least argue that all of their games have at least been interesting (in a cricket kind of a way – if you don’t like cricket, I’m sure nothing will convince you of this…) and have managed to breathe new life into the 50 over format, the death of which has been much anticipated in cricketing circles in recent years. So, the tournament burbles on, with the possibility just about remaining that one of the home nations will progress into the second round, although the cruel twists, turns and quirks of fate brought about by unexpected results could still (at the time of writing) scupper this and lead to the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth, although no doubt not with quite the same scale of lamentation and woe as an ignominious exit from the footballing version tends to.

I spent the week awaiting a few deliveries which kept on failing to appear. The beloved’s birthday looms and so a certain amount of online purchasing has come into play again. I suspect the usual Postie is on holiday and the rest of his colleagues can’t be bothered doing his round and sorting the packages, but I’m reliably informed that the postal service really shouldn’t work like that. There was, however, suspiciously little in the way of actual deliveries this week, and the ones we did get were much, much later in the day than usual. It just means that the slightest noise outside tends to find me hurling myself down the stairs to try to prevent the arrival of another little red cardboard notification of doom telling me that they’d tried to deliver something but I was out.

The bank kept on ringing me, wanting me to open another account, but didn’t seem to accept that I was perfectly happy to leave things as they are for the time being, thank you very much for the kind offer, etc. No matter how often I try to explain this, I find that they still want to give me time to think about it and promise to call me back again in a few days after I’ve had time to think it over. I usually hang up the phone and immediately completely forget that the call ever occurred, so the follow up call usually surprises me all over again, and the poor Telesales Operative dealing with my finances seems utterly astonished that I haven’t spent every waking minute since their last call going over the pros and cons of their incredibly lucrative offer. How could I not want to earn interest on my money? Well, it’s simple really, generally I don’t have any. There might well be cash in the account at this point in the month, but there’s unlikely to be much left in there by the end of it. I’ve never been particularly interested in financial shenanigans and jiggery-pokery anyway. Saving the odd pound here and there by juggling my gas supplier, for example, always seems to be a pointless load of fuss when it all seems to even out in the long run. Matters of interest, it seems, don’t stimulate my interest.

Finally, another metaphorical glass should be raised to the memory of the departure from this mortal coil of yet another of those great character actors who so filled my younger days with joy at their performances, as the rather fabulous Michael Gough has died at the seemingly indeterminate great age of 93, 94 or 95, depending on whom you choose to believe. Each and every way, it was still “a good innings”, as the saying goes (although remaining “Not out” seems preferable). International fame came to him relatively late in life when he became “Alfred the Butler” in a series of “Batman” films, but for me he was always associated with Hammer Films, as well as being one of those rather marvelous recurring villains in all of those great 1960s series, most memorably in “The Avengers” where he was the original mad-scientist creator of the Cybernauts. Here’s to you, sir, with thanks!

SMALL SURPRISES (BOTH NASTY & NICE)

I spent a lot of Monday feeling quite angry, and it was all my fault, because I took my eyes off the ball for a moment and dropped it and then got a unpleasant surprise. Now, I’ve never been a big fan of surprises, and I’m more likely than anything to try and skip the country if there is even the most unlikely chance of having to attend a surprise party because that sort of thing just makes me feel uncomfortable for the recipient and just plain awkward in myself. This would become even more likely if I was the person getting the surprise, but even the small surprises that life can sometimes throw at you are not something I enjoy, probably because, in general, I tend to find they are of the “nasty” kind.

Without going into too much detail, during my mother’s recent three month hospitalisation, I paid little attention to her finances because I knew that they were all being paid by Direct Debit and so they were nothing to worry about. What loose bills that I did find got paid, and, to be honest, I genuinely thought everything was “hunky-dory”. However, when mum finally got home this weekend, she and my sister went through all her accumulated post and emails and found, to everyone’s surprise, that there had been an unpaid bill for some clothing which amounted to about £25 and, not to put too fine a point to it, there were some rather stroppy follow-up communications that mentioned legal action and brought to mind (not without reason) images of leg-breaking burly men standing upon doorsteps and making threatening noises towards a rather befuddled 78 year-old woman. Hopefully, it has been sorted now, and such things will not become necessary (if they ever were…) but the thing that got me annoyed wasn’t that aspect of it, they are after all just people doing a job, but the lack of opportunity that was given to my sister to explain when she tried to ring up and sort it out.

Maybe you’ve had one of these conversations before, but they are rather a new experience to me, even though I didn’t do the actual “experiencing” myself (which was probably for the best). According to what I was told later (“Objection! Hearsay!” as Jack McCoy would undoubtedly have bellowed...), it went something along these lines…

“It’s about my mother and this unpaid bill…”

“If you are not the actual customer, then I cannot talk to you about it!”

“Yes, but she had a stroke three months ago…”

“I cannot talk to you!”

“She’s been in hospital for the last three months…”

“I cannot talk to you!” and so on…

You get the picture…

So, when faced with someone being totally bloody-minded, I suspect that it was just as well that it was my sister making that particular call, because I think I might very well have burst a blood vessel if it had been me. Now, believe it or not, I am prepared to see things from the company’s point of view, and I’m sure they spend all day having to listen to hard-luck stories, especially during the current economic climate, and I’m sure that it’s a very frustrating job to have to do, but that sense that someone isn’t even prepared to listen to what you’re trying to say to them must eventually bring even the most mild-mannered of customers to the brink of a meltdown if they try to ring up with the most reasonable of explanations and get faced with that kind of response... (“Mr. Magee, don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!”)

I’m told that this person really shouldn’t have made it a “data protection” issue and it was quite within their powers to give general advice but instead they chose to make an already difficult situation into a very, very stressful one. I suppose my sister could have asked to be transferred to a supervisor or something, but when you’re up against such an immovable object, even the unstoppable force that my sister is capable of being is sometimes left holding on to a telephone in disbelief.

There does also seem to be a slight modern corporate sense that just because they've sent out a letter or email, then the matter has been sufficiently dealt with, despite the fact that they have not got any way of knowing whether the intended recipient ever actually got it. Their large hammers go crashing about to crack such tiny nuts as we all seem to be when faced with all their might, but might isn’t always right in much the same way as the customer can sometimes be wrong, too.

Hopefully the matter has now resolved itself, although the bank were equally tricky when it became obvious that my mum had also, over the course of three months and a stroke, rather naturally forgotten all her various banking PIN codes, and, because she had wisely not written any of them down for security reasons, had no access to her own money. Again, I can’t really blame them for not just handing them out to anyone who rang up to ask for them, after all, the security of our money should be their primary concern (Hah!), but it’s these tiny little unpleasant surprises that make life just that little bit more infuriating for everyone as they try to get on with their own lives.

Then, sometimes, it’s the little things that take you nicely by surprise. Those little details that you’ve forgotten all about. A couple of years ago, before I found this blog as an outlet for what, for the sake of argument, we’ll still refer to as my “creativity”, I used to write Amazon reviews. I mentioned those here once before and my favourite example (“Morse Lives!”) still lurks over on The Writers’ Blog pages. What I’d forgotten, however, is the Amazon “comments” section, where, much like in Blogland, the great unknown masses of customers are invited to tell you, in no uncertain terms, what they think of your humble thoughts. Luckily for me, the comments on that particular timeless piece of prose were generally favourable and I was able to add my own reply to one of them, which went like this:-

Thank you for your kind words, and for finally confirming to me something that I'd hoped - that such an 'offbeat' style of review might (at the very least) just amuse somebody somewhere and still fulfill its purpose. I'm so glad you "got" it and hope that things have now warmed up in your part of the world.

Morse purists might, of course, question the whole "urn scenario" given his ultimate fate, but I hope my little joke still works*. After watching all 33 films in fairly rapid succession, the voices seemed very vivid to me, which I think is testament to their sheer quality.

*"Kit, tell me joy" (anag) (2,6,4)

So, imagine my surprise when someone, on this damp weekend we’ve just endured, eighteen months after the review was posted and long, long after the product itself had become unavailable added:-

Anagram answer - my little joke - Morse would be proud of you!

I try to play my little games with the world, and for most of the time, the world simply isn’t at all interested, but, just occasionally, my faith is restored.

You throw your little pebbles out into the pond of life and you never know where the ripples are going to end up, and, despite what I might choose to believe, some surprises can occasionally turn out to be pleasant ones.