I Hate Barclays

I have not blogged for ages due to housemovenewjobnotfeelingwell syndrome.  And still it continues, but I think it best to write this down, if only for myself, as one day I’ll need to look back on this and recall the horror.  In detail.

I can’t even remember, now, the offers to buy that fell through and the offers from myself that never happened, or were not accepted, as these things happened before Christmas, and that was 100 years ago.  So I cannot really describe the series of events which led me to this point.  However, here is this point.

I have an offer on my house.  I have put in an offer on a house.

Simples.

Or not.

10th January – checked my credit file.  All debts were wiped before Christmas, so why are these debts still showing up?  Phone the building society arranging my mortgage.  They tell me “those debts must GO.  You cannot give us letters from the card companies telling us they are paid.  They must be removed from your file or we will not give you a mortgage.  No, no, no”.

12th January – I phone Mint and MBNA.  “Please remove that nonexistent debt”, I say. 

“No.  We only upload our data on 29th of each month, so you’ll have to wait another three weeks”. 

“Noooo”, I wail, “the people selling me the house will get anxious if I sit here doing nothing for that long AND THEY MIGHT SELL TO SOMEONE ELSE AND THEN I WILL CRY”. 

“Oh, ok then, since you put it like that…”.

12th January (later that day) – I phone Barclaycard and make the same request.  “Oh, ok, but you have to sign a form first.  We’ll put it in the post.  It will take 10 days”. 

“TEN DAYS! I can’t wait that long.  The solicitor, the Estate Agent, and the sellers will think I’m taking the pee”. 

“Sorry, them’s the rules”.

15th January – letter arrives.  Yay!  I sign it and post it.  Yay.

19th January – I phone Barclaycard.  “Did you get my letter?”. 

“Yes”. 

“Can you clear my file, then”. 

“Yes”.

21st January - “er….why is my file still showing a debt?  People are getting angry”. 

“We can’t do it.  We only do it at the end of the month”. 

I am on the phone to the complaints department immediately.

“Sorry, we can’t do it.  They shouldn’t have told you that”.

“But they did,  twice.  And now I could lose this sale, you numpties.  Even worse, I have TOLD PEOPLE THAT IT IS IN HAND AND NOW THEY THINK I AM A LIAR AND A KNAVE!”.

24th January - “what are you doing about this.  I am getting anxious phone calls from the Estate Agent and solicitor.  You told me you could do this and you haven’t.  Why did you lie?”.

25th January.  Parcel arrives.  It is the biggest bunch of flowers ever.  It is from Barclaycard.  There is a note attached.  “Sorry for the inconvenience”. 

I check my credit file.  The nonexistent debt is still there.  I shake my fist angrily at the flowers, but it is not their fault so I apologise to them almost immediately.  They are too big for the only vase I have left and water spills everywhere.  I have to remove MrCat’s lovely posy from the nice vase to fit them in.  MrCat’s nice flowers are now in a horrible vase and the Barclay flowers are in the nice vase.  This makes me more angry.

26th January – Letter arrives.  It is from Barclaycard.  “Sorry about the inconvenience.  Here is £30 towards the cost of the zillion phonecalls”.

I check my credit file.  The non existent debt is still there. I am mildly mollified by the £30, but still shake my fist aimlessly at the sky.

I phone the mortgage company.  “Barclaycard are evil.  Can you do something about it?”.

“Ok, get them to fax us a letter, telling us that you have paid the debt and we’ll see what we can do”.

3.00pm.  I phone Barclaycard.  “Please write a letter.  It is the least you can do”.

“Ok.  Give us the fax number”.

I give them the fax number of the building society.

“No.  We can’t fax it to them.  We have to fax it to you.  You have to physically be there”.

“WHAT?”

“sorry”.

I pace around angrily.

3.30pm – I phone again.  I get a different person on the line. I have decided to lie about the fax number and pretend it’s mine.  I fear that I will be struck by lightening if I tell this lie, but I am now desperate to get this thing moving, and immolation seems the easiest option.

“Hello, can you fax that letter”.

“Yes.  Can we have the fax number”.

I gulp.  “Yes, it’s 98798798798798798798798”

“Ok, it’s on it’s way”.

I am shaking.  They didn’t ask me where the fax was actually situated, so it’s not really a lie, is it?

4.00pm.  I phone the building society.

“did you get the fax”.

“yes.  Everything is ok.  We can proceed”.

“hurrah!.

27th January.  I check my credit file.

Barclaycard have cleared the non existent debt which they said they couldn’t do until 31st.  But now they’ve done it after all.

For at least two hours I am unable to speak, or even move, so great is my rage and so high my blood pressure. 

(You’ll be pleased to hear that this is not the end of it.  I am currently waiting for a spectral letter from the Tax Office.  More on this later…)

A month condensed

(please don hyperbole detector when reading this post)

This is the past month in precis.  It will thus omit to highlight the number of times one has had to retire to the parlour to lie on the chaise longue in tattered crinoline, holding a lace kerchief to one's fevered brow because of the sheer TRAUMA of it all.

October to November in a nutshell - house offer, job stops, claim benefits, get new job, hate new job, change mind about house offer, still hate new job, change mind again about house offer and annoy everybody including self, "dream house" comes on the market again (and unlike last time I'm in a position to actually put an offer in, but it seems there's something wrong with it which is why it's back on the market, stoopid, so I have to sit there looking at it on Rightmove like a kid at the window of a toyshop and DO NOTHING whilst getting enraged), the passing of time does not alter my hatred of job, start looking for new job, fill in forms for solicitor and get maudlin about leaving home of past ten years, watch as price of "dream house" is reduced and still DO NOTHING, develop grudge about workplace which doesn't do wonders for motivation, wake up to a blood spattered sitting room after "playfight" between felines goes all Tarantino on the laminate, take MrCat out for the first time in AGES and celebrate this fact by ordering a spicy poppadom.  NO EXPENSE SPARED!

I ate most of it.  Was that wrong of me?

There'll be more of this dross along soon I can assure you.  And there’ll be more detail, so leave now.

My OId Man’s a Dustman

Only he wasn’t.  My father, that is.  He didn’t wear gor blimey trousers or a dustman’s hat although occasionally, it has to be said, he looked a proper narnar.  For which I can only blame the brylcreem.

Anyway, this evening SmallCat did an impersonation of me.  It wasn’t so much what he said, it was HOW he said it that alarmed me.  It sounded like Michael Caine, (don’t get me started on him, just DON’T).  In other words – Cockney.  Like I was born within the sound of Bow Bells.  Like I’m some kind of Pearly Queen, for heaven’s sake.

Let me get a few things straight here.

1.  I was neither born within the sound of Bow Bells and nor have I even HEARD them.

2.  Yes, I was born and brought up in London but everyone in my house had Irish accents and not once were the words “blimey”, “leave it out, mate”, “you’re avin’ a larf” or “geezer” heard over Sunday lunch.  Which, incidentally, was dinner.  Not lunch.  We never had lunch.  Lunch was only introduced into my vocabulary when I went to college and I still feel uncomfortable using it. In reality, there is no such thing as lunch.

3.  I detest Michael Caine

4.  I do not watch Eastenders. 

Having established the ground rules, I think we can move on now.  Me old china.

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This week I have been mostly still not employable

Facts, figures and backsides

Days away from blog – lots

Amount of days left before unemployment - 12

Job applications made between 15th August and 5th October – at least 30.

Interviews – 0

Offers on house – 3

Offers withdrawn – 3

Number of chest infections SmallCat has had since July – 2 (yes, he’s had another bad incident since the pneumonia, hence the absence)

Number of inhalers in house – 3

But figures can also be good.

Number of interviews since 5th October – 4

Number of interviews lined up this week – 2

% morale boost achieved by said interviews - 100

Catflaps successfully installed – 1

Mortgage offers agreed – 1 (hurrah!)

Children now much better – 1

Lovely boyfriends – 1 

Number of young men exposing their bottoms to your erstwhile bloghost this year – 1.

Well, really.  I have no idea what that was all about, but whilst at Hardwick Hall this summer we took a tour of the older, ruined Hall which was replaced by the jaunty number in the previous blog post. As we were ascending a set of stairs to look at some precariously placed plaster decorations, the young man ahead of me suddenly, and with malice aforethought, dropped his pants without so much as a by your leave.  It was all done so quickly that MrCat didn’t even notice, and the youngsters ahead continued on their progress with the merest of guilty sniggers to give them away.

The view from the top window was unexpected to say the least 

I had two options.  Express shock like the middle aged, middle class, middle of the road woman he no doubt took me for, or make some kind of nonplussed comment in the hope of embarassing him in front of his friends.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide which route I chose.

This week I have been mainly frantic and on the phone

What would Bess do?

This is Hardwick Hall.  It was built by Bess of Hardwick who was good mates with Elizabeth I.  MrCat and I went there this summer during our Peak District-Yorkshire Moors-Northumbrian Hills “sort of walking” holiday.

The cost of curtains alone would bankrupt a Duke

When I was a history undergrad, we heard a lot about Bess.  Any woman who was mentioned in lectures more than a couple of times and who was not a) an executed wife b) a decorative mistress or c) Elizabeth I, had to have something going for her.  The only people who did “stuff” back then were men.  Women doing “stuff” were a bit out of the ordinary, and Bess certainly did a lot of “stuff”. 

Bess was mentioned so frequently because she built Hardwick Hall, which had a lot of windows.  We had a guy who specialised in Architectural History, and apparantly the windows of Hardwick Hall say a zillion and one fascinating things if you’re interested in that sort of mullarkey.  Sadly, I did not attend his lectures.  He wore very odd suits which put me off so I chose a different course (Papists and Puritans in Elizabethan England, since you ask). 

Anyway, I say “sadly” because if I’d done his course I’d have gone on a trip to Paris to study Louis Quinze chairs.  It wasn’t the lack of chairs which bothered me, you understand, but the lack of moules marniere and steak frites.  The best I got was a video of “The Life and Times of Philip II of Spain” one afternoon in the history department.  Hey ho.

Bess married several times and was almost as rich as the Queen.  She probably invented the pre-nup and as a result, did rather well and held on to just about everything she gained despite her sex and the fact that she didn’t start ahead of the pack.

So, perhaps I should learn a lesson from Bess in the midst of my current woes.  No job?  Can’t afford your home?  What would Bess do?

Yes, that’s right.  I have to marry the Earl of Shrewsbury.  I can send him a proposal through theyworkforyou.com.

Sadly, I fear his political affiliations are likely to make this a somewhat rocky relationship.

But needs must.

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This week I have been mostly proposing marriage to Tory Peers.

Five little monkeys jumping on my self esteem

It is a fact universally acknowledged that when a lime coloured feline is in a funk, then the whole world turns to pants. 

The post which follows is a self indulgent, self pitying rant.  Please don ear muffs and sturdy shades.

Here are some reasons not to be cheerful. 

• I probably don’t have a job anymore, and there are no jobs out there. 
• My house is for sale, but I don’t want to move. 
• I am in debt up to my eyeballs – indeed, as I write this I’m waving my hand around ABOVE my eyeballs only you can’t see that. 
• And I am so very tired of worrying about money and not sleeping properly, it has been going on for the past few years, and has aged me.  The foundation and powder is beginning to accumulate in the scowl lines around my eyes of a morning (I don’t have laughter lines).  When people look at me closely, they can see Maybelline products with alarming clarity.  They can probably even name the shade.  Hell, the label is PROBABLY ON MY FACE! 

But, as MrCat always says “what’s the worst that can happen?”.  And he’s right.  Let’s be resilient here.  Beans are cheap and nutritious and I am also really rather fond of Autumn.

So to cheer myself up this evening I decided to think seriously about updating my rather tired Etsy shop and adding something new to the product line.  Surely I can come up with something original but most importantly SIMPLE TO MAKE, which people want to buy?  We’ve had enough of bunnies and bears and samey looking dogs and cats.

And then I saw this.  Five little monkeys, jumping on the bed.

 

Frankly, I think this is a work of genius.  But, but…….

WHY CAN’T I COME UP WITH SOMETHING LIKE THIS!

>sob

PS – if you click on the picture, you’ll go to her shop.  It’s very good. 
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This week I have been mostly growling

Headless on my Window Sill

Here is the progress I’ve made with three of the four creatures I am crocheting for Speechless, Mostly.

I now wonder if it was a bit cruel to place the heads of these monkeys directly opposite their dismembered limbs. They are giving their body parts slightly beseeching looks. There is genuine anguish on the face of the (ever so slightly bosseyed) pale lilac monkey as it realises that it won’t have a stripe on it’s sweater like the other two. The green monkey is turning away as he can’t look at the scene of carnage any longer. The brown monkey is simply appalled.

I think I ought to go downstairs right now and apologise.

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