Real Life Revisted

American writer EB White once said, “If the world were merely seductive that would be easy. If it were merely challenging that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy it. This makes it hard to plan the day” and, having returned refreshed from a very welcome family holiday to the demanding tasks of the real world, I fully understand White's sentiments.

Torn between getting back to blogging, revisiting my duties of domestic goddess and taking up my role of debt fighter extraordinaire or simply enjoying more time with my family I have,

·        Washed, dried and relocated nothing short of eight loads of washing

·        Unpacked four suitcases and distributed the contents to their rightful owners.

·        Opened and replied to ten pieces of correspondence as well as sent four birthday cards complete with presents.

·        Read, answered, deleted or blocked 340 emails lurking in my inbox.

And,

·        Taken my soon to be eighty six year old mother to the garden centre, assessed a leak in her roof, chosen an outfit for her to wear at a christening and ordered a mirror she has need of from the internet.

In addition I have,

·        Expressed my discontent to our external decorators, who, while we were away, saw fit to remove our tower scaffolding from where it was stored, assemble it at the front of the house and leave it there unattended for two weeks, to provide both aid to potential intruders as well as a tempting acquisition for a passing thief.

·        Told my landlord I did not take kindly to having his finger wagged at me in fury when informing him it was his tradesmen who had seen fit to appropriate equipment belonging to us without permission.

·        Advised my seventeen year old son it is not only unacceptable to allow his friends to take and damage the prized possessions of his eleven year old brother in our absence but it is nothing short of outrageous to believe he can use my Amazon account (and my card details) to fund his purchase of six computer games without asking me.

·        Confiscated my new tenant’s electric fire because he saw fit to leave it on unattended in temperatures of 25 degrees and insisted he remove the tortoise I found roaming, free range in his bedroom, using my cream fitted carpet as its litter tray.

·        Secured a very apologetic response from the Spanish legal administrators for our apartment’s community for the cyber bullying I endured at the hands of their volunteer community president.

And,

·        Ignored yet another letter from Lloyds Banking Group which, after enquiring yet again if I wish all future correspondence to be in Braille, insists I settle the balance forthwith and completely ignores the fact that the account remains the subject of an ongoing Financial Ombudsman’s Complaint.

EB White also says, “One of the most consuming things in life is to have an enemy” and while I am determined not to let family life be consumed by my ongoing battle with the banks, now that domestic, administrative and family obligations are suitably attended to, I am, at last, at liberty to dedicate some time to improving the world.

Lloyds Banking Group, along with the infamous Halifax Bank of Scotland who continue to hide amongst the sumptuous skirt's of LLoyds executive elite, remains firmly in my sights!

New Years Revelations

Believing, like TS Elliot,“ last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice” my New Year’s resolution has been one of mindful determination to mark 2012 with a new and audible voice of my own.  Sadly, my adversaries have neither new voices nor new words for this brand New Year and instead have chosen to sing the same old song.

Determined not to let their repetitive monotones colour my New Year spirit I have started my first child free week of 2012 by replying to yet more unsolicited and largely meaningless correspondence.

I have;

·        Explained to Egg I find selling my husband’s debt to a collection agency all but two years after advising me of their intentions not to pursue him both an unusual and unsatisfactory way of illustrating their compassion.

·        Explained to my very supportive MP that I wish to take my Warmfront complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman in the hope I will eventually secure the heating survey I was promised in December 2008.

·        Explained, again, to the Financial Ombudsman’s adjudicator, who has clearly taken umbrage at my fourteen page letter asking her to follow the FOS guidelines, that I wish to be informed of her reasons for seeking HBOS’s permission to escalate my complaint to a formal enquiry more than eighteen months after she first took my case.

Satisfied all wolves are once again deterred from any temptation to darken my door or my doorstep, I have been able to set aside fears of damage to my children’s sense of well being and turn my attention to the duties of house and home. The task in pole position involves venturing into each unruly but now vacant child’s bedroom while the occupants are at school in an effort to reclaim some floor space and restore some kind of order.

While I remain amazed, but no longer surprised, at the quantity of dirty washing and empty sweet wrappers that can harmoniously cohabit within a teenager’s bedroom if left unchecked, I can still be caught unawares with the discovery of an academic award received but not mentioned or, as on one occasion, an MI5 recruiting brochure abandoned on a bedside table. However, in spite of  more than thirty four years of parenting I was totally unprepared for what I read on the fly leaf of an old but otherwise blank diary I was about to throw away in the name of de-cluttering.

“Dear 2007 diary,

I have kept you because 2007 was a year of no troubles and my life was perfect.
Time flies and it is now February 24^th 2011.  I have moved house, moved schools and left the village I have always lived in. Now I have more school work, more home work and have been having a really hard time.

I have kept this diary even though it has nothing it because I wish I could turn back time.”

This simple but heartfelt statement written by my thirteen year old daughter almost a year ago saddens me immensely.  Not least because, unbeknown to me and in spite of my best efforts to keep our persecution at the hands of HBOS completely seperate from family life, my daughter has still suffered its consequences in silence and kept an old and empty diary purely because it represents the last year she remembers being wholly untroubled.

Aware that HBOS has stolen my health, my financial future and, so far, three and a half years of my own life, it did not occurred to me, until the discovery of this very unwelcome New Year’s revelation in the words of a child, HBOS has also stolen three and a half years of my daughter’s childhood and this, for me, is nothing short of heartbreaking.

Kitchen Chaos

I am told chaos results when the world changes faster than the people in it and, whilst the uneasiness caused by global chaos is reputed to allow the opportunity for creativity and growth, chaos in my kitchen seems to be causing nothing but confusion and angst.

It is mid morning and my grandson and daughter are attempting to make a crumble with fruit they have picked from the garden while calling on my expertise, constantly, to help them.

My youngest son, furious to find someone has been using his Uno cards again, communicates his indignation by way of a walky talky at full volume that picks up passing police transmissions at the same time.

My husband who was, until summoned by our eldest son, mid point of yet another Internet based job application, stands silent and hovering in the doorway in readiness to fulfill a “no notice” request for a lift to the cinema.

The same sixteen year old son is attempting to procure the Orange Wednesday code from my phone whilst telling me to chill at my handbag invasion and show more respect when conversing with him.

I, on the other hand, while doing my best to both relay cooking instructions and referee the Uno card dispute,  am endeavouring to communicate to my sixteen year old son the benefits of  being less demanding of instantaneous social gratification and more responsive to the numerous tasks of educational importance that he has seen fit to neglect.

Getting nowhere with anything, but still with all eyes on me I decide to,

·        ask my daughter and grandson to take a break from prepping the crumble and play Uno,

·        ask my youngest son to switch the walky talky off and join in with the  Uno game,

·        tell my eldest son it is too short notice to go to the cinema and suggest he crack on with his list of more pressing issues.

This leaves my husband free to return to his CV and me exhausted, but with some semblance of order and an empty kitchen.

“Miracle Mum,”, some might say?

“Dictator and control freak,” they cry,  while during all this, my husband stands silently by.

Beaches and blessings

Like pediatrician and author Dr Marianne E. Neifert,  I believe “a family is what you make it. It is made stronger, not my the number of heads counted at the dinner table but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have both as individuals and as a unit”.

With this observation in mind and sincerely hoping “a family in harmony will prosper,” I decided to combat the growing number of sibling disputes by way of a visit to the seaside.  Good weather combined with an unexpected mid week day off for my husband not only enabled us to get to the coast without running the weekend traffic jam gauntlet but also offered us an opportunity to take our ten and twelve year old as well as three of our grandchildren ages eleven, six and three. A substantial picnic along with buckets, spades, wet suits, flotation jackets and an inflated tractor inner-tube were carefully crammed into every available space in and on our car, while a selection of choral offerings from our passengers marked the level of excitement in the air during the journey.
Within an hour or two of our arrival, once a lengthy disembarkation had been completed, lunch served, crabs collected and sandcastles built, I was left to snooze in the sunshine while endless swashbuckling adventures involving our five charges and the inner tube were played out on the shoreline under my husband’s watchful eye. Towards the end of the afternoon, prompted only by the onset of hunger, my wanderers returned to find their beautifully engineered sandcastles, both lovingly and expertly constructed with the help of my husband, had attracted some enthusiastic but clumsy interest from some neighboring children.  Panicked by the potential for destruction, my ten year old son very politely suggested they ask their own Dad to construct a similar offering which they would be then be able to call their own.

As the small boy and his little sister got up to leave he said without malice,
”I can’t ask my Dad to build me anything because he left us when I was little and even though my Mum got us a new Dad he had to leave too because he and my Mum hated each other.  Now I don’t have any Dad but I really like your sandcastle.”

I could see from the look on my children and grandchildren’s faces that they were shocked and saddened by the boy’s statement. After a few moments of thoughtful silence, a discussion of some gravity had all five of them locked in debate.  Before long an agreement was reached and my husband and I were informed that a new sandcastle village was to be built for the sole use of the fatherless boy and his sister. An hour later the boy was found and presented with a comparable architectural masterpiece and this time the look of shock was on his face rather than the faces of my own children.

Twice he said,” Is this really for me?”

As I watched my five charges move off towards the shoreline to embark on more inner-tube adventures, I saw the beneficiaries of their efforts settle down to some intense sandcastle based play wearing faces that shone with unadulterated pleasure.
Not only am I immensely proud that my children and my grandchildren showed understanding and compassion for two children they believed to be less fortunate than them, but I am doubly impressed they applied their collective expertise to design a solution through a caring commitment of their time as a unit. I am also all only too aware that, had I chosen a different path when our HBOS troubles began, it could well have been my own children explaining the lack of a fatherly presence to strangers on a beach and not someone else’s.

A day at the beach and a regrettable gap in a small boy's life provided me with a heartwarming opportunity to see just how much my children still have in spite of our financial traumas.  It also afforded my an illustration of how much they value and have benefited from the rewards of a loving and secure family environment which, thankfully, has remained uncontaminated by unsympathetic creditors.  It is for this reason and for their sakes that I continue to covertly struggle on behind the scenes while battling with the Lloyds Banking Group. I do this in the hope that one day my husband and I will be able to enjoy family life, after debt, free from the legacy of HBOS greed and economic recession.

Poor parenting

It is said the number one fear of most people is public speaking. I was surprised to read that even death is second to this. While I don’t fear death or public- speaking, I do and always have feared failure. To fail in my parental duties is the most excruciating of all.

So far this morning my youngest son, who is now ten, has asked me,

·        How does your body know how long to make your toes?

·        How much water do spiders drink?

·        How many memory sticks would it take to fill a brain?

While endeavouring to answer these questions have I been,

·        packing suitcases for five of us

·        preparing a family Sunday lunch

·        answering my emails regarding the imminent school ball

·        organising my lodgers for when we are away

·        trying to write a blog about Equitable Life and the Halifax

Today’s duties have come hot on the tail of a gruellingly long sports day at which I,

·        sold ice-creams for the Friends in the blistering heat,

·        answered any number of questions from fellow committee members and prospective ball goers

·        recruited a new Vice Chairman  for the Friends

·        prepared and served a picnic for my husband, mother, daughters, sons and grandchildren all of whom came to support my youngest two budding athletes

But in spite of all these examples of a one woman debt fighter and housewife extraordinaire’s ability to succeed, today I forgot to go to my youngest son’s special assembly at which he did his first public speaking.

For this unforgivable act of parental neglect, I am full of regret.

I'm still standing

Recently someone I have never met gave a critique on my writing. On reading this blog she remarked I must be very strong.  Never having thought of myself in these terms, it inspired me to search for a word which described the perception I have of myself. The word resilient was the only one which came to mind.

The Japanese describe resilience as someone “who falls seven times and gets up eight” and without a doubt this resembles the daily routine I have endured for the last two and a half years.  I cannot begin to count the number of times I have been knocked down during this period nor can I recall what mechanism I have employed to get to my feet but thankfully always, within a day or two of all manner of blows, I have been able to find the resources to regain my footing.

This week has been no different. 

On top of the normal madness of running a family with three school age children, arranging a prep school ball for one hundred and fifty people, together with a fair of amount of lodger “patting” and a couple of visits to my eighty four year old mother, I have been asked three enormous questions by our creditors over the last forty eight hours,

·       Heritable bank have asked if I would I like to consider entering into IVA in an effort to thwart the Bank of Scotland’s continued bully boy tactics.

·         Merrils Ede would like to know if I am prepared to be made bankrupt “without further notice” by the Bank of Scotland for not complying with yet more demands relating to making a payment arrangement.

·        The Capital Gains arm of the Inland Revenue would like to know if I am in agreement with the retrospective calculations for a tax demand they have prepared covering the last ten years of non payment.

With resilience as my master, I have begun to assess the pros and cons of going into an IVA and, along with the help of my trusty friend Chris I have, yet again, resisted the underhand comments of the Bank of Scotland’s solicitors Merrils Ede.   I have not, however, done anything with my letter from the Inland Revenue.   For this I require something more than just resilience and for the past few days this attribute, whatever it may be, appears to have deserted me.

My fear is the Inland Revenue will, with one flourish of their bureaucratic pen sweep us into bankruptcy if I am unable to meet their demands.  It is my understanding they take no prisoners and it is for this reason their letter lies neglected in the dark of my office cupboard waiting for strength to join forces with resilience and give me the wherewithal to tackle the six pages of Inland Revenue calculations.  I know I must at all costs produce a reply which avoids another demand for money we do not have. 

I have always believed harnessing resilience will help me acquire the ability to work with adversity in such a way I may come through it unharmed and perhaps even better for the experience. I haveve learned to accept I must face life’s difficulties with courage and patience by refusing to give up so I can rebound from these misfortunes, hardships and traumas to face overwhelming odds again and again. While I appreciate I can never go back to start a new beginning today or any other day I am, at least, able to take solace in the knowledge there is always tomorrow.

Today I am completely overwhelmed but tomorrow I will start a new day and make a new ending.

Childish things

Today my husband said there is nothing better than watching things grow in our garden and holding me in his arms. However, in truth there is in another love he holds even dearer and thankfully it is a love we both unreservedly share. 

The love for our children.

An all consuming determination to keep my family together throughout the trials and tribulations of our financial circumstances has been driven by the belief that it is what is best for my children and the sense of responsibility I feel for them has provided me with the resolve to continue battling with the Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB for an unencumbered future for us all.

Thankfully no longer racked with grief for the life we had it did not take to feel the impact of our circumstances. Life without money is a life with less choice but equally I have a great deal to be thankful of. For example, I remain indebted to our landlords for the compassion and understanding they showed when they offered us our tenancy without references, reduced the rent to something we could afford and allowed us to take a lodger to make ends meet.   However, this benevolence comes at a price.  Inadequate heating, leaky windows and pipes go unchecked and without money I have no choice but to stay put.

A similar situation exists when it comes to my children’s prep school.  I am truly grateful to the Headmaster for the bursaries we now have for our children but if there are any issues, I know I will be paralysed out of gratitude for his generosity.  

My nine year old son is a loving child with an inquiring mind, an open smile and a kind, polite disposition. He is rarely naughty and is generally very keen to please. He has grown up in the shadow of two older siblings both of which are exceptionally able academically while sadly my youngest son is dyslexic and often really struggles in the classroom. To my great relief the staff at his independent school have been working very hard on building his confidence by using every opportunity to praise both his creative abilities and his sporting prowess and because of this after years of limited confidence, he is now beginning to show signs of some self belief. 

However, yesterday this was far from the case.

Distraught at being told by his teacher she was ashamed of him for not producing the standard of work she anticipated, I find my son, once again, convinced he is the most "stupidest person in our family". While I, impoverished and powerless thanks to a financial position HBOS have done their best to compound, I remain hindered from coming to my son's defense out of gratitude for his private education without charge. 

Money is most definitely not everything, it does buy choice and I have discovered to my extreme frustration, accepting the benevolence of others can uncomfortable impair the voice.

Today, my heart bleeds for my son.

Viva Espana

They say life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans and today I wholeheartedly subscribe to this observation.  In the space of hour I have visited my eighty four year old Mum, called in on a friend for a coffee, told my lodger Daryl not to leave rotting stinking food in our fridge, advised the Chairman of the school Governors their marketing strategy is flawed, praised the Friends secretary for all the hard work she is doing on the up and coming summer ball, explored how best to prepare for a court case against the Bank of Scotland with my solicitor, and discussed the legal implications with our tenant in Spain in the event of the imminent repossession of our apartment.

In reality any one of these subjects would be more than enough for my addled brain but knowing full well success usually comes to those who are too busy to go looking for it, I always feel compelled to do everything I have agreed to. The job I had planned for today was simply to establish what Banca Caja in Spain want to do with our apartment on the Costa Del Sol. We haven't been there for three years and have made no payments for most of this time to either Banca Caja, who hold the mortgage, or the community who provide the maintenance services for the complex. Bizarrely enough, it was only when some good friends found a long term tenant for me who expressed a interest in buying it, the real trouble started.

Discovering the rent being offered was enough to pay all the interest on the mortgage with Banca Caja as well as 95% of the Community fees, I foolishly thought those concerned would be pleased if I arranged for my tenant to pay these amounts direct to both of them. It was at this point the madness began. On moving in, my tenant, who enjoyed watching the BBC channels on TV was disappointed to find that the Community satellite was failing to provide them. He approached the community manager about a repair but was told it would not be forth coming without a committee vote. This was because our financial difficulties had resulted in 9000 euros of arrears.

At the committee meeting the Chairman of the Community recommended a vote to a force sale of the apartment on the pretext that the equity from this be used to recoup the amount owing. No amount of explaining on my part that the property had 100,000 euros of negative equity would deter him. I later discovered, his motive had less to do with settling an outstanding community account and a lot to do with acquiring our apartment cheap for his friend.

 My tenant, who by this time was feeling very insecure, suggested I write to my bank and my solicitor to verify his position.  I did this only to hear that the bank also wished to take possession of the apartment too but had not done so because they had forgotten to impliment it two years previously. I was assured that my tenant could remain in residence due to his protected tenancy and he would be allowed to purchase the apartment within a five year period. Banca Caja went on to say that they would, in exchange for my agreement to this, write off the 100,000 euros negative equity and arrears and settle all outstanding bills against the property including the Community fees.

Hallelujah, I thought.

Everyone is happy (except perhaps the Chairman of the Community’s bargain hunting friend) and no stupid “Bank of Scotland type” debt collecting persecution tactics for me to deal with either.
The icing on the cake was that, during the following weeks, Banca Caja stopped allocating the rent payments to my mortgage account. When I enquired why, they insisted that it was no longer necessary as any interest due when the repossession was implemented would form part of the write off. My tenant, whose solicitor advised him he had to pay rent to someone to protect his tenancy rights, has continued to pay it to me and I have now purchased a modest holiday with the proceeds.
Thanks Banca Caja you have been great but do you realise, I wonder, that you have still not repossessed my apartment.

I am now wondering if maybe you have forgotten again.

Try, try and try again

Abraham Lincoln said, "Whatever you are, make sure you are a good one" and in an effort to step up to the wearing of my somewhat dusty housewifely hat, I made a light lunch for my husband and I to enjoy without our children. During the course of this interlude of domestic bliss my husband looked up from his lunch and, observing my watering eyes, enquired if I had had an allergic reaction to something.

I explained that I had been choking.

However, despite sitting inches away from me across our table, he had been so lost in thought he completey missed my distress and there was a look of incredulous surprise across his face as it dawned on him he had, despite his proximaty, no recollection of what had happened to me.
Basking in the security of the past weeks "warmer glow", I decided, with some misgivings, to use the opportunity to tell him this "moment of absence" was not an isolated incident.

I was totally unprepared for what followed.

Whereas I saw my kindly and carefully voiced disclosure as a way of opening a dialogue from which we might find our way back, my husband saw it as an accusation which required defending.  No amount of explaining  the frequency of these "absent episodes" was not a judgement but merely an observation, would deter him from his argument.  Despite the fact he had acquired, for himself, proof they were a reality, he could not accept his opinion on their frequency was simply invalid.  I thought our objective should be not to query their existence, but to lovingly discuss how best for us both to live with them.

Overwhelmingly tired of the life I could see stetching ahead for me yet desperate to ensure my children do not grow up without a father, I visualised the coming years with a husband constantly in denial of all circumstances and all attributes which displeased him. I was destined be struggling silently to provide family stabilty at the cost of any personal expectations of happiness and retired to bed early with a very heavy heart.

Waking early, I crept out of bed to make a start on my plans for a future without him, only to notice his clothes on the floor discarded from the night before.  They lay carefully and childishly folded in a pile which was too small for their volume and I knew this unsolicited task had been undertaken in an effort to seek my approval.  With my resolve still intact, I made my way to the bedroom door imagining it to be the portal between me and the rest of my life.  My husband stirred with the noise of  my opening the latch the and it was then I heard his muffled words,

"Come back to bed so I can make you a cup of tea".

"Alright then", was my well practised reply,"if you are sure you don't mind"

Whatever I am, be it lover of my family, lover of my husband or just a lover of tea,  I have always endeavoured, like Abraham Lincoln suggests "to be a good one".  I have tried to do the right thing and in this instance I am sure of one thing and one thing only, I am definitely good at trying again and again and again.

Passionate beliefs

I am told to believe in something passionately is the way in which to make it a reality and conceptualising in this way has been the driving force for my continued attempts to piece our lives back together. While frequently advised to throw the bankruptcy towel into the arena by those without the constitution for tumultuous seas, I have refused to allow lending sharks to pick over the bones HBOS have already stripped bare because,

• I believe passionately financial institutions should not lend residential mortgage   money to those with £446,000 outstanding on credit cards.
• I believe passionately banks should not advance £3,500,000 in commercial mortgages without evidence of taxable income and assets.
• I believe passionately it is negligent for lenders to ask wive's to sign away a family home to support a husband's business without illustrating how they have assessed payment affordability.
• I believe passionately it is irresponsible for a bank to instruct the conveyance of a family home without giving a wife independent advice.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for a creditor to lay siege to a woman and her children in her home, until such time as the police arrive, with sub machine guns, wearing riot gear, to remove them.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any family to be hounded by phone and threatened by debt collection agencies who pretend they don't know the financial position of the vulnerable despite hundreds of letters to the contrary.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £17,000 from the parents of his children's school friends.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £65,000 from his and his wife's family.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to secure the equity in his step daughter's and grand children's home against a business debt.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to sign documents which will give  unpaid tradesmen the authoriy to take away gifts made to his wife from her parents.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to tell anyone he can afford to  pay them when he does not know how he will achieve this.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man under any circumstances to keep all of the above from his wife with lies.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to go to any lengths to avoid taking responsibilities for his actions and instead choosing to blame others.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to lead his whole family to the edge of a financial precipice without asking them if they wish to go there.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to pretend he has his difficulties in hand in order to avoid losing face.

But I also believe passionately,

•  No man should be hounded by creditors to the point of suicide.
• No man should lose his brother (age 44) and his mother (age 67) to Motor Neurone Disease three weeks apart. 

 And above all else I believe passionately

• No child should be forced to grow up without a father as consequence of having financial difficulties.

It is for these reasons I am still here and for these reasons I continue to fight back.... passionately.

Knock, knock, who's there?

I will spend all of today day in disguise and there will be no room for self pity or tears because today I have secured the role of a stereo-typical middle class mother of three children who go to independent school.

My character lives in an enormous, shabby chic fifteenth century manor house overlooking a village green. She takes a pride in her appearance and plays an active part in the local community.  Her two grown up daughters from her first marriage, who live locally, have provided her with four grandchildren and two step grandchildren and this extended family gives her many opportunities to socialise over a meal which she is happy to cook.  She regularly serves up on a table that started its life in the board room of her father but now has many happy family memories associated with it.

An aging mother, with whom she has a good relationship, lives in the nearby market town. My character visits regularly, taking her out for day trips whenever she can find  time.  She has a 4x4 parked on the extensive gravel drive and people usually talk to her wherever she goes because she is always smiling. She has many friends and is reputed to be a good and caring listener who will always find time to help a friend in need.  It is because of the personable way she has with people she was the perfect recruit for Chairman of the Friends of her children's prep school and the Headmaster was delighted to welcome her on board.

It is the day of the  Friends fund raising fashion show and there is an air of nervous excitement amongst the new committee members as the time approaches for the doors to open. The role I am playing today will not be too difficult because I have, in recent years, rehearsed it well. However these days stage fright haunts me.  I am told this is only natural and certainly not unexpected for someone playing a character part to such a large audience. However, I still worry I will be exposed as a fraud.

Only three short years ago I was not a fictitious character and this was my life and I believed it was bought and paid for.  Today I appear to enjoy a life like this but in reality it is no more. Now my children remain at private their schools because of the kindness of their headmaster’s who have secured them all bursaries.  The car parked in my drive has been moments away from repossession and the house we live in is rented while much of the furniture in it has been donated by family and friends.  Its lofty rooms are not just for my own use as sharing it with three lodgers is the only way in which I can make ends meet and my beautifully coiffured hairdo is a wig as I lost every hair on my head when the shock of our financial position came to light. My clothes have been carefully purchased from charity shops with pocket money gievn to me by my mother.

The friends I speak of have propped me up because I could barely stand from shock and the good relationship with my mother has developed in spite of my husband borrowing £55,000 from her that she could ill afford to lose but has.  My grown up children now make a contribution to the costs whenever I cook and the food I purchase comes from the M&S waste sale, at a fraction of the usual price, where my husband now works as a warehouseman.

A refugee from the past, I stand reborn in a new life which has been carefully reassembled from the tatters of the old. It may well appear I have made a seamless transition but, each and every day, I wonder how much longer I can remain undetected in this well practised charade. Surely someone will spot the devastation in my eyes while my face smiles and then I will be painfully outed.  What can I possibly say today if someone looks at me and asks, "Who's there?" when to me I am a 53 year old bald woman whose very core has been mangled by the shame of her husband’s insurmountable business debt.

I wait with trepidation how much longer will I get away with just playing me?

My debt shame

Today it was my intention to recount, from the beginning, the sorry tale of our suffering at the hands of HBOS. In the belief I had sufficiently distanced myself from our financial distress and regained the strength to put pen to paper I planned to inform the Financial Services Authority and the Financial Ombudsman Service precisely what the Bank of Scotland has done and the impact it has had on my family. I woke up determined to describe, in detail, how spotting us adrift with our three young children and fully aware we were fighting for our lives aboard a sinking ship, they ignored all government guidelines and instead chose to completely remove the wind from our sails, strip us of any chance of recovery and force us onto the rocks where their appointed debt collector now persecutes us for sport.

It was my intention to explain that a former career in the financial services industry did not prepare me for the pain a "too big to fail" giant was prepared to inflict. I wanted to make sure the Financial Ombudsman Service knew I had been rendered powerless against a banking machine which was deaf to my proposals and what is more, intent on wrecking the financial future of my whole family.  I believed it should be common knowledge the Bank of Scotland was unhindered by their own codes of conduct for customers in financial distress and intent on serving their own ends regardless of the cost to my family.

I was sure I could go back to the beginning and illustrate articulately and accurately how the Bank of Scotland chose to multiply our financial difficulties ten times over and, after stripping us bare, proceeded to persecute us for being unable to reimburse them. Sadly I was unable to do any of this.
Instead, all I could do today was cry.

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International Women's Day

Thirty-eighth American vice president Hubert Horatio Humphrey once said, "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously" and despite many years of women's the best efforts to attain both, today, on International Woman's Day, I continue to battle with HBOS without the benefit of either. 

Working my way up in the UK's financial service industry throughout the 80's and 90's, it did not occur to me that one day my gender would not only make me invisible but also prohibit me from being heard. Now, some twenty years later, as a result of my extensive communications with HBOS, it has become uncomfortably clear that as a married women, I should not have expected to enjoy the same right to information about the status of my residential mortgage as my husband. Not knowing this has cost me my home, my health and my financial future.

Furthermore this"too big to fail" banking giant Halifax Bank of Scotland is far from coy about it's anti-female stance and instead are more than happy to put, in writing, they have no obligation to discuss arrears on joint borrowings, debt advice and court proceedings with me as long they have discussed them with my husband. So, ladies be warned, this means your lenders will effectively support your husbands if they choose to keep financial difficulties from you  and you could, like me, find the banks are forcing a sale on your homes without giving you the opportunity to find out why they would wish to do so in the first place.

According to the Bank of Scotland's complaints department, they are under no contractual obligation to discuss any aspect of a mortgage with all the named parties on the loan and although government initiatives have publicly urged them to give people in difficulties debt counselling before legal action is taken, this is merely a guideline which a lender may, or may not, chose to abide by. Nothing more. In short HBOS do not consider it their role to include all parties to a mortgage in discussions concerning forcibly repossessing a family home and no regulator has the power to make them. Nor will banks who chose to flaunt regulatory codes and guideslines be penalised.

Sadly, I only became aware of these facts once the repossession process had already begun. It was only then that I discovered my husband had been unable to bring himself to divulge the unpalatable truth about our financial situation to anyone, let alone me. Remarkably, I could have remained in the dark even longer had I not become suspicious and beaten him to the post one day only to discover his property business had failed, our business bank had gone into administration, the bank of |Scotland were taking us to court  to repossess and, to my absolute horror, we were £27,000 and eight months in arrears. Little more than two weeks later a possession order was granted to HBOS for our lovingly restored sixteenth century tithe barn and home of ten years and there was nothing I could do about it.

However, it didn't stop me trying.

Desperate to address the problem the moment I became aware of our position, I soon secured a tenant to cover the interest payments on mortgage. However, the Bank of Scotland refused to allow me to save my home with rental income on grounds it was too late. Instead they insisted I accepted a forced sale offer of well below market value and in doing so turned our sizable £27,000 into a staggering mortgage shortfall of £217,000. Now I am reliably informed by their solicitor I must conjure the shortfall from out of thin air and, despite numerous letters from the Citizen's Advice Bureau (CAB) explaining we are financially finished, (a situation HBOS were wholly aware of well before they issued proceedings) my instructions are to produce a solution within seven days.

Outraged at the callous and unprofessional attitude of this calculated example of sexist banking avarice, it beggars belief the untouchable Bank of Scotland are also happy to state that married women do not count when it comes to providing them with information and making decisions about their homes when their mortgage accounts get into difficulties. 

I still strongly suspect I could have rescued my home had I been given the opportunity, but as a married woman, I was denied the chance to try. Now, nearly two and a half years on, the Bank of Scotland are more than happy to grant me equal rights to my joint and severally liable shortfall but remain deaf and blind to the fact that by failing to keep me informed, it was they who created the shortfall in the first place. It for this reason I say to each and every banksters who played a pivotal role in the financial downfall of both myself and no doubt numerous other married women, 

"How will you be marking International Women's Day?" because, I for one, plan to mark it by fighting back!