Homes and Gardens

 

Knowing “a house is made of walls and beams” while “a home is made with love and dreams”, I guarantee our sixteenth century grade two listed barn most definitely fell into the latter.  From the moment we saw its derelict shell towering over unobstructed views of the countryside towards the river Severn, we knew it would make the perfect family home.

Over a ten year period we were diligent in our search for reclaimed materials to maintain its character and used locally grown green oak to restore its magnificent vaulted ceiling complete with mistral’s gallery.  With an enormous log burner at its heart to ensure our family was always warm, this lovingly crafted restoration project was my husband’s pride and joy and regularly left visitors gasping at both its beauty and location.

As my children grew old enough to enjoy their surroundings, they discovered our home made a wonderful back drop to the freedom that two acres of land and an abundance of local friends afforded them.  I, in turn, was delighted to finally have a home from which we could put down roots which also allowed us to bring up and school our children in a village community.  Being a developer’s wife had meant numerous house moves throughout the years as a means of growing my husband’s business so I happily embraced a more settled outlook and threw myself wholeheartedly into country life. Quickly making many friends led to our home becoming the venue for many wonderful gatherings and  it was often filled with the camaraderie and laughter of our guests.  

In October 2008 my perspective completely changed.

Discovering we were to be faced with repossession, I soon realised everything I had once considered my own fell into two categories neither of which had anything to do with whether one's property is merely a house or a wonderful family home. A threat of this nature instantly dictates that everything must be viewed either as items against which a mortgage is secured or items against which a mortgage is not. 

As the forced sale of our home gathered momentum, repossession became HBOS’s “hangman’s noose” in the eevnt we be tempted not to co-operate.  During this period I watched my husband carefully strip each and every mortgage free fixture from our home in the hope the harvested items could be sold or reused for our families benefit.  When it came to dismantling our children's enormous wooden climbing frame (which he had designed and built in our field) he endured the sub zero temperatures of one of the coldest Januarys on record. In spite of the adverse weather conditions he carefully removed each and every part of this structure and, piece by piece, transported it to our newly rented home. 

For nearly three years the pile of wooden planks representing all that remained of our beautiful sixteenth century masterpiece was left discarded and ignored. Grass and weeds grew up amongst what appeared to be nothing of value and our children all but forgot about their much loved climbing frame's very existence. Believing its presence was only an unpleasant reminder of “old oak beams and thwarted dreams” I accepted it was unlikely ever to be resurrected again.  

However this week, to the astonishment and delight of everyone, my husband announced his intention was to build a tree house. With a spring in his step and  a renewed vigour I have not witnessed in some time; he resurrected and transformed the remnants of our old climbing frame. Three full days and nearly four hundred screws later it has become a formidable play structure in the enormous sycamore tree at the bottom of our garden and all three of our children have been in excited attendance for every step of its construction. Having now completed this project I believe my husband has not only created another masterpiece but has also laid one last ghost to rest. 

I am told there is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury and the forced sale of our home along with the simultaneous demise of our business, our livelihood and our financial future is most definitely an injury from which recovery has proved extremely difficult. Nevertheless, a tree house rising from the ashes of our lost life has been a very therapeutic start on the road to recovery for us all.

 

Lucky Devils

While sat at my computer in our rented home enjoying the comfort of our Aga heated kitchen I was asked by my twelve year daughter if our family is lucky. It would have been wholly inaccurate to reply with anything but,“Yes”. However, I am in no doubt that when it comes to home repossession and our subsequent persecution at the hands of the too big to fail banking giant Lloyds/HBOS, there are a substantial number of individuals whose luck amounts to far in excess of mine.

For example;

· Sir Tom Hunter, the Ayrshire entrepreneur, appears to have had millions written off by HBOS throughout 2008/9 at precisely the same time as I was being told letting my home to a tenant was no solution to an arrears problem of (eight months) amounting to £27,000.

· Sir David Murray is said to have lost only 78% of his 720 million when in 2009 the recession hit his business Murray Holdings but HBOS saw fit to forgive 759 million of his company’s unrecoverable debt. As luck would have it he was still worth an estimated 144 million because of this write off whereas I was forced to our assets at a vastly reduced price and have been left with a bill of £217,000.

·Remo Dipre had his share holding completely wiped out when the housing market took a nosedive in 2008/9 and left his company Gladedale with 78 million in losses.  Lucky Dipre benefited from a Lloyds write off 533 million pounds at the time and, unlike me,  there is no sign of him being hounded for the shortfall.

·David Sutherland, also in the housing development market, was another beneficiary of HBOS debt forgiveness in 2009. While was being taken to court to force me to sell because the housing crash had and wiped out my husbands livelihood, his Scottish based company, Tulloch homes, got out of trouble by way of HBOs granting a debt reduction of 68 million pounds.


During these early days of the banking crisis, HBOS’s Chief Executive Peter Cummings was said to have been writing off debt to the tune of 37 million pounds just days before Lloyd's TSB was persuaded to take the HBOS helm. However, this convert policy for debt forgiveness was exclusively for HBOS's lucky corporate and Irish friends while for me, two and half years down the line, the company line remains completely compassionless.

At the time The Irish Times reported, "People want to pay their debts but simply cannot afford to under the terms that were originally agreed" and as a result HBOS will be working with Irish people in these circumstances and writing off shortfalls for those in trouble in both the buy to let market and the residential sector.

Lucky them!

Sadly there is to be no such luck for me as, according to the Financial Ombudsman Service, Lloyds banking Group and the infamous HBOS, a mortgage shortfall write off will remain impossibly out of reach for me because of our contractual obligations. Furthermore I am  advised I will never to be considered for debt forgiveness regardless of how the shortfall came about or the direness of our financial circumstances.

As this is clearly a very unlucky situation for me, it begs me to ask;

· What kind of mortgages did these lucky individuals have if they were not contractual?

· What extenuating circumstances qualified them (and not me) for HBOS mortgage shortfall write offs?

And,

· How the devil can I qualify for similar favours?

I am told "happiness consists more in the small pleasures of every day life that occur, than in the major events of good fortune" but had I enjoyed the good fortunes of the favoured few debt forgiveness would have rescued me from the life sentence of HBOS persecution that I am currently serving when instead, it is the Devil and not happiness who remains in the everyday fabric of my life's detail.

This is nothing short of hugely unfair...

Stamp of disapproval

In 1928 Josiah Charles Stamp, former President of the Bank of England said,“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. If you want to continue to be slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit. “It seems to me, not only have Stamp’s observations gone unheeded for nearly a century but the enslavement he talks of has been globally embraced while governments have merely stood by and applauded. 

After reading Ian Fraser’s recent blogs along with Barry Ritholt’s article in the Big Picture which begins, “The US banking sector is not healthy” I can imagine Josiah Stamp saying, “Tell me something I don’t know.” Ritholt tells us the US government failed to “repair what ailed our financial institutions.  Indeed, pouring billions into nearly identical management teams that mismanaged the risk, over-leveraged exposure, and drove banks off the cliff in the first place was an invitation for another crisis” and as far I can see our own government has done no different.

While contemplating my response to the Financial Ombudsman's service and the implications of their HBOS eighteen month respite offer, I am left wondering how ongoing banking mismanagement will impact on my future if  I capitulate with regard to my belief the shortfall I have acquired is not of my making and instead sign an agreement for the sake of some much needed and immediate peace and quiet.  Furthermore, I seems evident the chances of  a write off my mortgage shortfall on compassionate grounds are set to reduce while a “deny, deny, deny” culture persists and the true levels of flawed lending continue to prop up the balance sheets to provide lucrative asset reaping bonuses for those who are eliglible?

HBOS and Lloyds’ refusal to write off my unrecoverable debt from their lending book only provides further evidence the smoke and mirrors culture within banking is alive, well and perpetuating the aforementioned sleight of hand which has led to economic enslavement. I cannot help but feel this leaves me a lifetime of enslavement to HBOS’s harassment to look forward to over a mortgage shortfall they chose to create and one I have no hope of ever being able to repay.

Josiah Charles Stamp also said, “It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities” and as I continue to wait  for Antonio Horta Osorio’s reply to my letter and ponder my response to the Financial Ombudsman’s Service, I wonder if anyone at HBOS and Lloyds are even aware of the 1st Baron Stamp or his words.

Off Limits

I have heard it said that limitations live only in our minds and if we use our imaginations, the possibilities become limitless. This point was illustrated to perfection today by my ten year old son when expressing, yet again, his desire to keep chickens.  On this occasion he did not attempt to seek permission to own a chicken but merely stoked a lively discussion as to how many chickens would be required to fulfil his ambition to keep our family in eggs.  Changing tack like this has smoothly shifted the debate from if to when he can have chickens and has made me wonder if taking a leaf out of his book in my dealings with Lloyds and HBOS’s might render me greater success.

Over the last week I have;

·        Received another demand from Lloyds debt collectors

·        Received no reply from Antonio Horta Osorio to my original letter of 4 August

·        Received no reply from Antonio Horta Osorio to my ”chase up” letter of 19 August

This leaves the Irish and the Elite continuing to enjoy preferential treatment for mortgage shortfall forgiveness and me continuing to suffer in purgatory purely because I live in England and do not have a high enough profile to be heard.

I have, however, received another letter this week. The Financial Ombudsman has given me two remarkably good but unexplained piece of news.

The henchwoman at Merrels Ede Solicitors has been called off as a direct result of my compliant and HBOS have, at last, agreed “not to pursue” for the time being, namely eighteen months.  This has come as a complete surprise to me because, in their last letter, my caseworker informed me they could not proceed without seeking agreement from HBOS to investigate my complaint leaving me under the impression the Financial Ombudsman's Service was about to prove completely toothless yet again.

So where does this leave me now?

It leaves me with eighteen months of limitless possibilities.  I don’t know what they are yet but it will be a relief to be able to put my case to whomever I wish without continually having to deal with the bully boy and brow beating tactics of HBOS’s Rottweiler, Merrils Ede solicitor’s. It also leaves me some unencumbered time to consider the merits of a ten year old boy keeping chickens.

Tears and Fears

It is said, "Tears are the words the heart cannot express" but after three long years in my role of one woman debt fighter, tears alone could no longer express the way I felt about the position I found myself in. Consumed with a passion to keep my family whole while covertly facing hundreds of thousands of pounds of my husbands business debt regularly left me void of a means with which to express my grief, my fear and my frustration. When I started my blog, I had no ingenious plan for what I would write nor had I a clearly defined objective.  I was purely driven by an over whelming desire to express words from the heart in a way which had proved impossible to relay by any other method.  

As the months passed, my writing began to focus on the trials and tribulations of living in the aftermath of our outstanding financial obligations and the impact it had on every facet of my life. Publishing my posts in the public domain, although daunting at first, has been a wholly uplifting experience with moments of pure glee if someone new signs up “to follow” or something I have written evokes a comment. I have even received valuable snippets of information aiding my cause and these small votes of confidence have not only supported my resolve but also encouraged me to persevere with my battle. For this I am truly grateful.  

Knowing obstacles are only observed by those who take their eyes off the goal, writing about my desire to keep my family together has kept this vital objective firmly fixed in my sights while blogging about issues with our creditors has not only helped me remain focused on the tasks ahead but aided my understanding that being happy does not mean life is perfect. It simply means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections. However, blogging about the effects of debt on my marriage has been completely different.

Constructing sentences which describe how I feel has been an outlet for a grief I have been unable to express even with tears. My reaction to my husband's deceit has been the mother of all elephants in our room for the past three years and blogging about our lives together has helped create a picture of clarity for me while enjoying the observational detachment of a writer.  It has also enabled me to realise that, as well as battling the banks and refusing to allow my children’s lives to be contaminated by debt, I have also been fighting to save my marriage. However, what I have been completely unaware of is, my husband now knows this because he too has been reading my posts and, just as my writing has helped with so many other aspects of my life, I believe reading my words from the heart have done him, and us, nothing but good.

I believe one should never give up on something which is impossible to go a whole day without thinking about. This has certainly proved the case for me with respect to my children, my marriage and my writing and, because of the immense challenges I now have to face on a daily basis, I have also discovered, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot because in your soul there are infinitely more precious things that cannot be taken from you”. Because of my blog and in spite of the ongoing persecution I am still subject to from Halifax Bank Of Scotland and Lloyds TSB Banking Group, I now find, not only do I have an elephant free marriage, but I also have something infinitely more precious.

The riches I now enjoy can never be stolen.

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.

Despicable Me

Buddha said, “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle yet the life of this candle will not be shortened”, and by the same token, “happiness never decreases by being shared”.  It saddens me to hear these words because although I believe them to be true, it is not how married life is for me.

My husband’s monotones seep into every crevice of our lives and his overall lack of enthusiasm is only punctuated by occasional self-amusement at a play on words that comes to mind from listening, but not engaging, in the conversation of others.  Perfectly able to speak with animation about a new piece of information he has acquired, he sees no need to offer even a hint of a smile when conversing in other ways.  To him it is excessive and unnecessary to crease his dead pan facade as he either enters a room or sees a familiar face across a crowd, even when it’s me.

My daughter, now almost thirteen, calls him “Daddy glum face” as she teases him about his expressionless demeanour.  He replies, without offence, that it would be uncomfortable if he smiled any more than he already does and, as he sits blanked faced throughout every meal, every car journey and what seems like every moment, I regularly wonder how many hours of silence I have spent with him to date and consider, with sadness, how many more I still have to come.

“Move on,” I tell myself in moments of desperation only to have my resolve falter at the price my children will pay for my inability to cope with the man they love.

“Get help”, say my friends when I tell them, in tears, about his mood swings of indifference to rage, only to find I shrink from the task of broaching the subject with him, let alone finding the money to fund it.

“Keep trying,” is the voice that persists, in spite of his wagging finger declaring the fault lies entirely with me. For this is a broken man I speak of who once was my closest friend in a time gone by, before bereavement, before debt and before financial despair. 

They say that sometimes being a friend means knowing when to exercise the art of timing, with a time for silence, a time to let go and a time to leave well alone for people to hurl themselves at their own destiny.

·        I have been silent while he built a business on what proved to be foundations of sand

·        I have let go so he could seek his own destiny and achieve great things in his own right 

However, it is also said a friend should be prepared to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.

“But how” I ask, “do you pick up a man in pieces when he believes himself to be whole with no part of the problem lieing with him?”

I end today knowing there is no delight for me in a life unshared and sadly, all too often these days it is my computer, not my husband, that is my closest friend.