Old Friends and New Banks

We used to be so close to Kim and Paul. Our oldest children were inseparable. When they moved house they came to stay with us for two weeks. But their new home was 40 minutes away and so we drifted apart.

I could tell just how far apart from the fact that Kim rang on my phone rather than Tamsin’s. Having two lines means you can tell when someone has had to look you up in the phone book…

It turned out that Kim wanted to know about childminding – we used to do this in the days when we were desperate for any kind of income. But when OFSTED got involved the paperwork became ridiculous and we joined the hundreds who gave up (which shows you how counter-productive over-regulation can be).

Anyway it turned out that Kim was going back to work.

“Really, what are you going to do?”

She was going to be a part-time teacher.

“Fantastic. I’m always on the look out for teachers for my little part-time business. D’you remember that?”

She had some garbled memory of gas prices but they didn’t have gas where they lived so it would be no good for them.

“No, no,” I said. “That’s not how it works at all. Actually you could do me a great favour: I have a little thing I say to six people a day. It takes precisely one minute and 45 seconds and if you wouldn’t mind, you could be my first today.”

And so I told Kim all about it – and now I’ve got to tell Paul. Besides it will be good to catch up.

So that was one – and after that I called in at our breakfast meeting venue to pay the bill l and asked the receptionist: “Do you know what we do here once a week?”

So I told her and she’s got a DVD – and since her colleague listened too, that counts as three in all.

Then into Ipswich to the dentist (he gave me a schedule of possible treatments culminating in a full implant costing £2,000!)

And since I had all of today’s 50 cards to give out as well as some left over from yesterday, I nipped into the town centre to get rid of them.

It’s amazing how quickly you can do this.

“Hi, you look successful. Are you?” I said to the guy in the suit. So he wants me to call his girlfriend who looks after the services.

And after I had given cards to all the people in the queues for the cash machines at the bank (here, have one of these. It’s about putting more money in the bank) I thought “Why stop there. Why not go into the bank.”

Banks these days are much less formal. They seem to be full of people milling around as if they were in a market. However this time I made the mistake of approaching one of the staff. By the time I saw his little lapel badge it was too late.

But instead of asking me to leave, he said he was always interested in money.

“Well, I could tell you about it. It takes me one minute and 45 seconds. But if you haven’t got a customer who wants help in that time, I could give it a go. They can always interrupt us…”

And so I did – and I roped in his colleague to make up the six. The colleague listened with a glazed expression. But the first guy took a DVD and gave me his mobile number and email address.

We even had time for a joke about how infuriated the HSBC hierarchy get if you refer to it as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation – I feel an obligation to do this at every opportunity since my wife’s grandfather was a manager of the Midland Bank and he’s still spinning in his grave at the thought of the Chinese getting their hands on it…