A little light is needed!

How satisfying it is to use words as weapons! With the obscenity of a director in banking receiving an annual bonus of £22m it is easy to feel short changed when a misbehaving bank offers you compensation of a tenner.

I wonder what a bank would offer a customer for the sum of £10. I suspect that no ‘service’ from a modern, thrusting, relentless bank would actually have so low a charge. But this sum is deemed sufficient to throw to a mewling customer who has the temerity to request information to explain the seemingly inept actions of its employees.

You can tell that the paragraph above is based on personal experience, can’t you? It’s the barely suppressed rage, expressing itself in vituperative verbosity. With my usual style that is a nice judgement to make! So, I have sent off my missives of . . . – add your own word which alliterates with ‘missives’ and is nasty. The clock is ticking. Having sent off three letters to a Chief Clerk, a Manager and an Area Director, I will be interested to see who, if anyone, responds. And how quickly. And how much. Especially how much!

I would have thought that a brief five lines by a bank as a response to four questions asked by customer shows contempt. If that customer has shown a certain tenacity in demanding a well reasoned and full explanation for apparent mistakes, it would be foolish to dismiss the concerns with meaningless weasel words. But Banks are not bound by the normal concerns of your average Joe. We don’t have bonuses of £22m – which just goes to show how little our concerns should be regarded. One could see a wonderfully circular argument develop here which would delight Joseph Heller!

Enough. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I will await the replies of my correspondents before dipping my pen in the vitriol of justified outrage.

If your house has an open plan living room which is ‘L’ shaped and lighted by three modern style chandeliers which each have five candle-like light bulbs in them; what is the likelihood, if they are all inserted at the same time and they are all new, of them all stopping at the same time?

Don’t hold your breath. That was not one of those questions like, “How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer? “Bicycle.”

The makers of light bulbs can do what they want to, when you think about it. Who actually times how long their bulbs last? There are sad people in the world; but that sad? And another thing, when do you replace light bulbs? No, no, forget the “bicycle” thing. I mean in real life.

There are some people who replace at once, because they know that they have a supply of the correct wattage bulbs in a location that they are sure of. The rest of the population has a suspicion that they might have some bulbs somewhere, but God alone knows where they might be.

My musings are occasioned by the fact that one of the bulbs in one of the chandeliers has blown and it has not been replaced for two days. Even as I sit here underneath its lack of light, I prefer to write about it rather than replace it. Such a small action, so little inclination to do anything about it.

Perhaps something for tomorrow so that I can complete a task and get the work element of the day over and done with!

It’s a hard life.