A very dry summer, and a few lies!….

I was reading one of my blogging friends’ posts and was reminded of an incident from childhood…..almost 60 years ago

…………………..as a child, on our grand-parents’ farm-land, there was a large clay-pit, no longer used, which filled-up every year with rainwater, and then slowly emptied through evaporation. There were two pools, one very small which dried quickly, and one which had never really completely dried before the rains returned, and no-one really knew how deep it was.

My brother and I were warned never to go near, but curiosity meant that one year we ventured down to the area, and discovered the small pond was almost completely-full of frogspawn. As it was a hot summer (weren’t they all?) it was evident that in a short period they would die from lack of water, so we decided to rescue them by transporting the jelly-masses by bucket-load and tipping them into the larger pond.

This proved to take several days for two young boys to achieve. Parents or grand-parents could not be advised of the project because of the prohibition on approaching the steep sides of the clay-pit, so we had to provide a number of plausible un-truths as to what we were doing each day!

Suffice to say, the project was completed successfully and we may have been responsible for the large number of frogs in the area later that year! Fortunately there were no houses in the immediate vicinity, and we were able to inform parents and grand-parents of the project. We felt good,about it (I think justifiably!), and had something to write in the inevitable essay which had to be prepared on our return to school..

….needless to say, the whole area is now covered  with houses and the incident forgotten, but it still remains fresh in the mind of a boy who never really grew up….

You can Bank on it!

Good lady and I were recently making decisions about some of our investments and had made an appointment with a specific advisor, at our bank (which we used for many years for personal and business banking). So as is our wont, we were there on time.

We were asked to take a seat along with some other people. In the intervening 25 minutes we waited, we were asked by three different members of staff if we were being looked-after, whilst it was obvious we were not!

Ultimately, we never saw our advisor, or received an apology, but another member of staff decided to deal with us, and did so with efficiency.

We thanked her and were heading off, when she informed us that we might receive a service call from the Head Office about how she had dealt with us. There was then what I can only describe as a plea that we commend her work, as, if we described it as less than excellent, she would be ‘marked-down’.

What an insult to the human dignity of an individual, just doing her job!

I assured her that if such a phone call materialised, I would refuse to make any comment about her as an individual, but would restrict my conversation to statements about the Bank in general.

While the senior people within the banks in general command (or should I say, demand) unbelievable salaries, I will hold them responsible for any deficiencies in the system….or maybe they would agree to a call centre where annoyed customers could vent their spleen about the way banks are run!