Well, I called it right. The election, that is. I’d rather not have but then I remembered Duke’s advice from the cartoon strip Doonesbury: “Always bet on the cornered rat.” OK, this wouldn’t have worked in 2020 but it is still generally sound advice.
That didn’t stop the day from being one of sick despair. It is a feeling many of us have become familiar with since 2016, but it doesn’t make it any better. I’d told my editor the day before that because I was going to stay up for the night, one way or another I wasn’t going to be in a fit state to file on Wednesday, and I wasn’t.
After a point, I got bored on the Wednesday of global politics and thought it might be a good idea to look at my bank balance. To recap: a few weeks ago I had a meaningful conversation with the bailiffs about paying off my council tax bill, followed by an equally meaningful conversation with the financial company that looks after what we may ruefully call my pension, and got the latter company to transfer a large chunk of that into my bank account, which I would then use to pay the former. I was told it would take 15 working days for them to get round to this, and the bailiffs kindly agreed to this timescale, even though it was six days after the date they had first insisted on.
And so, 15 working days later, which also happened to be the day after the US election, I received a text from the bailiffs reminding me that they hadn’t forgotten our deal. They didn’t add an emoji of a horse’s head in my bed, but then they didn’t have to. Exhausted, hungover, and wildly depressed, I logged in to my bank account hourly. Nothing to see there: and, as usual, less than nothing, if we’re being mathematical about it. The overdraft remained stubbornly unmoved.
By about 3pm I realised this was going to be the status quo for the rest of the day and rang the pensions company to ask them what was going on. After being held in a queue for a shorter time than I was expecting, I managed to get through to one of the 12-year-olds who answer their phones.
“Hello, you owe me some money,” I said. (Not my exact words. I merely give you the gist.)
“Ah,” said the child on the other end of the phone. “Let me put you on hold for a minute.”
There then followed, for me, a time for reflection. I had plenty of time, and during it I contemplated the folly of the world, the difficulty of achieving serenity within it and, to borrow Beckett’s magnificent phrase, the wet Saturday afternoon of my conception.
Eventually it turned out that, what with one thing and another, the pensions company had, unilaterally and without bothering to inform me, decided that they’d be paying me my own money 20 working days after I’d asked for it, rather than the original 15 agreed upon.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, there has been an unprecedented number of customers taking money from their accounts lately.”
“Why?” I asked again.
“Because of the Budget.”
At this point I became a little agitated. I expressed the notion that a financial services company that is caught on the hop by the fact that a Budget is taking place is perhaps not operating at the peak of its potential.
“I mean, even I knew there was a Budget coming,” I said, “and I’m not a respected financial services institution.” (I use the term “respected” loosely. The company, last time I checked, rarely troubles the upper reaches of the customer satisfaction tables when it comes to pensions. But the last time I checked was some years ago. They might have pulled their finger out since then, although the evidence is not compelling.)
In the end I asked to speak to someone more senior, and this time a 15-year-old spoke to me. I explained that this wasn’t good enough and that the bailiffs who were waiting for this money, not to mention my brother, from whom I’d borrowed £600 as an emergency stopgap, were not going to be thrilled by this latest development. The adolescent gave me more or less the same answer as his underling, although every sentence he used began with the word “so”, which after a while started to get a little irritating.
Well, we will see what happens. The bailiffs have given me until Monday, which is not quite far enough away for comfort; my brother, who has known me all his life, has said, effectively, “que será, será”, which is rather big of him. But if you want a distraction from being devastated by the result of the US election, I can’t recommend trying to get money out of your pension fund highly enough.
[See also: I am dissatisfied with every single aspect of life]
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This article appears in the 13 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump World