The Form Fiasco
Having been ejected from the Ministry of Love for being a thoughtcriminal and actually doing things outside of living and breathing for the Ministry, I thought it would be a good idea to take a few days back home to clear my head and sort out this dratted PO Box form that I’ve been putting off. A few signatures, some proof of address and a cheque sent to the appropriate department of the Royal Mail, and everything should have been set up in a matter of days. I say should... If there’s one thing I’ve learnt recently, it’s that nothing is ever as easy as it should be.
Naturally, the first thing to go wrong was that I left my chequebook in London. ‘Ok’ I thought to myself, ‘I’ll just trek down into Ramsgate and get a cheque written out by the bank’. Simple. Well no, apparently not.
The first problem with any encounter in the region of England known as Thanet, is always one of communication. When I finally arrived at the bank and it got to my turn in the queue, I found I had to repeat the word C-H-E-Q-U-E over a number of times to the confused (and I must say, slightly scared) lady behind the counter. When she finally deciphered this strange, mystical, alien word, the look she gave me was as if I had just imparted upon her a word of the ancient tongue and I had myself just stepped out of the dark ages. When you consider this conversation was taking place in a bank in the middle of RAMSGATE, you will realise this is quite an achievement!
Anyway, a few deep breaths, and some difficult conversation later, and I managed to glean from the scared banking assistant that because cheques are slowly being phased out of British banking, Natwest (a part I note, of that ill-fated banking group RBS) no longer print cheques for customers. Clearly Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension funds are such that RBS are desperately trying to cut costs. Deep breathing Michael...
I left the bank dazed, confused, and somewhat worn out given the mental effort of trying to explain what a cheque was to the poor lady behind the counter. After a return journey of 45 minutes walking in the cold, I returned home to continue my ill-fated search for jobs, while trying to work out just how long I could leave sending off my forms before I needed the details to send to the publishers.
I arrived home then, to swiftly encounter my second problem: proof of address. Being the efficient, organised soul that I am, last time I was down I diligently spent a day sorting through all my old bank statements, destroying those I didn’t need and doing my bit for the planet by arranging with the bank to not send me any more statements by post. Big mistake. One thorough, and expletive-laden ransacking of my room later, and I find I have no proof of address from within the last three months, and the bank wouldn’t send me one that wouldn’t arrive till the next statement was due in nearly a month’s time. It was then that I learnt, to my dismay, that the cost for setting up a PO Box has gone up by nearly £25 – the cost of my train journey home!
Things weren’t looking good.
It was time then, to tackle the third hurdle of my form-fiasco, and collect the signatures I needed for my application. Another trip to Ramsgate, and I finally arrived at Alan’s flat. Fortunately, the incredibly practical and helpful Alan (the ‘G’ in ‘RG’), suggested I use his details for the address validation part of the form. This of course meant printing another form and filling it all out again. Did the printer have ink? Only just... but it was a close run thing.
I find myself then, at the stage where in all I need to do is return to London, write out a cheque, send it off, wait for the forms to come back to Ramsgate, collect the info and then use it for my application to the publishers.
How such a seemingly simple task could turn out to be such a complicated mess of events I don’t know, but if the past few weeks are anything to go by, things certainly aren’t going to get any easier...
Until next time.
MJR.