Blog of August 9, 2012

Now, back home in Bournemouth, with the rent on the flat and the payments on the car to find, and the high cost of living and nothing coming in, I needed money. And fast.

I had been sending query letters on The Perfect Partner to literary agents in London, and I started to apply for posts advertised in the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times. I went for jobs I thought I would enjoy doing, and tried to explain in my applications how a career in pulp and paper industry qualified me for a job selling tractors to countries in Africa. I wasn’t qualified for any of the jobs advertised, but I knew I had to keep turning over stones. Many of the advertisers didn’t bother to reply, and when they did it was a rejection. What with rejections from them, and rejections from literary agents, my life was one big rejection.

I had banked with Barclays for over twenty years and while I had an arrangement to get cash from a branch in Bournemouth, my account was still held in Welwyn Garden City, where we had lived previously. Over the years they had provided me with mortgages, loans for cars, etc and I had always kept my end of the bargain. I figured this should count for something and I called them and made an appointment. I was looking for my overdraft facility to be increased.

It was a drive of about two and a half hours to Welwyn Garden City. It was mostly motorway and the big Rover ate up the miles in fine style.

Whether or not my taking the manuscript I was working on with me was a good idea - and in hindsight  I probably made a complete ass of myself for doing it, I sat working on it as I waited to be seen. The smartly dressed young lady who came out to see me glanced at the pile of papers on the coffee table in the reception area, but made no mention of it. When she asked me in the privacy of their meeting room, to list my assets, I included the book I had written and the one I was currently writing. There was precious little else I could list, except my three year-old Rover car – on which they were providing the finance, and some used furniture in store in Orlando.

She knew as well as I did that my novels were not worth the paper they were written on until a publisher stumped up some cash, but she was kind enough not to say it. I also told her I had been applying for jobs in the Daily Telegraph and The Times. I could see I wasn’t convincing her, but on the strength of my long-standing relationship with the bank she agreed to extend my overdraft facility by the two and a half thousand pounds I was looking for. I thanked her and drove home.

Two days later I walked into an electrical components shop in Bournemouth to get myself a part for my computer. I handed over my Barclaycard. The machine declined it. The manager was serving me at the time and I ask him to swipe it again. Again the machine declined it. The manager walked off with the card saying he needed to make a phone call. After standing there like an idiot for fifteen minutes, I barged into his office and demanded to know if he was planning to keep me standing there all day. He informed me that the bank had instructed him to keep my card. He said he was sorry. I told him he wasn’t half as bloody sorry as I was and went home and phoned the bank. I let the young lady I had met two days ago have it with both barrels.

She said she was sorry.

“Yes, of course you are,” I said, laying the sarcasm down three inches thick. “I hope I can do the same for you some day. Have a nice day.” I banged the phone down.

This is an extract from my book WILL YOU TELL HER, OR SHALL I? A true story. My story. The story of how I lived with the ten-year terminal illness of my wife. Available on www.booksthepublishersmissed.com

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