Lunching and Banking

I had a rather good weekend. I did very little on Saturday. I only left the house to go and visit Stella in Mount Clear. Otherwise I just pottered around at home.

I went to Daylesford on Sunday, for lunch at Gillie's house with Irene, Chris and John. It's quite some time since we last met - not really Covid related but because each of us has been away, consecutively. It was a good catch up. And good food. Irene made a quince pie for dessert. I don't recall ever having eaten actual quinces before. Quince paste, quince jelly, yes. Actual quinces, no. They were very tasty. As were the smoked salmon we had for starters and the roast lamb we had for mains.

Yesterday was not as much fun. Stella had managed to lock herself out of her online banking and it proved to be very difficult to get it all sorted out. We couldn't do it over the phone - the bank refused to talk to anyone apart from Stella and she can't see well enough to answer questions such as the number on her bank card or her account number. In desperation Stella, Lindsey and I went into the bank in town. The young man who helped us was very pleasant, very nice, as helpful as he possibly could be but we ran up against Tony as a ghostly joint account presence - which surprised us all, especially Stella. She had converted the account from a joint to a single account when he died. We assumed it was all sorted out and that he had been removed as an account holder. Certainly all correspondence was going to Stella alone. But no. And they wouldn't do some of the things that Stella wanted to do without his permission - which is hard to get when he's been dead for almost four years. We will have to find the death certificate and forcibly remove him. 

I know banks need to be careful about their customers' money and privacy but my heart always sinks when it is necessary to deal with them directly. The staff are always pleasant but bank processes are almost impossible to navigate successfully. How many times do you need to tell them that someone is dead? Or that the account holder is vision impaired and simply can't answer their questions without the help that the bank refuses to let them have?

It would have been a much more pleasant afternoon if we had had tea and cake and sorted through some of Stella's clothes at Hill House, which is what we had planned. Stella and I can do that on Thursday. Lindsey, alas, is otherwise engaged so will miss out.

I called in to see Jim yesterday, before the banking kerfuffle. He was happy. Someone had given him a triple chocolate Kit Kat - I assume the care home for Fathers' Day which was on Sunday. He was happily eating part of it when I arrived (It was a big Kit Kat, not the little ones that I buy for him and which he demolishes in one bite)