My wife and I have both been fighting an English cold. She had it first, then one goodnight kiss later, I was right there with her. The typical stuff: cough, aches, sore throat. Not fun. The benefit of the cold is that I am in the proper nasty mood to provide a recap of our progress with life in the UK.
I just realized this past week that over here 'moving home' doesn't mean going back to Chicago. When they say 'moving home' here, they simply mean moving to a new home or change of address. This is a relief since I simply felt the Brits knew too much about me since every website I logged on to asked me if I was moving home.
We still don't have a car. I don't even know why. The car guy claimed the Royal Mail packet of signed documents, credit card authorizations, etc. took 6 days to get to him. Uh huh. Royal Mail, by the way, is a shining star here. Most stuff is one day delivery to almost anywhere in the UK. He then was waiting for us to call and give him credit card details. I asked why he sent us a credit card authorization then. "Oh," he said, "right. There is one of those here, isn't there?" He then mumbled something unintelligble and the conversation soon ended. He was going to call last Friday and give an updated delivery date. But he didn't, which is good, because then I might expect that sort of response in the future and face further disappointment.
Our new bank, NatWest mostly came through. I have UK credit cards and debit cards with microchips in them. The missus, for some reason, only got the debit card and we had to re-convince NatWest she was my wife by filing out some more forms. This weekend we went Saturday afternoon into bustling Hereford to deposit a check in to the NatWest account so we could write checks or use the debit card. Unfortunately, it seems here the bank has to be open and you have to go inside to make a deposit. The ATMs allow cash withdrawel and topping up your pay-as-you-go phone but no deposit. I haven't talked to a bank teller in at least 15 years. I won't even know what to say.
Monday, July 21
Under the English Weather
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3 comments:
Your brother, Mike, used to be a bank teller and still works for a bank. That should count for something. I think you should treat your bank like your brother; call him up after his bedtime and try to get him pissed.
I guess pissed means something different there.
Imagine having trouble getting money into a bank. Seem like it should be harder to get it out. Good luck and hope you feel better!!
How about: "Everybody be cool - this is a robbery!"
I hear they really get a kick out of that.
I think here they call it buggery.
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