The money issue - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day IV

My mother has always been the first to say that I am not especially good with money.  Frankly I think she is prone to exaggeration, and seems unable to forget the incident at Ascot many years ago when I, at approximately aged five, exclaimed that I had brought my 'paper money' to the races.  My parents, in their naivety, assumed I meant Monopoly money or chocolate coins, until I drew it from my tiny pocket and revealed that I had mysteriously acquired thirty pounds.  Rather than ascribing this to my youthful innocence, Mother appears to believe it was early evidence of a frivolous nature and poor financial acumen.

But I have never been one to spend more than I have, and to this day I refuse the use of a credit card lest I go mad with the power of it.  Indeed, up until recently, I had for many years been surviving off an overdraft, and while that meant I was never truly 'out of the red,' I was beginning to pay it back and it was fairly easily managed.

But devastation struck just a few months ago, when the fateful combination of alcohol and anxiety and overdraft collided and then collapsed in on itself like a neutron star of despair.

I'd gone for a night out in Reading with my 'new friend,' and was close to, but not too close too, my overdraft limit.  There was some horrible dancing and I had a small tussle with the DJ when he refused to play Come On Eileen on the grounds that it was 'too old,' but I survived the night and that puts me in good spirits.  When the morning came, and I woke with my mouth feeling much like the inside of a teapot, I carried out my usual tradition of searching for every item I took out with me, lest I was mugged but was just too arseholed to recall.  When the debit card failed to appear, I commenced an increasingly panic-stricken search until I was forced to accept its loss and call the bank to cancel it.

Unbeknownst to me, some cunt had cleared me out the night before and taken me over my limit.  So with each passing day my account was bleeding fivers to HS-fucking-BC, until it got to such a state that they cancelled my overdraft and finally deigned to get in touch.  Now I have a quite morbid aversion to phone calls and I only make them if it is an absolute necessity.  I also have a morbid aversion to serious banking and the combination of the two left me paralysed with fear.  So, instead of doing the reasonable thing and contacting them to untangle the mess, I pretended the problem did not exist and went about my business.  Two further letters they sent me went straight to the back of the drawer, unopened.

And then one day, after over a month of scraping together the last of a building society fund I had previously squirreled away, I received the most ominous-looking letter I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on.  I tried for a good half hour to peer through the envelope for clues using a torch, but when I failed to glean any legible information, I consigned myself to death and tore it open.  There, I was greeted with the imminent threat of bailiffs coming to take all my shitty goods if I failed to pay back the full £2000, forthwith.  Which of course, I could not do.

The anxiety by this time had grown stupendous, and I had about one hour's sleep and six panic attacks over the next few days.  I was given half a day off work after vomiting in the car park.  I had to dash out of the classroom after inexplicably bursting into a fit of hysterical laughter.  I was surviving off a diet of whiskey, and the only fruit and vegetables I got was the dry ginger mixer and slice of lime.

I eventually realised that I was never going to be able to make the phone call, so my options were limited to either launching myself in front of the Reading to Waterloo South West train service, or going to the branch in person.  I certainly gave the former serious consideration, because £2000 is a lot of money when you don't have it and there was little question of me asking my family for help.  But the train pulls in quite slowly, and I did fear I may just be dragged along the track for a while, and left maimed but alive and in devastating pain.  So I chain-smoked a good ten cigarettes, and turned up to the bank.

They were lovely.  It took half an hour with the staff and then a charming lady on the phone over in India, and it was sorted.  I set a doable payment plan and the bailiffs were called off and everything was fixed so quickly and simply I couldn't believe I hadn't done it before.  I imagine the stress of that period has taken a good year off my life, and it was sorted in one, easy morning.  While I cannot blame the episode entirely on alcohol, it certainly served to demonstrate what a terrible companion it can make with mental illness.  I might not have stopped drinking, but I have at least starting opening my letters from the bank.

I'm all about the paper money.