Private Banking for All

I have just been contacted by a young employee of a certain high street bank.

'Do you earn over £100,000 pounds?' was how this fresh-voiced child began.

'None of your business,' I said.

'Right, uh, yes, well, do you have £50,000 to invest?'

I like to be consistent in my responses, with a slight variation of tone to indicate a growing irritation.

'Oh, OK,' he said breathlessly. 'It's just that if you do, you may qualify for our Private Banking service. We provide an exclusive service to High Network (sic) Individuals such as your-' He broke off from his script, remembering I hadn't confirmed my membership of such a giddily wealthy community. 'Um, well, it's an exclusive service,' he tailed off.

'£50,000? That's your threshold?'

'Yes,' he said eagerly. 'Or something close to that, anyway.'

Now I'm well aware that not everyone has £50,000 savings. But millions do, in this country alone. Exclusive? What the hell do these high street banks think they're playing at?

City Breeding

The City, as I’ve already observed, belongs to the young. It is also increasingly the preserve of the Etonian. I suppose this is just a return to the good old days, but it is striking how the barrow boys of the eighties and the classless nerds of the nineties are being replaced in the sandwich queues by the kind of children you would expect to see tumbling out of a King’s Road nightclub in the company of a girl named Allegra. The accents are getting podgier, the haircuts floppier. Why it is that the investment banks are turning once more to the upper classes, I don’t know, but as someone who has grown up more or less on the cusp of public schooldom I find it mildly distressing.

Mind you, their fathers probably own half the Home Counties. I should really strike up conversation with a few of them over roast beef & trimmings in Fuzzy’s Grub. A little sucking up to the younger generation never did a private banker any harm.

Everyone's in a foul mood in the office today. There is a general suspicion that someone on high isn't telling us something.

A band of foot-and-mouth now lies between here and home.

None of the clients I need to speak to are answering the phone. On holiday, of course. Abroad. Of course.

Dreadful bloody weather.

I am feeling distinctly subprime.

Mrs X on the Rampage

An extraordinary evening.

By chance, I worked late yesterday and so happened to be in the office at nine o'clock when my phone rang and a policeman asked to speak to me. He had been given my number by Mrs X.

It turned out that Mrs X had been celebrating her last evening in London with an old school friend, a celebration that involved several stiff drinks in Covent Garden. At some point, the school friend took her leave, and it was only after she had gone that Mrs X discovered she had lost her handbag. Whether it had been stolen, as she believed, or merely misplaced in a moment of tipsiness, couldn't be established. But the end result was not pretty.

It seems Mrs X has, when in her cups, a wild side of which I have thus far been entirely ignorant. The good lady is in her 70s, yet managed to launch a robust attack on the establishment in which she had passed the greater part of evening. When they dared to point out that a sizeable bill remained unpaid, she became positively Visigothian. The authorities were summoned, and I was named as her champion.

Needless to say, I hurried over to the establishment in question, to find Mrs X swaying contentedly in the corner, assuring the police officers that the bill need not be cause for concern. 'I have a fortune tucked away in Singapore, you know,' she was earnestly telling them when I arrived.

I was effusively greeted as "my precious bank manager". Then she was back on that Singapore fortune.

It took all of my considerable social dexterity to shut her up. I paid the bill, expressed our joint appreciation to the police and the various serving staff, and then hurried her out of there.

Dear Mrs X, sozzled as she was, couldn't remember at which hotel she was staying. I tried ringing a few likely candidates, but none of them recognized her name. Eventually, there was nothing for it but to check her in somewhere else. By the time we had cancelled her credit cards and found an express supermarket that could provide her with toothbrush, face cream and a couple of other items I won't mention, it was getting on for 11 o'clock.

I escorted her back to the hotel and bade her goodnight. 'What about a nightcap?' she cheerfully suggested.

I explained about last trains and hurried away, hoping the staff would be good enough to make sure she found her room.

This morning I was back there, first thing. Mrs X was having breakfast in the dining room, bolt upright, bright as anything. 'I don't know why you brought me here,' she chided gently. 'I'm staying at ---.'

Her handbag, I'm glad to say, turned up inside one of the shopping bags her schoolfriend carried off last night.

I suspect I shall have to charge the hotel and bar bills to our expense account. So it seems, despite her generosity in taking me to lunch, Mrs X. has done rather well out of the bank this week.