I know it’s not the usual saying,but it sums up my situation. One of the problems I have to solve, which I have mentioned only in passing, is that Julia has booked electricians to come in next week and rewire the house. Most people would get it properly cleared first but we are doing it differently…

The only thing I can think of doing is to rent storage space, so I went down to the place where we have our storage locker, intending to change my card details for the existing payment (as my card was replaced recently) and to arrange for short term rental of more space. As they checked my name on the computer everyone started looking shifty and muttering.

It seems I haven’t paid my bill since the beginning of the year.

Fortunately, due to lockdown, they hadn’t got round to selling the contents.

My debit card was renewed by the bank in January and at that time the payments stopped. They sent letters but they were all returned. They were sending them to the PO Box number I used to use when I was in the antiques trade. I’m sure we changed that years ago when they said they needed street addresses for fraud prevention purposes. Even so, it’s not a difficult job to trace the street address, as the Post Office won’t conceal it if asked.

They have never asked me for an email address.

All their phone calls went unanswered. I checked in case they were using an old mobile number, but they were using the home number.

So, despite me informing them by phone that my card number had changed (as I have been doing for the last ten years), they have no record. Despite the fact that the Post Office still occasionally delivers letters via the Box Number, none of their many letters got through. Despite me being constantly at home in lockdown all of their calls seem to have coincided with one of the few times we left the house. We both left the house four or five times during those months – when we went to pick shopping orders up from the supermarket. The rest of the time I was at home apart from blood tests, and JUlia was always at home while I was away.

Instead of clearing the house I’m now engaged in collecting things to prove my ID – the contract was ended when I stopped paying so I have to sign a new contract, which involves providing ID despite the fact they know perfectly well who I am.

If I say “pathetic” I will leave you to add the other words, the volume and the exclamation mark.

So, as the bank provided me with brilliant service yesterday, the storage place took it all back with their pathetic service and a receptionist who was trained by the NHS in the 1980s when harridans were in fashion and customer service was something that the British didn’t really see as necessary.

Meanwhile, I am having to wonder what I did in my past that was so bad I deserve all this misfortune.

Are you getting photographs with my posts? I haven’t had any for a couple of days. They are there as thumbnails, but they don’t seem to be showing when I view the post.