Port De Soller Mallorca

Port De Soller Mallorca
Sunset

Sunday 16 February 2014

What makes you feel worse than being told you're dying?

As you probably all know by now, the doctors told me I probably only had about a year to live. That was back in September last year. Like me, you probably can't imagine how you will feel in a situation like that and you go through a whole gamut of emotions as does your loved ones and in the end you feel all sorts of emotions particularly anger and frustration and so on but then you deal with it and get on with life.

Well today I learned that there is even something worse than being told you are going to die...... It's that moment when you realise that you have lost your frigging wallet which contains your whole life, practically. Bank debit and credit cards, cash, the lottery tickets you have just purchased and are probably winning ones at that, medical prescription cards, photos of the Grand Children, etc, driving licence paper and photo .....

Shit, shit and double shit your whole life starts to unravel especially as you suddenly realise also that for the first time in your life you actually have money in the bank and what happens if some 'clued up nefarious' person has gotten hold of it and manages to rob you of what you have before you get a chance to cancel all of the cards, shit, shit and double shit again.....

And of course the financial institutions while trying to be helpful, I suppose, add to your growing anger at yourself and frustration by being complete arseholes when trying to report it.

Both Barclays and Santander make you pay for the call MBNA you get a free call. You get through to the first two and it is an automated message put in your credit or debit card details, you ain't got them to hand, "say you don't have it". "I don't have it". "We'll put you through to an agent". And you are duly put through to a Barclays agent who is a foreigner, but only after we get a long automated message ....... I want to report my lost fucking card I don't want to hear you are regulated by the fucking financial services authority, and then when Mr non speaking first language English gets on, even when you spell your details phonetically, he still doesn't understand you ... As Penny would say (well maybe not a correct quote, but close enough) 'Holly Crap on a Fucking Cracker', what is wrong with you people, I want to report my lost bank card that I was stupid enough to be careless with, give me someone who can understand me and get rid of the automated crap WHEN REPORTING A LOST CARD, is it too much to ask for, I think not.

Santander was just as bad with the automated message, what is it with financial institutions, when you press the option to report a lost card SURELY this is an urgent call and you should be put through to a PERSON IMMEDIATELY and a person who speaks the same language as you, but maybe in my own anger directed at myself I am being too critical? MBNA, which I consider to be the worst of my credit cards at least give you a free number to phone and there is only a short message before being put through, no details no problem, a couple of security questions and you are done with a new card on the way, so that was better. Except the other three card providers say I can continue to use my pin number but MBNA issue a new one, ah well, can't have everything.

And then you phone the police in the vain hope that someone has found it and handed it in... You have to phone Essex Police cos your local station only works part time and Sunday is not a working day for the local South Ockendon station. Having said that, the young lady at Grays was most solicitous taking my details with the minimum of fuss and my number in case it was handed in, reminding me to call my bank and credit card companies to immediately cancel the cards, bless her.

Then, having done all that but still in panic mode: A loud knock on he door and standing on the door step is a smiling young Essex policeman with wallet in hand. Some lady has just handed it to home outside the local closed station..........

Can you check the contents: Credit and bank cards, check, in fact everything was there, including the new lottery tickets, except for the £40.00 in cash. To describe my relief as ecstatic, would be an understatement. Even with the missing cash and now having to wait a few days for replacement cards it was still a huge relief and I do not begrudge the finders fee being removed unilaterally, as I would gladly have paid anyway, maybe not £40 but certainly £20 but I am not going to quibble over that.

Needless to say it has thrown my routine out a bit for the day, but like death, which I am still avoiding like the plague, I live to fight another day, week, month or year or years, and although this is only the second time in my life where I have lost my wallet, the first time was on the Maid of The Loch on Loch Lomond, on a school outing when I was about 14, so there was really nothing in it back then and I certainly never gave it another thought, I shall be much more careful next time. And the thing is that it must only have been a few minutes between losing it and realising I had done so, when I rushed back into the shop in a panic, that someone has picked it up and walked out with it.

Life goes on and I suppose I should be grateful I lost it here and not in Spain last week.....

7 comments:

  1. I'm really glad that had a happy ending. I was worried at the onset.

    When I was eight my family was on vacation driving across the United States. I had a leather wallet with the Lone Ranger on it. I loved it so much. Somewhere in Wyoming at a tourist attraction I lost it. To say I was crushed would be putting it mildly. There were many tears.

    The Meeks "Grand Tour" was almost a month long and I recovered quickly, as eight year olds tend to do, but there were times when it still made me sad not to have my wallet. I didn't even care about the dollar and change that was lost.

    When we got home, it was waiting for me. Someone had found it and mailed it back to the address on the identification card I had carefully filled out with my best printing. There were quite a few screams of joy and running around the house frantically that day. It joy at the exact opposite end of the scale (Joy vs. Sadness) ...and it was considerable.

    The best ending to this story would be if you actually won the lottery with that ticket.

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    1. Brian, at 57 I was like you at eight!!!!!! I must have been more cynical at 14 though as it didn't seem to bother me as much. I'll let you know if we win on the lottery, ther will be a few friends / authors doors being knocked on if we do with lots of eating and drinking on celebratory visits xxxxxx

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  2. It was only minutes, between losing it and realising I had lost it sweets, when I rushed back into the shop to look for it so whoever picked it up probably saw me and took it for the cash, but at least they did then hand it in and I got my drivers license and medical cards back. But I tells ya it fair made me break out in a sweats, in a sweats nae kidding and the wee polis man was lovely too when he came to give it back to me, way to go Essex Police xxxxxx

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  3. I'm glad Brian Meeks posted a link to this. Great writing. Felt like I was there. Oh wait! I have been there! My circumstances were a bit different, but I too got my wallet back. And lucked out in the health part. My prayers for your continued bright outlook.

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    1. Hi Cynthia, Brian is a sweet guy isn't he, love him to bits. It seems while you, I and Brian are numpty's in losing our wallets in the first place at least we should be buoyed by the thought that at least kind hearted folk found them and facilitated their return to us. Hope your health improves my sweet, but my outlook is, life is what it is we just have to deal with it, the good and the bad and make the best of what we are dealt with, difficult at best but gotta do it and try not to let it get you down (to much) YOU TAKE CARE OF YOUR SELF XXXXX

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  4. Oh, Tom, anyone who has lost a wallet or purse was cringing when you began...and breathing in relief with you when it was found. My parents were in their early 80s (before the Alzheimer's and dementia) and were taking a much-planned trip to China and the Great Wall. Two stops into their trip, at one airport checkin, my mother could not find her driver's license or her passport. Nowhere, and they checked everything. I won't recount all the problems that caused! MONTHS later, back at home in Kansas, she was changing purses and found the license and passport in the lining of her leather purse. They'd slipped through a short tear in the seam and fallen to the base of the purse.
    Know what my mother said? When you think of all the things you've been afraid of losing--and then you lose inconvenient but replaceable things--you've been given a blessing, a reminder of what is REALLY important.
    The wallet story is wonderful, Tom, and I'm still lighting candles for you, believing that this was a blessing for you, a reminder of what is REALLY important.

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  5. Yes Marylin I know what your mother means. And as for losing things in wallets/purses I think I'm becoming your Mom too! On Friday after our return from Holiday we had a spa day booked. We were in the process of booking in and I couldn't find the cards we had from when I booked it before we went on hols. It was the same girl who took the booking but she said without the cards we couldn't get in! I said I thought she didn't give them back to me at the last visit she was adamant she did. So with more than a slightly annoyed and sighing Ishbel it meant I had to return home to find them. It was only when I checked my wallet again that I found them after checking twice before.... Numpty

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