I never expected I would agree or sympathise with Nigel Farage but even he did not deserve to have his account shut down by his bank for “reputational reasons.” The story has rumbled on with many ordinary people claiming that they too have had their bank accounts closed or services curtailed. Indeed in the last few days my sister in law, who is creeping towards pensionable age, was told by her bank that it stopped her overdraft facility “because she was not using it”. She had intended to use it to ease through the fluctuations in her income over the coming years. But would they reinstate it? “Sorry ma’am” came the answer “the computer says ‘no’ ”
Less in the news are the stories of people who sack their banks, or conversely love them and stay with them through the inevitable glitches and frustrations of dealing with modern banking procedures.
Like me.
I lament the passing of real bank managers – the kind that sat behind their desks and personally held sway over your financial life, who made decisions there and then whether to refuse you an overdraft, without having to refer you to a credit team up north, or allowing the computer to say “no”.
One such stalwart once ruled Barclays Bank in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire where I was brought up. He was Mr Jackson. I never knew his first name, but he was known to everyone as “Jacko”.
He was punctilious, apparently sometimes irritating (to the extent that once my father, who was a country solicitor, stormed into his bank and closed half a dozen client accounts in protest at his meanness). He was also (when he was not being difficult) a friend of my parents.
Nowadays it is hard enough to find a bank, let alone a bank manager. Like working red telephone boxes, banks are disappearing from our towns and no doubt the experience of queueing politely to pay in or cash a cheque will be added to those reminiscences that nostalgic people post on social media, along with cassette recorders, gramophones, policemen on the beat and pounds shillings and pence.
But 70 or more years ago, there was Jacko the bank manager, and I am so glad he was.
Fishing mad father
My father was fishing mad. Wherever he went, he had a fishing rod in his car, and wherever there was water he would get his rod out and torment the native fish by casting an artificial fly in front of their noses.
One of the places he used to fish was a lake that had once been a gravel pit in the village of Fenstanton near Huntingdon. After all gravel had been extracted, it had been stocked with trout. If there is no flowing stream, trout do not breed, so the trout in this lake had little to do but grow fat and wait for people like my father to come along and catch them.
Our family would go there from time to time and have a picnic while my father would wade off, rod in hand, glint in eye, in search of a fish that was too stupid to tell the difference between something with a hook on it and a real fly.
As those who have half a dozen or so decades under their belts will know, summers then used to be long and hot, with endless sunshine and cloudless skies. Skylarks and finches would fill the air with their songs and everywhere there was the soft drone of bees as they worked to make honey for us all.
On one such day in the early 1950s, our family in my father’s black 1940s Morris 8, arrived at this lake for a picnic (and for my father to fish). Maybe that should have been expressed the other way round: the primary objective was undoubtedly fishing. Many years later my father was to write a book recounting his war time experiences, but more importantly the two loves in his life: my mother, and fishing (again, I may have put those in the wrong order). The book, inevitably, was titled: Twice Hooked.
Eat your heart out KFC
There was a wicker hamper in the boot of the car filled with goodies made by my mother (she made the most amazing fried chicken – eat your heart out KFC. It knocked spots off your products!). Historical note: KFC were just starting up at about the time of the the events I describe here. The picnic spot was on the grass on top of a bank that sloped down to a shallow area of water in the lake.
The party consisted of my parents, my younger brother and me (aged 3 and 5) and – for some reason - Jacko.
Perhaps he had actually granted an overdraft that week and my father was rewarding him, or maybe he was watching my father because he wanted to be paid.
While the picnic was being spread out, we, the children, splashed each other in the water, before we returned for the feast – jam sandwiches, pop in corona bottles, the wonderful fried chicken all rounded off with home made ice cream also made by my mother – skills she had brought with her from her native Nebraska. These were times before ultra processed food became our staple diets.
Dreaming of floating charges and sinking funds?
After the picnic was over Jacko lay down on the grass and nodded off to sleep. My mother had to go to the nearby station to pick up an aunt who was arriving from London. She charged my father with the task of keeping an eye on my brother and me until she returned.
But the call of the trout was too loud and my father sauntered off into the reeds with his fishing rod. In the meantime, my brother and I continued to play in the water which was only a little above ankle deep. Gradually we moved further from the shore.
After a while a sense of adventure cut in and I decided to explore the margins of the paddling area.
The song birds continued to sing. There was the occasional chirrup of a moorhen in the reeds. The sun beat down overhead. Jacko snoozed on.
I waded out a little further. It was now knee height. My brother followed. We splashed some more. I went out further still. There was a lot of laughter. We were having the kind of whale of a time that only unsupervised 3 and 5 year olds could have – even without the whale.
And Jacko still snoozed on.
Then
The water was no longer shallow. It was not like a beach with a gradual slope. The water had become abruptly deeper. There was loose sand or gravel at the edge – a mini continental shelf. I found myself waist deep. I struggled to get back to the shallow, but the sand gave way and I was then shoulder deep. Everything I did pushed me deeper into the water – neck, then head deep. And then I was completely under water. I found that if I jumped I could grab some air but soon I was too deep for that. I remembered seeing the sky above the water, but not being able to reach it. I had run out of air and was all set to become another drowning statistic. Fortunately my brother (who has always had more common sense than I) chose to stay in his depth.
And that might have been the end of the story.
But……
At that moment there was a mighty splash and Jacko, fully clothed, was swimming out to rescue me. He grabbed me under his arm and hauled me back to land.
The next thing I knew was that I was being emptied of water by an exceedingly damp bank manager.
Not long afterwards my father appeared on the scene looking sheepish, followed a few minutes later by my mother who first looked ashen then murderous. A few trout in the vicinity breathed (as far as trouts do) sighs of relief. There was no more fishing that day.
Later I was to learn that my mother said that if either my brother or I had died that day, she would have divorced him and gone back to America.
But we didn’t, and she didn’t, and I don’t believe it dampened his love of fishing. Jacko carried on turning down requests for overdrafts.
It was many years before I would go near water, but I did eventually learn to swim – and now it is one of my favourite forms of exercise.
Jacko has long since joined that great clearing bank in the sky. Years afterwards he told me that he had his pipe in his mouth when he dived in – and it was still between his teeth when he got me out.
His action that day did more to ensure that I had lifelong loyalty to Barclays than all the public relations efforts mounted by all other banks put together ever since. In short, he was the reason why, after several decades and occasional frustrations I still bank with Barclays. (This article is not sponsored by Barclays by the way).
I don’t believe we had any more picnics at Fenstanton. After my parents were dead and gone, I returned to the village and tried to find the lake. I only had a hazy memory of going along a rough track, through a farm gate, and of the area surrounding the lake being an overgrown wilderness.
I found the lake, now a leisure centre catering for people keen on fishing. It had changed so completely that I could not recognise where I might have been on that fateful day. I did not see a single bank manager at the site. That is not surprising. Bank managers are now as rare as unicorns these days.
Your best yet, I’d say. Beautifully written, closely observed, poignant and funny all at once. Great writing.