Long, long, long ago (2000) I lived in England for a period of about ten months for the purposes of work. I was gainfully employed there, had a UK tax number, paid council taxes (it will take me the rest of my life to recover from having to pay council taxes to live in such a shitty shitty town), had a UK bank account. Or three. Current. Savings. High Interest Savings. Credit Card. Before I moved back to Ireland, I went to my local branch to close my accounts. On their advice, I left all of them open with a few pounds in each of them. This weekend, I received a letter from HSBC stating that they were closing my credit card account. No where in the letter was the sentence “but as your account is in CREDIT, you need to nominate an account for us to transfer your CREDIT balance to.” Theft! Theft! Hey! That’s my money you are walking away with!!!

To cut a long story short, because I am again back in the land called England I was able to ring their helpline. A very helpful lady took my credit card number and my security details (remembered despite the fact I have not logged in for eighteen months maybe to the online banking) and assured me after taking a sort code and bank account number for an Irish account that my money would be duly returned to me. It was after all MY MONEY!

So, I then asked her what the balance was on my other three accounts, that my statements were in Ireland and I really could not remember. “What three accounts?” she asked me. I was dumbfounded. “Em, I had a current account, a savings account and a high interest savings account.” “They are not showing up here, let me transfer you”. Transfer me she did. The next person was also extremely helpful and polite and despite putting me on hold for about ten minutes while she presumably talked to other people was able to come back to me with information that the matter would need to be referred to the branch, especially as I had not given my permission for the accounts to be closed. Maybe not responding to a letter was permission, but I can’t remember receiving a letter to say the accounts were going to be closed.

After the phone call, from the deep deep recesses of my memory, I recovered the code to log into my internet banking. No mean feat as I did not have it written down. It is ten digits long and I haven’t used it for at least eighteen months. I say eighteen months with certainty because I updated my address when me moved into our current home.

So, HSBC, where have you taken my money? Where are my three bank accounts, all of which had CREDIT balances. I smell theft! I would like to know why I was never asked to nominate accounts to have balances transferred to!

Of course this is England, land of fiascos like the run on Northern Rock and irresponsible chancellors like Alistair Darling, so maybe it is no wonder that HSBC are stealing pennies wherever they can find them. But, can a bank really close an account and take your money when you haven’t responded with a new nominated account. If they do close your account, shouldn’t they at least send cheques with MY MONEY?

I am intrigued to learn what will happen next.

Terminal One in Heathrow was an eerily quiet place on Friday. So eerily quiet you’d think the security checks would be fast, efficient and take less time than normal due to the remarkable fall off in passenger numbers. It was with dismay that I learned that T1 has slowed to a snails pace. Security checkes took longer. They are still being stupid about bins and liquids. I approached the givers of plastic bags carrying my litre and a half bottle of water in my hand. Water in my hand, fully visible because I wanted to dump it to comply with the regulations.

“Madam, you can’t take that with you.” one of the plastic bad shouters shouts at me.

“Yeah, no kidding. But there are no bins to put it in are there?”

“Give it to me.”

He took the bottle from me. This sort of unnecessary interaction just gets on my nerves. Why not have the bins there, next to the people giving out plastic bags for liquids, so that people who ARE AWARE OF LIQUIDS RESTICTIONS can just get on with the job of throwing away their water unharrassed. All the people with the bags do is shout at you about liquids. Surely you don’t need to be shouted at by five people. Surely one of them could be assigned the task of monitoring bins for people to dump water in themselves to make sure no bombs are dropped into them.

It got worse, despite the fact that lots of gates formerly used by BA are now free, the people flying to Ireland still have to endure the nastiness that is gates 80 to 90. I wonder will they plan to shut down that area and demolish it. There are nicer parts of the terminal no longer in use, so hopefully things there will change a bit. Still, it could have been worse. I could have been flying through T5 on day one of service. When I wouldn’t have flown anywhere.