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Published: February 20th 2011
Sometimes in life, things just don't end up following the route expected of them. Of course, the problem with this statement lies in the expectation, as opposed to the thing itself. It is my view that a thing expects nothing of itself and that it would be a better world for all if we expected about as much from them ourselves. That "shit happens", is about as universal a truth as it is possible to find; yet how many of us blithely navigate our lives under the arrogant belief that "shit will not happen to me"? Or, worse still, that through my judicious ministrations I can almost certainly "prevent shit ever happening to me"? Unfortunately, as is proven in life by every disappointment suffered, no matter how trivial or catastrophic, we are unable, or more truthfully unwilling, to accept that the tenuous control we exert over the present cannot also be exerted upon the future.
Another truism is that a man should always "practise what he preaches". In essence this means that hypocrisy will only be tolerated if it emanates from the the mouths of either the wholly omniscient or the irredeemably stupid, after all it would be incredibly churlish
to question the integrity of either God or Wayne Rooney's actions, and as I am certain that I fall in neither of those categories, though I'm certainly flirting more with the latter than my arrogance will allow me to accept, my disappointment at having recent events play out in a manner entirely unexpected, and wholly unwanted, should have been taken like a man. As will become embarrassingly clear, my relationship with the uncontrollable is as fractious as ever.
In mitigation, the twin catalysts of my abject frustration were two things which are, for me, a constant source of disappointment: my bank and technology. Out of all the things that you would expect an aspirationally inelegant man to accept as being wholly out of his sphere of control, then banks and electronic technology, no matter what other supposedly more intelligent humans will often explain to the contrary, would be pretty high on the list. But no, though being two of the most unloved things in my life, and after a succession of previous encounters that would have enlightened even the dullest of minds as to their intractability, I still persist, even now, in the ridiculous belief that upon these two
things I can exert a control sufficient to keep them from interjecting themselves into my life with such tedious regularity. I am like the opposite of the proverbial ostrich; I labour under the clearly preposterous notion that if I look a thing squarely in the face, then said thing will be so cowed by the intensity of my examination, that to do any more than what I expect would be an affront to fate itself. From now on I am going to turn my back on banking, place all the worlds computers behind me, place a sign on my backside reading "kick me", and bury my head deep in the sand.
This blog is now three paragraphs old and as yet I have not once mentioned "Tana Toraja", "gory buffalo sacrifice", or "strange funeral rituals of the mountain death cult" which, for those of you in the know, really should have featured much higher up this page. But, returning to the notion of hypocrisy, as things conspired in such a way as to reduce the four days which I intended to spend amongst the Toraja, to just one fascinating but ultimately insufficient day, it would be, as I say,
immensely hypocritical of me to give the Toraja more space in print than they occupied in actuality. This late conversion to principled living will necessarily be to the displeasure of those readers expecting ananthropologically illuminating essay on the Toraja and their history, but a considerable boon to those miserablists who appreciate a compelling tale of woe and misfortune. For the aid of both these groups I have highlighted the section detailing our time spent with the Toraja in
BOLD, most everything else deals with the stupidity of my bank. I leave the choice to an individuals proclivities. So, enough prevarication, it is now time for me to begin this tale. What follows is the story of how things don't go as planned in the land of the buffalo cult.
The ten days I spent on the Togean Islands were entirely without disappointment. I am absolutely certain that this was as much to do with their lacking a single bank or, as far as I was aware, anything with more computing power than a calculator, as it was with their incomparable beauty and fantastically laid back people. Coincidentally, the last frustration I experienced was in the hours before sailing
to the Togeans, when we spent a nervy couple of hours trying to find a working ATM so that we could withdraw sufficient funds to last our time on the islands. The first that I was to suffer upon leaving the islands was in Ampana, when minutes after disembarking the ferry I had my card refused in the ATM. This common occurrence only mildly rankled, and as we had sufficient funds for almost two days remaining and an imminently departing bus to catch, I soon forgot about it.
After the disappointment that was not that disappointing of having to spend an extra day in the Togean due to a cancelled ferry, we were fully determined to make the journey to Rantapau in two days, thus affording us three whole days of exploration. This was one less than we had planned, but still a decent amount of time. As expected, we made it as far as the town of Poso on the first day. Just after arriving and immediately prior to retiring to bed, I enquired as to the time of the following day's bus to Rantapau. I was asking more for the comfort of having my knowledge confirmed, than
in hope of gaining further enlightenment. As expected I received the same answer as I had several times previously; that a direct bus lasting about 13 hours would depart at around eight the following morning. In print you can clearly see how I am setting myself up for a minor disappointment, but at the time my ego was being happily massaged by again being in possession of correct information, and I went to sleep happily disregarding even the smallest doubts as to the veracity of this accumulated knowledge. The morning found me much less secure.
Upon attempting to buy the anticipated ticket to Rantapau, I was quickly and succinctly made aware that not a single coach would make, indeed ever does make, the journey direct to Rantapau, and that the best we could achieve was to take a Makkassar bound coach and get down at Polopo, a coastal town some three hours distant from Rantapau. As the coach was expected to take 13 hours to reach Polopo, we realised that we would not be able to travel to Tana Taraja that day. We were now left with but two days in which to explore this region, an amount of
time that, had we had it, would still have been woefully insufficient in order to experience everything that the single day we eventually spent there tantalisingly made apparent was on offer. In Polopo, before boarding our final bus, we again attempted to withdraw some money and were again unsuccessful. I suppose, in hindsight, a few alarm bells should have begun ringing at this point, but my preoccupation with making the journey was such that, coupled with the depressing regularity of Sulawesi's ATMs malfunctioning, I again gave the matter no serious thought. When my card was also refused at all three of the ATM in Rantapau the following afternoon, I finally woke up to the probability that something was very wrong with my card, as opposed to the ATM.
We immediately made our way to the nearest Internet cafe, where upon logging in to my online account, my worst suspicions were confirmed. Both of my Nationwide accounts, as well as the affiliated credit card, were not showing at all. We also had an e-mail from Airberlin which informed us that the flight we purchased two weeks previously with the now inactive credit card had been cancelled as they could not
collect payment. This was all very strange indeed. We had been using this Nationwide card without any issues for the past 6 months, transferring funds to it from our other accounts on a regular basis and withdrawing cash as and when needed. This system had been working perfectly well, until then.
Normally, the cancellation of a single account, or the loss of a card, would not be anything more than a temporary inconvenience, indeed, we had organised our finances in such a way as to guard against this. But, with the uncanny timing of the truly unfortunate, we had transferred the entirety of our remaining monies into this account just two days before it was suspended! This left us with literally not a single Rupiah in our possession and no way of accessing any more. The only chance we had was if my parents had transferred the small sum of money that two weeks previously they had so kindly offered to give us, in order to cover the payment of a flight home to England from Spain. Thankfully, my family are far more reliable, considerably more honest and far more generous than my bank. This small sum, enough for
a few days cash, was waiting in my other account.
I shall not bore you with the protracted and hugely frustrating spate of telephone calls that then took place over the following two days. Suffice it to say that the level of customer service that we failed to receive from Nationwide was of such a spectacular level as to beggar belief. The amount of untruths and misinformation that we were bombarded with by a revolving cast of incompetents and fools was enough fill several pages of watertight litigation. I am loathe to name names, but a certain supervisor by the name of Elisabeth Bussell showed such spectacular disregard for the severity of our plight, gave us such incredibly bad information, and was moreover both brusque, uncaring and intolerably dogmatic, that she certainly deserves an honorary mention here! But perhaps my anger moves this story forward far too quickly, or more likely not quick enough for those of you still hoping for a little information regarding Tana Toraja, or simply anything that pertains a little less obliquely to the world of a traveller. Maybe it would be better if I explained why our accounts were suspended in the first place?
At the time i surmised that the reason would be suspected fraudulent activity on the account. Because of the e-mail from Airberlin I assumed that it was this transaction that was responsible. We have had two similar situations before, and each time the cause was a burst of activity on a credit card from a foreign country. This was not the reason though, the prosaic fact is that some mail had bounced back and, as is this bank's policy, our accounts were suspended with immediate effect. This sounds a little harsh, but if we had been in the UK then we would have been contactable by phone and the resolution of the issue would have, or at least I suspect and hope it should have, taken no time at all. When out of the country and uncontactable, it seems that these things are a little harder, if not impossible, to resolve. It was for this very reason, and after having learned the hard way on two previous occasions, that with all four of our combined accounts we made sure we changed the address to my brothers in London and made them aware, in writing, that we were going to
be travelling for eight months. We even supplied a list of those countries that we would be visiting. Unfortunately, it seems that someone at Nationwide failed to action this written request, even though we personally handed over the form at our local branch.
Regardless of blame, despite the fact that they had failed in this simple request, you would think that this situation would be a simple one to resolve, would you not? In fact, I know this to be so. As twice before when travelling we have had to phone up a bank to have them reactivate an account that for one reason or another had been suspended. On both occasions this was achieved in a matter of minutes. With the Nationwide, as I write this a full six days since we first contacted them, I still do not have access to our money! Apparently, all that is required to reactivate our account is to change the old address that they still erroneously hold, to the new one that we gave them 8 months previously. The official options for doing this with the Nationwide are as follows: online, in branch, by post. Obviously, the online option was the
only one available to us, unfortunately, contrary to the shouted advice of one Elisabeth Bussell, this was not in fact possible. This option required us to download and print a form, then fill it in and post it. Should we have done this we would have arrived home some months before the letter!
Frustrated as hell after finding out that we could not change the address online as the spectacularly incompetent Miss Bussellassured us we could, we made our way back to the solitary place in Rantapau from where it is possible to make an international call. Unfortunately, we returned to find it closed. We then, as a last resort, purchased a cheap mobile and sim card, but the mountains that protect the valleys of the Tana Toraja, also seem to shield it from decent phone signals. The mobile was as good as useless. We were left with no option other than to call it a night, enjoy the following day's tour, and then resume hostilities the following evening. This cease fire though not at the time desired, was probably much needed. We were both getting a little upset at this point and had lost sight, as has this
blog, of the main reason for being here in the first place: the Toraja.
Unless you have skipped down the page to this section, then you will be aware that we only had a single day in which to explore this area and learn a little about the people who live there. Our original original plan, was to spend our first day in the Tana Toraja with a guide, to enable ourselves to learn as much as we could, and to then strike out on our own for the remaining three days. In hindsight we are well glad that we decided to keep the guide, even though it would be to the detriment of our exploring the region independently. The guide, a well travelled local man called Joseph (Christianity being the dominant religion here), was extremely genial, very informative and, moreover, extremely good fun. The day we spent with Joseph, though being in the main a highlights package and therefore slightly more "touristy" than we would normally enjoy, nonetheless gave us about as exhaustive an immersion into the lives and custom of the Toraja as I believe could have been possible in such a short period of time.
My overriding impression of the Toraja was of a people with a unique culture containing elaborate and intact rituals based around a long held belief system that they have managed to sustain, uphold and cherish, despite the impinging pressures applied by the relative normalcy of Christianity and the constant temptation from the ease of modernity. This is not to say that the Toraja are in any way week, backwards or small minded. Giving overt concessions to the twin horns of the above mentioned normalising factors has been the downfall of many larger, supposedly more entrenched cultures. That the Toraja have managed to assimilate both modernity and Christianity into their belief systems and their culture without either of them becoming dominant or persuasive enough to in any significant way undermine their tradition can be seen as a testament to the strength of this people. The taking of heads in battle, the strict adherence to caste, the dominance of ancestor worship and the prevalence of animism have all entirely stopped or been diminished in the last forty years, but in many other respects, and despite the pullulating fingers of modernity and the proselytising fundamentalism of Christianity, they have managed to sustain a
remarkable level of cultural integrity.
This integrity, so it appeared to me, is most obviously manifest in the powerful and enduring ties that bind the Toraja to one another, be that within the confines of the family or the wider, but no less integral, links between villages and clans. The two rituals, or cultural events, that are most obviously responsible for the continuation and strengthening of these ties are the funeral ceremony and the ceremony held to honour the building of a new traditional house. The former being responsible for sustaining the ties within the community, the latter solely for upholding those within individual families. Around these two traditional causes for celebration orbits so much of what goes into making the Torajan the people they are, or perhaps the case is more that so much of what the Torajan consider important goes into the creation and continuation of these two emblematic ceremonies. Either way, perhaps the best way to get a small understanding of the Toraja is to witness one of these ceremonies. We were lucky enough to attend a moderately small funeral.
I suppose the first thing that may strike one as a little weird about a
Torajan funeral is the fact that you, as both a tourist and a stranger, are permitted to watch. Stranger still, though not I suppose for one who has spent any amount of time in Asia, is that your presence is not only tolerated, but actively welcomed. The size of a Torajan funeral is felt to be representative of the respect in which the deceased was held. Having a foreigner attending a funeral is seen, to an extent, to be a further mark of respect for the dead. We were welcomed with open arms at the funeral which we attended, and were treated exactly the same as the other guests. We ate the same food, drank the same tea, and even had an honorary position on a special rattan mat at the front of one of the three temporary pavilions that were erected specially for this funeral. In short, we were treated as honoured guests.
It is impossible for me, after such a short visit, to convey the intricacies and cultural threads that have been woven together over the years to create the fantastically patterned and colourful garment that is a Torajan funeral. It is, for most people with a
little knowledge of the Toraja, the sacrifice of buffalo, often in incredibly large numbers, that is probably the one fact of which they are aware. Indeed, many people attend these funerals solely in order to witness the slaughter of hundreds of buffalo, pigs and occasionally horses. The war stories and pictures they take home from the funeral being for them more significant than the wider importance and interest of the event itself. To satisfy the morbid curiosity of those with a penchant for blood, even though the one we attended was, by Torajan standards, a small funeral at which only 5 buffalo were sacrificed, we did witness the butchering of one buffalo and the distressingly noisy end of a number of squealing and kicking pigs. During our meal (of pork), the pleasant sound of constant happy chatter would be regularly broken by the distressed squealing of another pig meeting its end by a knife being clumsily inserted into its throat.
The wider significance of the buffalo sacrifice would have to be explained to you by someone who has spent longer than a single day in this region, but it seemed to me to be about wealth and significance, and
the Torajan belief that it is possible to take your possessions with you after death. The buffalo, an enduring symbol for the Toraja, have long been representative of a persons wealth. I suppose that in years long past the buffalo, being an immensely useful beast of burden, not to mention being packed full of meat and milk, was almost the sole repository of a persons wealth. A family with a number of healthy buffalo would be that much more financially secure than one with only, say, two.
Because the Torajan believe that material wealth can be kept even after death, a persons favourite buffalo, sometimes several of them, were sacrificed at their death so that they could ride with them to the other side. Today this belief is pretty much the same, but in modern Torajan society the buffalo, though still being an immensely powerful symbol of wealth is, unfortunately, just that, a symbol. Like everyone else, the vast majority of Torajan hold their often considerable wealth in banks, as shares. The buffalo that are sacrificed at a funeral these days are highly symbolic of the regard in which the deceased was held, as well as the wealth of
his progeny. In Torajan society, the onus for the payment of a funeral falls with the deceased's sons and daughters and, if they have any, their children as well.
As I mentioned, the small funeral we attended in the company of only another 200 guests, was witness to the sacrifice of but five buffalo. This number being a long way below the 12 that is seen today as being the minimum number required in order to fully satisfy convention, and propriety. That the cheapest buffalo, a small and skinny fellow with short horns, can cost a minimum of 8 million Rupiah, or about £800, is to give an idea as to how expensive and potentially prohibitive the costs of a funeral can be. The five buffalo, decently fat creatures with nice large horns, that were sacrificed at the funeral we attended, would have cost at least £5000. The cost of a funeral in which hundreds are killed, many of them being prime black and white mottled specimens that can cost ten times amount, can be massive. If my parents were to expect such lavish expenditure as a mark of respect from their impoverished sons, then they would be doing
a lot of turning in their cave graves. Added to this cost is that of providing for the huge numbers of guests that attend these funerals.
Food must be provided for hundreds of people for several days, as well as temporary accommodation being erected to house guests from villages far and wide, as well as the returning diaspora of the deceased's extended family. It can be said with a large measure of truth that a Torajan will spend most of his life earning a sufficient amount of money to correctly honour their elders in death. A joke amongst the Toraja is that the larger the number of a persons offspring the better, as this guarantees a larger and more propitious funeral at their death. Not all costs are taken upon solely by the deceased's offspring, some are met by the village in which the deceased resided, others by the wider community. Each person, or family, attending a funeral will come bearing gifts for the deceased, anything from a flagon of the delicious Tuak, a palm wine, to a couple of pigs carried strapped alive to a bamboo pole, or a prize buffalo lead by the nose. All gifts, no
matter how grandiose or otherwise, will be noted by the family and, at the time of another funeral to which they are invited, a suitably reciprocal gift will be taken with them. Another, perhaps more persuasive way in which a funeral can help in strengthening community ties, is in the shared labour and materials required for the construction of the often huge and elaborate temporary housing and seating needed for all the attendant guests.
Bamboo is the main material used in the construction of these temporary pavilions, but many other materials, such as the hundreds of wooden planks needed for flooring, tin roofs and expensive soft cushions, rugs and mats, are owned jointly by a group of several villages. At the time of a funeral these materials are bought to the required village, and over a period of several weeks, assembled by a large team of workers from the neighbouring villages, all free of charge. Local community groups are also used at a funeral. The burden of the cooking and serving of all the ceremonial dishes is undertaken, again free of charge, by a huge army of liveried women from the community. Over the years the communal debts of
gratitude that build up help to strengthen the ties binding the local community. A Torajan funeral is, not so dissimilarly to a western one, in some ways more a social gathering than it is a day of mourning. As each family arrived at the funeral we attended, their names were announced to the gathered crowd over a distorted loudspeaker. The happy reunions of people who had not seen each other for many years could be seen being enjoyed over glasses of Tuak in all corners of the seating area. Gossip was exchanged, new acquaintances made, new arrivals introduced, fun had, and all the while a further enmeshing of a community's identity was seamlessly taking place.
Another interesting fact regarding a Torajan funeral is that, especially for a larger funeral, the deceased has often been dead for many months already. It is not that the Torajan are lazy or morbid, it is rather that as the funeral is regarded as perhaps the apotheosis of a persons life, some time is needed to make and afford suitable arrangements. To that end, after death, a person is buried once, perhaps in a family's cave grave, in a simple casket, before being exhumed for the funeral proper, where they will be buried a second time, this time wrapped in a ceremonial cloth. Other times the deceased will be kept in the family home where, other than being conspicuously less mobile than before, in all other respects they are treated as though being still present which, for the Torajan, essentially they are. Food will be laid for them at table, their permission will be sought before leaving the room and goodnights and goodbyes will always be addressed to the dead, as they would have been in life.
The final resting place of a deceased Torajan can be in any number of places, determined by belief, status or the village. Some will be entombed in cave graves. These are the Toraja's oldest form of burial, and involves a beautifully carved wooden coffin being placed inside a large cave. We saw some fantastically creepy examples of these caskets, still in situ, understandably weathered and with their contents falling from them, on the day we spent with Joseph. Perhaps the most famous examples of Torajan burial practise are the cliff graves. In this case a family will have a large crypt cut into the vertical face of a cliff, often in a highly visible, central location in the village. This will then be where all members of the family are buried. Some cliffs contain the vaults of several families, though, if I understood correctly, only those families belonging to the Nobel cast. The other famous feature of these cliff graves, as well as those in a cave, is the attendance on rock balconies adjacent to the grave, of wooden effigies of the dead, known as Tau Tau. These three foot high representations of the dead, standing together in family groups, lend to the cliff faces an odd atmosphere, as though the dead are stood there watching the living watching the dead. This interaction between the living and the dead is the very reason for the carving of the Tau Tau, as they are believed to be the conduit through which these two sides can communicate and a concrete way for the dead to continue inhabiting the temporal realm and not be forgotten.
This is one of the ways in which Torajan custom helps to keep the ties that bind a family so strong. At every funeral a new Tau Tau is added to the assembled cliff-face-genealogy where the whole family, sometimes several generations of whom, are so coherently represented. The dead here are quite simply never forgotten. A more modern burial practice is to be entombed in a families concrete crypt, often with Christian decoration. This is, obviously, a more modern practice but one not as common as you may imagine. For small children, specifically those dying before gaining any teeth, the old practice, mostly abandoned now, is for them to be buried inside of a living tree so that their unsullied spirits can obtain instant union with the divine. We visited one such tree where several relatively new, tiny holes covered by palm matting, studded the huge trunk of an ancient tree. Next to these could be seen the scars on the trunk where considerably older graves had been closed over by the growing tree, forever containing and carrying the tiny remains ever closes to heaven.
The other ceremony which I mentioned as being integral to the sustaining of familial ties, was that of the new traditional house ceremony. Everywhere you go in Tana Toraja, the most obvious aspect differentiating this place from others is the spectacularly decorated and impressively roofed, ceremonial Torajan house or barn. These huge, wooden and bamboo structures hold both a ceremonial and practical purpose amongst the Torajan. The rice barns, the smaller of the two structures though almost identical in design, are used as their name would suggest, as well as being indicative of a villages wealth and, at funerals, an important building used only by the more distinguished guests. The traditional house serves as a family's home, as well as a symbolic structure that speaks eloquently to the Torajan of a family's history. The most obvious way in which this is so can be found in the number of buffalo horns that adorn the supporting post at the northern end of many houses. An old house can have many hundreds of these climbing the strut. This practice shows a family's wealth, as well as being a physical reminder of the family members for whom the buffalo would have been sacrificed.
These houses are still mostly made from natural materials and, consequently, to see one more than a couple of hundred years old is unusual. When a family needs a new house, a replacement will be built and, before moving in, a new house ceremony will be held. This event, several years in the planning, will always bring together every single member of the often huge extended families, and serve as a powerful way for families to sustain the myriad threads of family life. As these ceremonies are held infrequently, the number of new family members to be introduced and acquaintance made can be huge, but in the space of a week the family is that much stronger and therefore that much more content. At each of these events a huge depiction of the families genealogy will be placed outside the house. This allows new members to place themselves contextually within the family's structure and for introductions to go that much easier. Any new, distant members of the family, use this opportunity to add their names to this organic depiction of family ties, thereby cementing their place forever amongst the family.
The end of that fantastically informative, and spectacularly edifying day bought us, as it now does you, back to the depressing argument that we were engaged in with our intractable bank. This is the point at which those amongst you, if indeed there are any foolish enough as to still be reading, who were here solely for an account of our time amongst the Toaja, to go make a cup of tea, or crack open a beer. This is the end of that section. For the masochists amongst you, I will now detail, with hopeful brevity, the resumption of our disagreement with Nationwide bank.
We returned to the only phone in town and with depressing repetition, continued to restate our case to a succession of uninterested or dogmatically compromised incompetents. We were immediately told, by the first manager that we spoke to, that to effect the change of address we had to go online and do it there. We explained how we were told this yesterday and found it to be impossible. After much wrangling we established that if we could action a change of address then the account would be active with immediate effect, but the staggering fact of the matter is that at Nationwide it is not their policy to take such information over the phone; in fact I was told, by this huge bank that with impunity suspend my account and denied me, through no fault of my own, access to my own hard earned cash, that "we do not have the facilities to achieve this". You would be amazed at this level of abject stupidity had it emanated from a small child, to be told this by a large bank was staggering; it is no wonder the western world is in such a financial mess. I was fuming, but there it was, an impasse. I was so convinced that by simple reasoning this intolerable situation could be easily rectified but instead, and is often sadly the case, like a man stuck in quicksand, the harder I fought the more intractable the situation became.
And this is how the situation remains. Despite the bank being able to action the suspending of our account because a single piece of mail bounced back and despite the fact that we changed the address and made them aware in writing and at our local branch, that we were going travelling, they were still, at the highest levels unwilling or, as they said, unable to carry out this staggering simple procedure. With their rapid growth in the last thirty years, banks have grown from community institutions that, though still affiliated to a larger organisation, had a level of customer service that in balance would weigh in the favour of the individual, to todays behemoths who love to proclaim themselves in their media campaigns as big banks for little people, or the worlds local bank, are in actual fact organised in such a way as to preclude the possibility of even the most basic level of individual service. To achieve this, as is the case with so many aspects of modern life, one must have a level of wealth that can afford to buy even this most basic of services. Without money they are simply not interested.
Over the course of several tens of phone conversations, which have cost us about £100 worth of our rapidly diminishing available funds, not once did we speak to the same person twice, even when we asked for them by name. At the beginning of every call, no matter how many "notes" had been put on the system previously, we were frustratingly forced to explain again, in abject detail, the nature of our complaint. Each time we were rewarded with advice so often completely divergent from that offered previously and, besides, all of it inaccurate anyway. We received a similar level of "advice", no matter how high up the chain of importance I demanded to be transferred. If anything, the unwillingness to accept culpability and, more importantly, the perilous nature of the situation we were in and to offer some sympathetic advice, only increased with seniority. It seems that Nationwide have done an excellent job in the training of their staff, they should be commended. Every person we spoke to had the ability to quote, like a robotic monk, the company mantra which, so far as we could tell, amounted to "I am sorry but we do not have the facilities" or, "we are unable to help you in this matter". Although every single person was thoroughly knowledgeable about what they couldn't do, almost to a man they had not a clue as to what they could. The common refrain here being, even amongst management, "I'm sorry but I don't have the authority".
So, there we have it. As equally depressing as it was hopefully informative, my account of how things don't go as planned in the land of the buffalo cult. I guess, should anyone have been brave enough to have done so, there may have been something in the confused whole for everyone, it is just that I suspect that the amount of digging required, for such meagre rewards, was probably not worth the effort. And, as I assume that anyone still reading this far to be either manic depressives or members of my family, I offer no apologies. Laterally, the former would only be offended, and the latter far too shocked, for it to be worthwhile my doing so.
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EdVallance
Edward Adrian-Vallance
There's a reason the collective noun for a group of bankers is a "wunch"