November 9th 2015

This morning I received a most distressing letter which threw all my plans for the day into disarray! A shower of uncircumcised usurers represented by Belgard Solicitors sent me the following communique.

 “Date: 6^th November 2015
Our Ref: OS/5200116
Your Reference:

 Our Client:      ACC Loan Management Limited

Account Name:                                         P J WALSH
Account No:                                                    T768570
Amount Outstanding:                                €362,771.56

 

Dear Sir,

We act on behalf of the above named Client.

Our Client’s records indicate that you are presently indebted to them for the amount specified above, full particulars of which have been provided to you, but you have failed, refused and/or neglected to discharge.

Take notice that we hereby demand payment of the above amount within seven days from the date of this letter. In the event of your failure to discharge the debt to our office within seven days we have received our Client’s peremptory instructions to issue legal proceedings against you. In the event of proceedings being issued we shall seek recovery of the full amount due together with any legal costs incurred. In the event of your continued default thereafter, our instructions are to proceed to judgement and to enforce the said judgement by all available means.

You can contact The Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS) if you have difficulty in making payment. MABS is a national, free, confidential and independent service for people unable to discharge their debts. They should be able to give you advice and may be able to contact us to try come to an arrangement that is satisfactory to everyone’s point of view.

We look forward to hearing from you within the seven day period.

The letter was signed by no individual and merely concluded;

Yours faithfully,

Belgard Solicitors

Belgard Solicitors,

(Note the letter finished with a comma; could that be symbolic?)

Now I ask you? Is that not some load of horseshit for breakfast? Who are these people who can cause a deity-fearing, law-abiding citizen with this type of threat before “The early-rising sun has not attained his noon”? Always liked Robert Herrick! At any rate I was tempted to rush out and break my vow of November abstinence at the head of it all. But no; on mature reflection and recollection I decided to take the advice of the anonymous one and contact this MABS outfit. I had occasion to deal with this agency before and had benefited from the expert, understanding and problem-solving expertise of a lady called Marie Shields who should be the Minister for Finance instead of the gobshite Noonan who deals in figures but not people.

I rang the MABS office in Athlone to make an appointment with the afore-mentioned Ms Shields. Fortune favours the brave! By the most fortuitous of circumstances Ms Shields could see me on the morrow because of a minute old cancellation by another distressed party.

On my previous sojourns with this agency I found it necessary to do a detailed account of my income and expenditure to determine what leeway the leeches might have for further blood-sucking. I settled into the task and gradually discovered that I am not a model of fiscal prudence. Bit like this Government, and the last ten, except for the simple expedient that the Dept. of Money uses you me and everybody else as guarantors. I don’t have this latitude, unfortunately. However, this exercise was most beneficial and gave me a blow-by-blow account of how to ‘blow’ your meagre income. I considered all of these matters and one unspoken element impacted on me very forcibly.

The legal tender vampires had to know how you spent your meagre income but there was no mention of how you didn’t get rid of those euros and cents that you didn’t possess! Time to do another ready reckoning. To me the items in terms of human comfort and cossetting had a significant bearing on all of these matters yet were never deemed to be a factor. Time to set the record straight!

I went through my accounts without feeling the necessity of recruiting any expertise and jotted down all my transactions in the columns under ‘income’ and ‘expenditure’. All of this has to be accurate, representative of actual fiscal transactions and capable of being subjected to the most forensic financial scrutiny. I spent hours at this depressing task and eventually had all the salient information on paper. You can’t imagine my horror when the bottom line balance established beyond all reasonable doubt that my mandatory expenditure exceeded my income by no less than €60 per month. The shame of it. Living beyond my reckonable means! All of this and the deprivation suffered because of what I forego of life’s little luxuries.

 

Among the items I can no longer afford.

 

üOfferings; donations, contributions to charity, or any other philanthropic gestures.

ü Newspapers; I used to read one daily, one provincial and two Sunday newspapers. (Cost today €20.00)

ü Holidays however modest.

ü Luxuries of any kind.

ü Presents for self, friends or family or any reason. (e.g.) Birthdays, Anniversaries, Christmas or any other occasion.

ü Attendance at any social events incurring a cost, including parties, weddings, christenings or other occasions.

ü New clothes. I recently attended a funeral wearing a suit made by a company which has ceased production for over twenty years.

ü Alcohol: I used to enjoy a social drink.

ü Cigarettes; not an option anymore.

ü Change of car; forget it. Present car is the last I will ever drive and is ten years old and may be worth €2k.

ü Books. My only real passion. I now borrow from the ‘free’ library.

ü Travel, even within the country. I have family members in Great Britain and the United States but will be unlikely to see them in their own countries. I look forward to the ‘free travel’ when and if I soon come of age.

ü Housing of my choice. Since 1971 I have always lived in my own house and I now live in a Local Authority house which was picked for me and consider myself lucky to have any kind of home.

ü A headstone or grave. Dying is expensive and I have decreed in my will, which was free, that I am to be cremated thereby eliminating the costs associated with a traditional funeral.

ü Legal fees. I recently brought a legitimate grievance to a firm of solicitors who confirmed that I had a perfectly reasonable case which needed no proving but could not be taken on a pro-bono basis therefore I was excluded from the justice system.(I subsequently applied and qualified for Legal Aid, which Board would not take my case anyway).

ü Cover Charge Events including theatre, cinema, concerts, going to the circus and Mass.