Horse Calendar Blues

The Giant Boy sloped off unwillingly to school this morning,looking like a grumpy bank manager.I am in a very good position to make this comparison,as most of my dealings with the world of finance and those that dwell therein have been characterised by ill-feeling.  The relationship began, as most do, with mutual effusions of joy at having found one another other, and a book token was showered upon me in October 1973.  Further rich gifts followed; a pen, a plastic wallet, a calendar with a horse on it; I admit it, I was flattered by the attention, my head was turned. At the end of my first University term, I was £50 in the black. This was because I had not at that time discovered drinking and smoking. I developed bad habits. But then so did the bank. It started sending me letters, not the cajoling, coaxing missives of our first days together,but letters which started peevishly (We thought you would want to know that...),and became positively sinister; "We have to advise you that if you do not put your account in order..". I did not enjoy this practice,and said so. Its response was to send me more unwanted letters,and then charge me for them. In the first flush of romance,I had heedlessly given it my address. How I regretted that action in the months to come! I ,too,took to correspondence;"Your habits irritate me, and your pleading just bores me.Close my account, and never contact me again". I know that seems cruel,but it was asking for it. But any response from me seemed  only to inflame it further.Needy, whingeing, and nagging, the letters kept arriving. I contemplated informing the police that I was being stalked by my bank. Perhaps I could obtain a restraining order? Was there a support group? If I started a relationship with another bank (and in those days fiscal promiscuity was easy),would my old bank find out,and try and come between me and my shiny fresh start?
And there were plenty of attractive offers. Oh yes. The roguish wink from Nat West, offering me an overdraft and a pencil case..Barclays sidling up,aware of having done something unattractive in South Africa,and eager to make amends, flaunting its lack of bank charges shamelessly. Even the normally sedate Mr Bradford and Mr Bingley were now suggesting that we buy a property together..
In the end, I did what I now always do when a relationship sours. I changed my name and moved to another city. It is expensive,but kinder, in the long run,to me. We don't even pretend to be friends,and when I see that bank now, squandering millions on branding makeovers and cartoon people with funny noses advertising its shopsoiled attractions, I just cut it dead. I am with another now.Not the most dazzling,perhaps a little dowdy, and decidedly without frills. We have a sweet little account which will be six years old in December. We don't talk much; but there is not much to discuss, as a rule.I don't have an overdraft, we don't see much activity; it is the deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue,as Mrs Patrick Campbell remarked when she settled down with the Halifax Building Society.