GOT a meeting coming up with the bank manager.
The son and heir tends to handle most of those these days, going in there armed with attitude, laptop and a lot of jargon that makes absolutely no sense to me.
In my day, the missus did the books – by hand – and when we had to go to see the bank manager, we almost crawled into the office on our knees.
She had a spare knitting bag stuffed full of her paperwork and I normally had my hat held two-handed in front of me, getting twisted more and more out of shape as the meeting dragged on.
Back in those days, we all knew the bank managers in town. They were members of the same clubs, our kids went to school together and we attended many of the same social occasions.
Yet when the catch-up became professional, the mate took on the guise of a mortician who had nothing but bad news for you – no matter how well you were doing.
To a large degree, banks have played as big a role in bleeding us dry as the drought, fires and occasional floods we have endured through the years.
There was only one word to sum up the bank manager, and the bank that stood behind him, but I shall refrain from using it here.
You’ll notice I said him.
In my day it always was a him.
He sat behind that bloody big desk making you feel as small as he humanly could.
Umming and aahing over the figures in front of him as though it was the first time he had deigned to glance at them.
You got the same feeling when you bumped into the (that word that cannot be used) bank manager around town. He was always looking down his nose at me, even though I stood a good six inches taller than him.
And in my experience, you never saw the bank manager in the football team and rarely the cricket team.
Which you can understand because if it was footy he would have been murdered and if it was cricket then he would have copped more than his fair share of bean balls.
No, tennis and/or golf was always the bank manager’s speed.
So no matter how good a shot you got in at the net, it was not really going to cause sufficient pain.
As for the golf course, well short of actually running up and wrapping a three wood around his neck, your chances of landing a well-placed drive on the back of his boofhead were a million to one.
Although rumour has it some have given it their best shot.
Anyhoo, times have changed a little.
They are all still unmentionables, it’s just that there are more of them.
And the lad has become something of a master (chip off the old block) at playing one against the other.
In these lean times, when banks are barely recording their record profits in the billions, that means they are inclined (barely) to really listen to you and come up with packages that interest you.
Because if they cannot hold your attention span for more than five minutes, they know you can walk out the door and try the next one.
Lots of next ones, not like my day when there was a handful and you knew they were all cut from the same miserly cloth.
So getting back to the beginning, we were seeing a new bank manager for this meeting because at the last meeting, junior had gone in with his laptop and attitude and told the bank manager de jour he did not like what he was hearing or his take on the figures.
Before the boofhead could do anything about it, junior was on his feet and out the door.
I, however, lingered.
This was a moment to savour, a moment that had been a lifetime coming.
I slowly rose to my feet, picked up the Akubra (which had not been twisted once) and as I reached the door, turned, stuck the hat on my head and with my best smile, said: “And you can get stuffed as well”.
Say what you like about wheat and wool, but when it comes to banks, thank God for deregulation.
