A Midland Odyssey Part Eleven - You Must Be Barking!

I was saddened to hear recently of the death, in February this year, of John Groom, who was one of my managers during my years working at Midland Bank in Barking; he was 83.

John Groom - or Jack as he was usually known - was what we might now describe as a bank manager of the old school, wise and knowledgeable, he acted in his customers best interests - his loyalties were as much with them and his staff as they were with his employers. He was a man of generous spirit who, in those days when customers would shower bank managers with Christmas gifts (chiefly wine and spirits), would make sure that every member of his staff went home at Christmas with something, even if it meant dipping into his own pocket to do so. He once bravely threw his home open for the staff Christmas party when there was no other venue to be had. In addition to his work with Midland Bank, Jack Groom was heavily involved with his local church, Holy Trinity in South Woodford, and was a magistrate, sitting regularly at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court.

Jack Groom (centre in dark jacket and tie), watches as Eddie Moody tops up my glass of champagne on the occasion of my leaving Barking branch in 1986. Sitting next to Jack is his secretary, Lesley Clarke.

Jack Groom was not the manager at Midland Bank's Barking branch when I first walked through its doors, that was his predecessor, Peter Cross, who was quite different from the man who replaced him. Peter Cross was a more outgoing, ebullient man who delighted in lunching with customers. I went from Romford branch to Barking at a time when it had something of a reputation. I am not sure why it had developed the reputation that it had, but it was - in football terms, perhaps - regarded by some people (almost exclusively people who had never worked there, it seemed) as the equivalent of Millwall FC, and certainly there was a sort of "No one likes us, we don't care," attitude among the staff when I was there, an attitude driven largely by the unfairness of the reputation the place seemed to have.  

I was unable to find a picture of Barking branch in its Midland Bank days,
so here's a picture of it taken a few years back and branded HSBC

The reputation that Barking had was grossly unfair and the five or so years I had there were among my happiest and the most enjoyable I had working for Midland Bank, and it was during that time that I met people whom I remain good friends with to this day. It's true that when I first went there it was difficult; I was sent there as Foreign Clerk and the limited amount of foreign work I had done at Romford was not the best preparation for what was a busy foreign desk at Barking, and at times it was probably the busiest desk I have worked on. I cannot say I left Barking as an expert in all aspects of foreign work, but the variety of tasks that I did there -inward and outward payments, bills for collection, foreign currency and travellers cheques, drafts and foreign exchange, among other things - gave me a very broad range of knowledge that was invaluable as I went on to specialise in other aspects of the job at other offices later in my career.

"The Vic"

If there was one thing that the people at Barking branch at that time did, it was embody that old saying, "Work hard, play hard." Perhaps it was because I was young, free, and single - as were many of my colleagues at the time - that the social life I enjoyed at Barking was probably the best that I experienced during my working life. On many a Friday evening I would repair to our favoured pub - The Victoria - with colleagues, Paul Calvert, Gerry Baker, and Keith Markham among them, I still meet those three regularly. And when we do meet, we generally pick up pretty much where we left off the last time, and frequently our conversations turn to the old days at Barking, much to my wife's frustration, since when I return home after an evening with my old friends and she asks after their respective wives and children, I have to admit that barring the fact that they are well, I know nothing as we had spent most of the evening wallowing in 1980's nostalgia! Some of that nostalgia will relate to the boating holidays we had on the Norfolk Broads and the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, Then in 1987 and 1988 we went on what was for me, a first foreign holiday - we went to Majorca both times - after which Paul and I found ourselves in relationships (not with each other, I hasten to add!) which brought our holiday making to an end.

The top picture shows (from left to right) Keith Markham, me, Gerry Baker and Paul Calvert on our boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads in 1985. The picture below shows us a good few years later at Keith's wedding. Only Gerry has been able to keep a full head of hair!

At the risk of simply compiling a list of members of staff at Barking branch in the 1980's, I cannot omit from this piece the names of some other stalwarts of the place who were good friends of mine. Norman Evans the chief Securities Clerk, who features briefly in one of my early blogs, The Obedience Of Fools (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-obedience-of-fools.html) was something of a legend at the place, as was Eddie Moody, the Accountant. Eddie was not one to suffer fools in silence, and was frequently scathing and inquisitorial when anyone phoned in sick: he would scoff at anyone who said they had the flu but would be in the next day, telling them that would be off for at least a fortnight if they actually did have flu. There was young Robbie Smith, who had come over from Northern Ireland and who it has to be said was not everyone's cup of tea, but who I really got on well with. He was frequently strapped for cash, and would be lured out by us some Friday nights "Just for one," and would usually still be there at last orders. Tragically he was killed in a hit-and-run accident near his home in Barking some years after I had left the branch.

Me, looking slightly trepidatious (front right) before a sponsored swim in 1985 with colleagues from Barking: Back Keith Knight and Andrew Graves, and front, Claire Bennett.

We had three typists at Barking - Lesley Clarke (who was the Manager's secretary), Janice Blackwell and Wendy Gudgion. In addition to those three battering the keyboards, there were at least four others of us whose jobs required a significant amount of typing as well, namely the Securities Clerks, the Control Clerk, and me on Foreign. In particular, I suffered the Foreign Bills for Collection forms, seven-part documents that required six pieces of carbon paper to complete and quite a heavy hand when typing to ensure that the bottom copy - the one that was retained in the branch - was legible. Carbon paper, Tippex and typewriter ribbons were a major part of every stationery order in the 1980's, items which one imagines are as rare as hen's teeth in most offices today.

No mention of Barking branch during the 1980's would be complete without mention of the 'arrest' of a student customer from North East London Polytechnic (where the bank had a sub-branch) who had defaulted on her borrowing. When called into the branch to discuss the matter, the student in question was asked to remain in an interview room, and while she was left alone in there, the police were called. This all happened before I transferred to Barking and the first I knew of it was when I saw it in the papers - it even warranted a cartoon by the Daily Mail's Mac - and pretty soon, the branch was besieged by journalists. The Manager's Assistant - who was the poor guy who had interviewed the student and (on instructions from Head Office) called the police - had to be smuggled out of the fire exit and driven away undercover at the end of the day.

I wouldn't swap my experiences working at Barking for anything, and this blog has merely scratched the surface of my memories of the place; perhaps before too long, I'll come back for another trip down Memory Lane.

I Know What I Like

Opinions are like noses; everyone has one - and they all smell.[1] The problem with opinions are twofold. Firstly there are the opinions that morph into facts. These are normally simple prejudices that have been bought some fancy clothes and sent out into the world with the intention of seducing others into their way of thinking. Secondly, there are opinions that don't pretend to be anything else, but which are so persuasive and so sincerely held, and often by people that we admire and respect, that we may feel inclined, or even obliged to agree with them.

Canute was an early victim of fake news.

I have no intention of entering into some sort of diatribe about the sort of opinion that gets presented as fact - goodness knows there enough of them out there - be it on social media, in the more extreme elements of the mainstream media, and from those politicians whose outpourings consist largely of bigotry presented as fact. And I have no intention of doing so because it would be rather like Canute trying to hold back the tide, although interestingly, Canute was actually supposed to have done so to demonstrate to his courtiers that he had no such power over the elements, not as a vain attempt to hold back the waves. Canute is perhaps, himself a victim of fake news. But I digress.

Opinions masquerading as facts are usually easy to spot and to dismiss - assuming we don't hold a similar opinion ourselves. The internet and social media have made it more important than at any other time in history that we exercise our critical faculties any time we read something online. You only have to look at all the spoofs and scams that circulate around Facebook to appreciate that, and while there are some stories that are clearly satire - just look at Southend News Network's output, or that of the Rochdale Herald, or The Onion - there is much out there that it is far harder to determine as untrue. Mind you, there are plenty of people gullible enough to believe Southend News Network stories, with the English Defence League, The Sun, and Katie Hopkins all falling for their spoofs. The problem can be that with insufficient fact checking, spoof stories - which I would add, are a completely different kettle of fish from fake news - can end up being repeated by fairly respectable news outlets, which makes them more likely to gain credence. As ever, the old maxim "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck," holds true.

Gotcha! The Sun fell for Southend News Network's story of a child
banned from a vegan birthday party for wearing a cow onesie.

But enough of facts versus opinions, what about opinions pure and simple? The problem with some opinions is that they can be difficult to measure, and nowhere is that truer than in reviews, which are by their very nature, opinions, subjective, and often driven by prejudice. And whether it is a review of a book, a film, a TV programme or a piece of music, the reviewer's opinion is - until or unless we sample the thing ourselves - all we have to go on. Sometimes that works out fine, and the reviewer's opinion is pretty similar to our own; sometimes it isn't. Often if I read a review of something, then watch it, read it or listen to it, and do not enjoy it, I shrug my shoulders and write it off to experience. A recent decluttering of my CD collection revealed a number of albums by artists such as Karnivool, Dream Theater, King Bathmat, and British Sea Power that I bought on the back of decent reviews or recommendations, but which turned out not to be to my taste, but no harm done.

Occasionally, however I come across something that I have bought on the strength of decent reviews but have found to be so poor or objectionable that it is difficult to understand how the reviewers, indeed any reviewer, could possibly have reached the conclusions they did. Take The Mars Volta, for instance. I read a decent review of one of their albums, bought it, listened to it and decided that the disc would be best employed hanging from a tree as a bird scarer - I simply could not listen to it. But perhaps that was just me, but it was my opinion, no matter that it was as far from that expressed in the reviews as it was possible to get.

The Mars Volta album Frances The Mute is simply impossible to listen to.

It happened again recently after I saw an advert for a book of science fiction short stories that intrigued me. Eating Robots: And Other Stories (Nudge the Future Book 1) by Stephen Oram struck a chord with me; a collection of science fiction short stories that verged on the weird, described on Amazon as " the collision of utopian dreams and twisted realities in a world where humanity and technology are becoming ever more intertwined," and " funny, often unsettling, and always with a word of warning." And then there were the readers' reviews which extolled its virtues and made me keen to read what I hoped would be an insightful, entertaining and thought provoking collection. So I bought it and read it, and was immediately put in mind of the story of The Emperor's New Clothes, with me in the role of the child who witnesses the emperor's procession.

As far as I can see, the book has two virtues: It's relatively cheap (£1.99 for the Kindle version), and at 135 pages, reading it doesn't waste too much of your precious time. They say that life is too short to drink bad wine, and if this book were a burgundy I would have poured it down the sink, but I ploughed on with it from a sense of morbid fascination. It began promisingly; Disjointed, and Little Modern Miracles - the first two stories - were decent: nothing earth-shattering, but good enough. Then it started to go downhill. The third story, The Downward Spiral of The Disenfranchised Consumer, started well and had an intriguing premise, but whereas in my view, the best short stories of this type end with either an unexpected twist - like the best jokes, a sudden change of emphasis that takes the audience by surprise creates the best effect -or a promise of what would come should the story unfold further. Sadly, The Downward Spiral spiralled downward and dwindled to a limp conclusion, a conclusion I only realised had been reached because I turned the page and the next story began. The same was true of a great many of these stories. On one hand that could be said to simply be thought provoking, to leave the reader with an idea that they can extrapolate from - on the other hand, it could simply be that the petered out because they had nowhere to go.

The whole book struck me as a collection of stories gathered from a creative writing course where a writer had been tasked with constructing a story in half-an-hour from some premise they had been given, and having done so not gone anywhere near it again.

I don't usually get so exercised about a book, or a film, or anything that I don't like, regardless of how my view of it differs from other peoples, but on this occasion my opinion was so out of kilter with the others I read that I had to comment on it. Perhaps I missed something about this book, but even if I did, I know what I like, and I didn't like Eating Robots.

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[1] There are variations on this; most are less wholesome.