The Greek solution

To: The CEO Mastervisacard Bank Services.

Dear Sir,

As a long standing and well known customer of yours, I am writing to see if it possible for me to arrange a credit easing on by credit card. As you will see from my statements, I have recently had difficulty in repaying my bills, even though you only charge a meagre, and in my opinion reasonable 1001% interest rate.

As you will see from my current account, I am a long and loyal customer, who by way of maintaining a healthy overdraught, have contributed heavily to the profits, and may I say, the much deserved bonuses that you and your fellow directors have been paying yourselves during times of austerity.

As way of explanation, we need to go back several months. My wife decided one weekend that she wanted a barbeque. We invited various friends and neighbours, organised the booze, got the old barbeque out of the garage and scraped the rust off. The day before I went to our Local Asda and purchased various items of meat, rolls, and salad etc. When we got it home, I inadvertently placed the meat into the freezer instead of the fridge. When my wife discovered this, she was obviously a little disappointed in me and quite rightly voiced her opinion of me as a husband, a man, and it was decided that I was, on the whole, a useless pillock We removed the pork chops and spare ribs from the freezer, and left them on the draining board covered with tin foil to defrost overnight.

Do you have any pets? We do, we have a ginger female cat, who, like all cats, has to check out anything that is new or different including a packet of tin foil on the draining board in the middle of the night. Cats have claws, these are useful for hunting things like for example, mice, or pork chops and spare ribs, so when we awoke on the following morning, we found a very contented and fat cat, cleaning her paws and licking her lips, while lying on the sofa, and a kitchen floor full of tin foil scraps and pork bones.

Now anyone who knows a thing or two about cats, will know that cats and pork don’t mix very well. As a result of her midnight feast, the cat developed a seriously bad case of worms. We took her along to the vets, who prescribed a course of pills, together with a special diet. Have you seen the price that vets charge nowadays? There is no such thing as the NHS for cats; so as a result, we were forced to settle the bill, and purchase tablets and food using our flexible friend that you very kindly gave me when all was rosy in the financial garden.

Have you tried to get a cat to take medicine? It’s not easy let me tell you. We tried crushing the pills up in her food, but she’s not stupid, she would take one sniff and walk away. Our cat is a little shy, she doesn’t like being picked up, especially at dinner time, and especially when someone is trying to shove a pill the size of a horse tablet down her throat. She managed to rip my shirt, arms and chest to shreds, before wriggling out of my arms, and attaching herself, claws extended, to the kitchen curtains.

At this stage I have to take partial blame for what happened next. I had been meaning to fix the curtain rails for some time, just never really got around to it. As the cat clung onto the curtains, the rail gave way under the weight and fell with a crash onto the nearby cooker. This in its self wouldn’t have been so bad, but unfortunately a large piece of wall came down with it, and smashed onto the ceramic hob. Fearing that I was going to get a large amount of breeze blocks on my nut, I leaped back and tripped over the now grounded cat, who was trying to extricate herself from the curtains, while making a dash for the back door. I reached out for anything to stop me from falling, and managed to grab the washing machine door, that the wife insists stays open when not in use. It was quite an old washing machine and its door was never intended to take the strain of a slightly overweight, if not fat, balding man swinging on it, and consequently it broke from the hinges.

Meanwhile, the wife came rushing in from the garden to see what all the commotion was about. As she was rushing in, the cat was rushing out. there was a coming together of wifes ankles with cats backside, the cat was further propelled out of the patio doors, and the wife was further propelled towards the dining table that had been laid out with the best crockery, on account that her boss and his wife were coming for dinner that evening. The wife managed to break her fall by grabbing hold of the table cloth, which despite being loaded to the gunnels with food, drink and candles, was unable to take the added weight. The bottle of French red hit the wall and smashed, the various dips and sauces that had been laid out for our guest to nibble on covered the floor, and the finest crystal glasses shattered over everything including the wifes hair do. The lighted candles fortunately, were extinguished by the cushions on the sofa, but not before they had managed to set it on fire.

As you can imagine, the cost of replacing everything that was damaged that day, was huge, redecoration, new sofa, crockery, cooker and washing machine and all. Now I hear you say, “don’t worry, your insured” well unfortunately, the month before my pay check arrived in my account one day after the premium for my home insurance was due to be paid out, and because it would have put me 49p over my overdraught limit, you quite rightly decided not to pay it. As a result, my insurance company declined to pay out on my claim. It was at this time that I became eternally grateful to you for all those letters you wrote to me, every time I spent something on my credit card, offering to increase my limit. So we were able to replace and repair everything using our plastic.

Now I read recently that you and your fellow European banks had kindly decided to ease the Greek nation’s financial problems, by writing off 50% of their debts, and was wondering if you could possibly do the same for us?

 I discussed the options with the wife, and following the Greek parliaments idea, held a referendum. It was unanimous, although I’m not sure what the cat was voting for, but when I asked her, she purred and put her tail up, after all, it’s in her interest for us to get our financial situation ironed out, she can eat Whiskas instead of Asda smart price cat food. I cannot claim to live in Greece, nor am I of Greek extraction. I did once take a package holiday with Dan-Air to Crete if that counts, I once had a Feta salad followed by moussaka at the local Greek restaurant. If it means that we have to sit and listen to Demis Roussos greatest hits CD and learn to play the Bouzouki, we will.

I await your reply with anticipation.

Yours sincerely,

A customer

cc. Herman Van Rumpuy. President of the European union.

cc. Angela Merkel President Of Germany

cc. Nicholas Sarkosy President of France

cc. Jean-Claude Trichet. President European central bank.