Well, we are trying to move to Dorset but Santander Bank seems to be working on a hunch that Ronny is a money launderer rather than a peace-and-love hippy with an inexplicable number of Carmen Miranda photographs in his possession. So they have locked our bank account for an indeterminate amount of time and for unspecified reasons. We can't show my solicitor proof of funds, so we can't close on the house we had agreed to buy.
I’m not saying he’s not money-minded but when Ronny was here in the UK in September he would get excited when his phone made a pretty ping and he got a message from someone who wanted to pick up some of the ferns he was clearing from his yard in Tampa.
RE: "My fern business is booming."
KC: "Great. How much are you selling them for?"
RE: "Oh, I'm not selling them, I'm giving them away."
Wait, Maybe they think I’m the criminal mastermind. I admit I did once steal an orange cream from the pick & mix counter in Woolworths in Reading when I was a kid. I was too scared to eat it in case I got arrested so I left it on the windowsill of the shop before I left. It might still be there.
The situation has been dragging on for a month now, and since the bank feels no compunction to explain their reasoning or to show their evidence of wrongdoing or ill-intent I have assumed that they think I'm bilking the poor guy out of his life savings in order to fund a nice holiday home on the south coast. Then, last week, their line of questioning suggested that they thought Ronny was the bad guy: "How long have you known him?"
"18 years."
Have you met him?
"Well, yeah."
I would send them photographs but they don't deserve them.
I think we will lose the house.
I'm consoling myself with the idea that I could have chosen a worse bank to deal with.
Isn't that Musk guy setting one up?
If Elon has taught us anything it is that it is a very, very bad idea to have rich kids.
