When I was in my 20s, HSBC closed my bank account.
Back then I was still living in Leicester, a city that had seen a lot of change in just the 8 or 9 years I had lived there. It was and still is a very diverse city. Back then it was about 50% white and 35% Asian. I had seen the Somalians come into the West End and Narborough Road and be replaced by Poles. I went to Caribbean carnival, I went to Diwali, I went to the rock club with the skate ramp in, lived on the edge of council estate, just was all over the city. It was full of intereting architecture (Coventry was all Brutalism) and some brilliant graffiti. My best friend was living in Nottingham at the time and I could jump on a train to see her, see my family in Coventry (which I rarely did) and jump on the train to Birmingham International and get the train to Aberystwyth from there to guarantee I got a seat.
And I loved it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Wales, I love living here and being ‘home’ but I do have a soft spot for Leicester even though the city hosted me during the worst of my mental health. It wasn’t a massive city, but it had so much going for it and it felt to much more open and friendly and interesting compared to Coventry and Aberystwyth. I became a person there, I developed a personality, I gained independence, I figured myself out in Leicester.
Towards the end of my time there, I was single having left my ex-boyfriend so I could go to therapy, left my job, also so I could go to therapy and was a lodger for a mad Welsh couple. When I finished therapy I mostly spent all my time online, writing fanfiction and watching tv shows on dodgy Chinese websites, sitting in cafes in the city centre writing and walking to and from the Tesco express at the petrol station at the crossroads. Or occasionally to the big Asda as the end of the Narborough rd. I ate a salad for lunch every day and instant noodles for dinner, sometimes getting a pizza or chips from the takeaway.
I spent a lot of time in the Woolworths cafe, it was upstairs and had a good view of some of the city centre. I was so annoyed when it closed down and I had to find another cafe I could sit in for hours at a time with notebook drinking more tea than was probably healthy or necessary.
I was on the way to the Woolworths cafe when I got the message that HSBC had closed my bank account.
I had been with the Leeds as a kid, then when they closed, my dad moved all our accounts to the Abbey National (now Santander). When I went to uni, part of untangling myself from my dad’s control was to get a bank account with anyone else. I needed something I could access in Coventry, Leicester and Wales because internet banking wasn’t a thing and I didn’t have reliable internet access at the time anyway.
I had gone to the cash machine to check my balance and my card didn’t work. I went to the bank and told me my account had been closed for lack of funds. I would get a letter and a cheque for the balance in the account.
The amount? £1.21.
I remember it, even 20 years later, because it’s possibly the smallest cheque I’ve ever had and it really was everything I had at that point. I was living off DLA (disability living allowance) and housing benefit and while I didn’t spend much, I didn’t have much either.
Suddenly I was in the middle of Leicester city centre crying because I had no money (I think I was due my benefits) and no bank account for my money to go into.
I didn’t even have any money on me to buy a cup of tea to calm down.
I ended up in the Halifax because they were the first people to offer me an account, I was turned away from another two banks (I don’t remember which ones now), didn’t want to go back to Santander and didn’t want to use the Coventry Building Society. I spent the day dealing with my benefits and getting them paid to the new account, changed my mobile bill and thankfully didn’t experience any delays or hardship (other than only having 1.21 to my name at the time, I had plenty of diet coke and instant noodles to see my through to my next payment. I moved back to Wales a couple of months later, and lived off benefits for a little while longer until I started working again – first part time, then full time.
I was reminded of this mostly because Halifax is now becoming Lloyds, and my account is switched over and it was seemless. I downloaded the Lloyds app and my info was all there, my money was all there, my bills carried on being paid. I am not sure to the green app or the horse but I get paid and pay my bills and usually have more than £1.21 in my account.
I did get the cheque from HSBC. And I paid it into my new Halifax bank account.
