» Stalked

My tale, and the guilt that follows
My first ever b3ta post, after I registered specifically so I could tell this tale.

I was once a stalker and it remains the one thing of which I am most deeply ashamed.

Names are of course changed to protect the innocent.

I first met Betty in 1985 when we were both 12 years old. She and I were in the same second year class and so had virtually all lessons together. She was insanely pretty with gorgeous hazel eyes, a warm velvety voice even at that age and a nose that turned up at the end. I did the usual thing of admitting to friends that I fancied her, she found out, laughed and rejected me (I wasn't the coolest kid in the class by a long shot) and we stayed casual classmates for the rest of that year.

The following school year I'd still see her around, still thought she was one of the most gorgeous women I'd ever met, but contented myself with nursing a secret crush. No need to take any action.

Then the following year at age 14 (this was 1987) my heart went out to her again when I saw her again after the summer holidays. I knew I had to do something to let her know how I feel. So I took one of her friends aside and asked if I could have her address to write to her. Her friend thought that was really sweet of me and so happily handed over the details. That night I wrote a three page letter telling her I was in love with her and how much I liked her and that whilst I knew I wasn't the coolest person to be around, I hoped she'd find some way of responding.

I waited three days for a reaction, but nothing came. I'd see her around and smile at her but she ignored me and breezed past. This was confusing to my adolescent mind. A reciprocation would have been nice, a rejection not too unexpected but still devastating, but no reaction at all? I wrote again a week later and asked her to let me know how she felt. Still exactly the same.

Thus began for me what I now look back on as an incredibly disturbing obsession. I would write to her regularly, at least once a week, telling her how nice she looked and how I was feeling that week. I'd sit in school assemblies and make sure I had line of sight to her so I could look at her and wrap myself up in her beauty. I'd wait around at lunchtimes near where I knew she would be so she would have to walk past me, just to give her the chance to acknowledge me. I sent her presents sometimes, on valentines day sending her a teddy bear in a box thanks to a mail order company that posted them anonymously in exchange for a postal order.

In all this time she never once reacted at all. She must not have even mentioned the extent of my pestering to her friends, as they were all supportive and co-operative when I confided in them of my feelings, saying she probably didn't know how I was feeling etc. One of them even gave me her telephone number although I never dared call her. I just wrote and told her that I knew it, but that I actually respected her privacy and wasn't ever going to call her. To me that sounded reassuring but looking back it must have seemed still rather sinister and scary.

This went on for a full eight months. The whole school knew I fancied her and would spend time hanging around like a lovesick puppy, but clearly nobody knew just what I was putting her through. The truth of the matter finally hit home to me the following spring when one of my own friends made a casual remark about how she had mentioned to one of her own friends about how she "sometimes wonders if he's going to jump out of a bush and rape me." I was utterly horrified and had to go somewhere alone to think. All this time I was trying to make her like me and trying to reach out and communicate with her in the only way I felt secure doing, and in actual fact I must have been scaring the life out of her. I immediately knew I'd done something that could not be undone. My letters and attention stopped. I put Betty out of my head and turned my affections to another girl who acted swiftly to put me in my place.

We had one more year at school together after which she left to stay to college. My only attempt at talking to her in this time was at the end of the final week of school when I was collecting signatures from everyone I knew. I approached her and a friend in the canteen one lunchtime and asked for their scrawl in my book. Her friend obliged and while she was doing so Betty took her leave of the situation without saying a word. My lasting regret was that I never really knew what she made of the whole situation and never really had the means to say sorry. Deep down it was my personal guilty secret.

That would have been the end of that but for the fact that fate threw us together again. I had a holiday job in between university terms working for an accountancy firm in the nearest city. Christmas 1992 I reported for my regular three week stint entering data and nearly died of fright on the spot as Betty walked past to her desk where she was now a secretary. I spent the morning hardly daring to move, even to the coffee machine and had to look her up in the office telephone book to convince myself it was really her.

Somehow I made it to the end of the holiday without having to confront the situation, but on my final afternoon I drew breath and wrote her an email on the internal system. In it I said I was too much of a coward to talk to her properly but then recounted to her what I knew I had done when we were at school together, how I had discovered what it was doing to her, how I had spent four years with it all on my conscience and how bittery, deeply sorry I was for putting her through what for a teenage girl must have been a rather strange and scary situation. I told her I would be back in the office at Easter and hoped we could start afresh from there. I hit the Send button at 5.30pm and ran out of the office without looking back.

Come the following Easter she was still there. No reply or comment was forthcoming and without any real reason to talk to her there was nothing more I could say or do. Time passed. I graduated and the holiday job turned into a full time position as the office computer assistant. Thus I was working with Betty every day and sometimes had to help her out with issues. Over time the atmosphere thawed between us. I could walk up and ask her something without shitting myself, she would ring me with a problem she wanted me to solve and I could even at times banter with her, making a crack about not wanting to be kicked when I had to crawl under her desk to untangle some cables. The only time I ever came close to confronting the past was at the Christmas party one year when we wound up sitting together in a semi-sober state. She initiated a conversation about watching managers make twats of themselves on the dance floor and asked how I was. I told her I was fine and then drunkenly mumbled about how I knew so much shit had gone down in the past but I was very glad I knew her. She seemed to clam up at this point and moved away. Clearly the scars were still there.

I made one last effort to make amends. In early 96, almost ten years since it all happened I was set to leave the office and move on in my career. In my last week I handed over my duties and then approached Betty and suggested that given I'd probably never see her again, how about I take her to lunch to say goodbye. Rather than respond, she groaned and looked at me pleadingly, as if begging me not to make her give an answer. I immediately let her off the hook, told her the offer was there if she wanted to take me up on it but I understood why she might not and assured her I would not ask again. I walked back to my desk slightly crushed, knowing that I would never be able to put the matter to rest.

It is now 20 years since my obsession and from time to time I'm still tormented by the thought of how I behaved. The concept of stalking did not exist back then, but that's what I was doing, trying to attach myself to every aspect I could of a person's life, just to get them to notice me and like me. Part of me wonders just what would have happened if she had told me where to stick it after I had sent the first letter. Maybe I would not have got the message straight away, but after the third time I probably would. This is of course is an attempt to deflect the blame, and I can't really do that.

So there you have it. I was once a stalker and it is for me the darkest stain I have on my character. You might say 20 years is a long time to beat yourself up over something, but I remain haunted by that final conversation when I quit the accountancy job. Even after all that time, even after working alongside me for three and a half years and treating me as a trusted colleague, it seems she was not able to look me in the eye and forgive me for the way I behaved. Without that, I'm not sure I can ever forgive myself either.

Usual length comments apply, but I hope you see why I had to tell it all.
(Tue 5th Feb 2008, 16:26, More)

» Tramps

Not all tramps are insane
Dateline: East London, early 2003

I was walking home in an odd kind of mood. I'd just been attending a strip establishment in Shoreditch, accidentally on purpose turning up on the same evening as the girlfriend of a mate was one of the performers. She knew that I knew what she did, as did he, and it was no big deal really, however the temptation to turn up and stare at her fanny was too much to resist. Plus she moved to America in her other career and now is on a top-rated TV show every week, so I have a great memory to call to mind whenever I see her.

Anyway, back on topic. Wandering back towards the station, full of beer and with my head full of all manner of thoughts about this lady friend I passed by a filling station which had a young lady sat on a blanket outside begging for change. She smiled at me as we made eye contact but I breezed past without stopping.

20 seconds later I did stop. I'd just had a great evening, fulfilling a long standing ambition to see a certain friend naked in a social context, and here was this girl (who must have been no more than about 25) with a life infinitely shitter than mine, still able to flash me a smile and make me feel good about myself. Spotting a chip shop nearby, I bought the largest portion of fish and chips they could manage and headed back to where she was still holding out her battered cup.

I sat down next to her and opened up the package, inviting her to share the feast if she told me her story. In between shovelling huge handfuls of food into her mouth in a manner which was quite heartbreaking, she told me how she had been thrown out by her mother, sectioned twice and now was reduced to living on the streets, trapped in the eternal poverty cycle of not being able to get a job without an address and vice versa. She didn't do drugs, didn't drink and was hopeful that somehow she would find a way out, but in the meantime she was left begging for change and hoping that a charity would spot her and get her a place in a hostel.

She even apologised for stealing virtually all of what she assumed was my supper, but I assured her that I would just get another for myself later. I thanked her for the company, gave her my last fiver and breezed off into the night after receiving a kiss on the cheek from her.

I've no idea what happened to her, or indeed what possessed me to suddenly be nice to the kind of person I'd normally spend my time stepping over as they camped underneath the cash machine. The warm glow I had for the next 24 hours somehow made it all worthwhile.
(Mon 6th Jul 2009, 17:53, More)

» Amazing displays of ignorance

What's in a name
A close relative is a head teacher at a small North Yorkshire primary school. She has commented how in recent years the names of some of her charges have become more and more bizarre. Or at least in terms of the spelling and pronunciation.

Things came to a head just before Christmas when she was angrily confronted by the mother of one child at the end of a day.

"Can you PLEASE get my daughter's name right, she is coming home very confused. Stop calling her Siobhan, her name is Sigh-Oh-Ban."
(Fri 19th Mar 2010, 15:49, More)

» Banks

Just where to begin
Oh my word, I've been waiting for this question for a long, long time. on my list of "favourite institutions in the world" banks are right up there at the, er, bottom. When dealing with banks, you have to keep in mind a paraphrase of one of Neil Kinnock's most famous speeches. I warn you not to be different, not to be unusual, not to require discretion, not to require common sense, not to expect customer service, not to expect logic and above all not to need them to do anything more complicated than pay in a crumpled fiver.

Mrs TBS isn't British. Or at least she wasn't at the time she first moved to start living with me in this country. As part of getting her settled and introduced to a whole new way of living, getting her a bank account so she could manage the money she would either be earning or that I would be giving her for her independence was one of the biggest priorities.

This was going to be a struggle as being new in the country she had very few means to prove her address. Fortunately (I thought) her country was one of the few whose citizens are still required to register with the police if they are coming for an extended stay. This required us to queue for three hours at a dingy office and pay £35 for a nice certificate with a Home Office seal and a signature from the head of the met, confirming that she was living at x address and that the police knew about it. We sat down in our local branch of Barclays and asked to open an account and presented this document. "Oh, but this is not a valid proof of address" said the drone. I failed to understand why. It was issued by a government department, it had her photograph on it, it was stamped with a date and the autograph of the official who processed it. It contained no less (and a great deal more) information and official confirmation of our address than say, a driving licence, which we were told would be a suitable alternative. I asked to see the manager, a terrifying harridan of a woman who sat alternately stroking her moustache or with her arms folded and told me in a patronising manner that this document was not on "the list" and so could not be accepted as proof we were not terrorists or something. Without the proof she would have to presume we were and invite us to leave.

That's right. A manager of a high street bank told my future wife that she was probably a terrorist and would not be offering her any services. They also lost my own lifetime of custom in that moment.

So we went down the route of putting a utility bill in her name, tricky as at the time we were in a shared house with all bills going through the housemates and landlords name. Still we changed the leccy bill, only the account was paperless, the bill presented once a quarter as an onscreen pdf. "Just call if this is a problem at any time" said the company. We phoned up and asked for a printed copy, and in the post duly arrived, er a two sheet printout of the pdf. We approached a branch of NatWest and their customer services desk. Bespectacled moron there told us this wasn't acceptable as it wasn't "a proper bill" posted to our address. Yes it was, I countered. I could use his computer to log on to my online account and show him the same bill on the screen. Not possible I was told. I offered to show him the envelope with the company logo on it in which the sheets of paper had arrived, but that still wasn't good enough. Rather than attempt to help or show human understanding, he sat on his hands and invited us to leave the premises.

We went away and considered our options and forgot to pay the bill. So a red reminder arrived - through the post! Filled with optimism we went back to NatWest only to discover in the three weeks since our last visit they had changed their policies (without updating their website or in-branch brochures) and now required TWO separate proofs of address from two different sources. We were shown a small printed card on the customer services desk advising of this change. I'm amazed they picked up any new business at all in that time, so carefully did they keep this new policy a secret. We left never to darken their doors again.

In we went to a branch of Lloyds TSB, who, we were assured still only required one proof of address. The lady on the counter looked at it and said "oh, this is a reminder bill. That won't be accepted." I asked why. "It calls into question your fiscal competence and credit-worthiness." I pointed out that we were applying for a basic bank account, one which dealt solely in cash and which offered no overdraft facilities of any kind and supplied the owner with a cash card for use in machines only. This was, we were told, irrelevant. They would not be willing to accept our custom.

By this time we had moved to our own place together. This opened up another route of "proof of address" and so decided to buy the contents insurance in her name. A check on the FSA website confirmed that proof of insurance for a property was an acceptable proof of residency - after all why would you insure your possessions at an address you don't live at? Finding a bank whose own internal policies would allow such a proof proved near impossible though, but whilst making an enquiry at HSBC the girl there told us that whilst she couldn't take the insurance certificate, the red electricity bill we also had on us would be fine. "Even though it is red?" I asked. She looked surprised, "a bill is a bill", she told us sweetly, "this is more than sufficient proof of address".

So we sat and waited for the application to be processed. Two weeks later an apologetic note came back noting that the bill we had offered was more than three months old and did we have any supplementary documentation to confirm proof of address? On the list of acceptable items was - you guessed it - a certificate of home insurance. Going back to the branch to let them photocopy it, the drone at the desk was unable to explain why the insurance was not acceptable for the initial approach but was fine for secondary confirmation. Still, victory was ours at last. It had only taken 15 months from arrival in the country to actually finding a bank willing to offer my other half even the most basic of services, during which time she had been forced to have her wages for her job paid to me and then withdrawn in cash which she kept in a box under the bed.

As a postscript to this story, two weeks after getting her basic bank account, Mrs Stuck went to her branch to correct one of her personal details (her name was spelled wrong on the card) and was enthusiastically upsold an HSBC Premier account complete with debit card and £500 overdraft by a target-chasing under-manager who happily fibbed on the application form as her earnings at that stage were just under the threshold needed to qualify. You read that correctly. The banks were not able to show discretion and flexibility over their internal rules when processing the documents required to become a brand new customer of theirs, but were clearly happy for their staff to encourage customers to lie about their financial circumstances in order to meet what were clearly head office sales targets for premium products.

What made me laugh most of all, was that when sitting on their hands and refusing to help, the banks insisted that they were scared of the FSA rules and the spankings that would result if they deviated one inch from their money-laundering protocols. This would be the self-same FSA which was kicked from all sides over their lack of ability to regulate the banks over their free-for-all lending that subsequently put them billions in the hole and precipitated a financial meltdown of unprecedented proportions.

Length, I know, but this did take over a year. And I'm only just getting started.
(Sun 19th Jul 2009, 16:28, More)

» Things we do to fit in

Cred Destroyer
I never fitted in, and I'm so damn proud of it.

I went to this rather safe, upper-middle class CofE High school in North Yorkshire, populated by some very pleasant but still rather personally repressed individuals. Thrust into this environment after the safe confines of a local village school, I quickly realised that aspiring to be one of the "cool" kids was a complete waste of effort and would carry with it few benefits anyway.

Instead I made a point of being as "different" as possible. Whilst all teenagers were obsessed with how they looked and conforming to a fashion style, I ignored it and wore what I wanted how I wanted. Whilst everyone else was obsessed with looking cool and listening to the right bands and being seen in the right places in town, I unashamedly brandished a love of cheesy pop music, danced around with joy if I felt like it and didn't care how many teachers I had a good relationship with.

In short, I was different, because that defined me far more than any sense of belonging would ever have done. Sometimes it meant friendships were a struggle, as you could see the people I was mates with fighting an internal battle between getting along with me really well and the potential for all their credibility to be wiped out in an instant if they were seen talking to me.

It all meant I was launched into the outside world with a personality, an enthusiastic sense of individuality and completely lacking in fear of being looked at, exposed or otherwise subject to scrutiny. It meant I was able to develop a career as an entertainer, working in high profile media roles, developing a small measure of fame and making sure that I made a difference to the lives of people just by being myself.

So I didn't fit in. I worked hard not to, and it made me a far far better and happier person that I might otherwise have become.
(Mon 19th Jan 2009, 14:29, More)