Then, just a few years ago, I realized that everyone feels secretly fraudulent. It’s the feeling of being an adult.

- Miranda July, “Free Everything”, The New Yorker, October 10th, 2011

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So, banks. We all use them, right? I guess some people don’t. Some people probably don’t trust banks, and keep their cash in neat little stacks under the mattress (doesn’t that get uncomfortable?), but a lot of us use banks. They’re a necessary evil. And I’ve never met someone who was enthusiastically supportive of their bank. No one has ever said to me, “Yes! I LOVE my bank! They make things easy for me and they give me cake and whisky when I’ve been especially good at managing my money!” No one has ever even said to me, “Oh yeah, my bank, they’re pretty helpful, actually.”

People have often, however, indicated how terrible/horrible/painful/stressful the experience of using a bank is. They say things like, “Wow! It would be easier to saw my own left leg off with a butter knife than access my account online!” and, “Oh yeah! Last time I went into a bank, I waited seven weeks to talk to someone. It was really boring, but at least I finally got to see what I’d look like with a beard.”

My life is quadruply stressful, because I have a bank in the USA and a bank in the UK. Do you know how many things can go wrong when you have TWO banks to deal with? Especially two banks that can’t interact with each other, because there’s a magic force field halfway across the Atlantic which prevents transatlantic transactions?

Here are just a few of my favorite bank-related memories:

- That time I wanted to wire some of my own money from my bank account in the USA to my bank account in the UK. My UK bank was like, “Sure! We can do that, no problem! Just fork over a 50% fee, wait four weeks, and you’ll be on your way!” And my US bank was like, “Um, you want to send money WHERE? To ENGLAND? I think I’ve heard of it, didn’t we beat them in a war once?” And then, after a lot of hemming and hawing and looking up of obscure codes, they were like, “Ohhhh yeahhhh, THAT place. No problem. Just fork over a 50% fee, wait another four weeks, and you’ll be on your way!” Unfortunately there was no money left to send myself after I’d paid all the fees.

- That time I wanted to access my account online. In fact, every time I have ever wanted to access my account online. In order to do this, I need a pointless little keypad that I stick my card into to produce a code. Which means I obviously also need my card. But! That’s not enough! I ALSO need a special (very lengthy) code that’s written on a laminated piece of paper they once sent me in the post. These things allow me to successfully log in about 80% of the time. The remaining 20% of the time I get a little red error message that says, “Sorry! We’re unable to log you in because WE’RE IDIOTS you recently used the back button on your browser.” Yes, yes I did use the back button on my browser, once, in 2004. SORRY.

- That time my card got eaten up by the cash point outside my local Tesco. I asked an important-looking Tesco employee if he could help, but of course he couldn’t help, because the cash points attached to his store are nothing to do with him. He pointed out that a lot of people had lost their cards in those machines lately. “Maybe you should ring your bank!” he said. So I rang my bank. At first all they could say was, “Um, I dunno, we can’t really help you, have you talked to the store manager?” But finally they suggested I go into a branch the next day. As the next day was Sunday, I went in the following Monday, and was seen by a very friendly representative who could see that some unusual activity had been flagged up on my account, but who couldn’t understand what that unusual activity was, because the person who had flagged it up hadn’t put anything in the notes. Finally he looked through all my recent transactions and decided that it was probably because I had withdrawn some cash in Wales last weekend. He lifted the restriction on my account, and ordered me a new card, which arrived promptly three weeks later.

- That time my US bank cancelled my debit card. Luckily, I was in the US at the time, so I went into a branch and asked the lady at the counter, above which was hung a sign that said, “We’re here to help!”, if she could help me.
“Oh no,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly help you. You’ll have to call that number, see, on the back of your card? They can help you.”
So I called the number. I sat on hold for a day, maybe two, and presently I was put through to a chirpy woman who was able to identify the problem immediately.
“You went abroad without telling us,” she admonished. I felt like a child who has been caught doing something he knows he shouldn’t do but can’t help doing, like eating ice cream before dinner.
“But I live abroad!” I said. “You know this. You regularly send mail to my address in the UK.”
“No,” said the chirpy lady. “We have no record of any address abroad.”
“But you send mail to my address in the UK!”
“No,” said the chirpy lady. “We have an address in California.”

So now, every time I move an inch, I feel like I should call both of my banks and assure them that IT’S OKAY! IT’S JUST ME! SHIFTING POSITION A LITTLE, BECAUSE MY FOOT HAS FALLEN ASLEEP!

But if I’m honest, some of my aggression towards banks – maybe most of it – can be accounted for by the fact that banks are all about money, and money stresses me out, even at the best of times. Banks stand there, on high streets and in strip malls, like living monuments to mortgages, loans, debt, wealth, capitalism, materialism, social (im)mobility, long work weeks, the American dream, the credit crunch. They represent what we have but also what we don’t, what we can never, have. And they add unnecessary complication to an already complicated thing.

Maybe I’d be willing to live with a lumpy mattress after all.

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I just got back from a trip to New York. I’m one of those people who really enjoys the process of getting somewhere, particularly the bit where you’re not allowed to use your phone, or the internet (I’ve used wifi on a plane once; the thrill lasted approximately a minute, after which point I was a) frustrated with how slow it was, and b) annoyed that I could now see that I had a bunch of work-related emails that I was definitely not going to answer, because I was ON A PLANE, but was nevertheless going to worry about for the remaining three hours of the flight). I’d probably like it if you still had to take ships across the Atlantic. Think about it: two weeks (I’ve made that timeframe up, I have no idea how long it takes to get a boat from England to the USA) of uninterrupted reading, writing and thinking time, all set against the dramatic backdrop of the sea!

Anyway, the advantage of air travel (apart from, you know, the advantage of air travel) is that you get to watch films. As this is basically the only time I watch films, I have to cram a lot into a few hours, so I watched three on the way out. And I know I’m behind the times here, but Bridesmaids? Really?

If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a woman called Annie who gets picked as her best friend’s maid of honor even though her life isn’t perfect. I mean, other stuff happens, but I think that’s the crux of it, and I had been led to believe that it was some sort of brilliant, funny, clever example of how women can be brilliant, funny and clever in films. In theory I’m not much of a feminist, but I’m willing to get behind something that portrays women as independently hilarious and witty, and who doesn’t like to laugh?

So imagine my chagrin when, having reclined my seat back and asked for a glass of red wine to accompany my chicken and root vegetable mush, I discovered that I wasn’t laughing.

At first I thought maybe it was me. I was being judgmental, I needed to loosen up, my brain was too focused on worrying about whether or not I’d locked the back door and turned the gas off. Then I thought it was probably just a bit slow; maybe they were just getting all the bad gags out of the way before building up to a mind-blowing climax. But somewhere during the seemingly interminable “two bridesmaids trying to one-up-each-other-with-not-very-amusing-speeches-at-an-engagement-party” scene I began to think that maybe I was forming what might be called an Opinion.

Here’s what I see: this film is the female equivalent to something like The Hangover (by the way, I almost never read reviews or articles about films – which may make my writing about a film somewhat questionable – but I’m 99% sure that about a million more qualified people have already said that).

I don’t mean female equivalent in the sense that it’s taken the things that The Hangover does for men and adapted them for a female audience, I mean it’s exactly the same, but with women as the principle characters. Which is fine! It’s great, actually. I mean, I guess it’s great. I guess it’s great that it’s now okay for there to be a scene in a film during which a bunch of women vomit on each other’s heads and shit onto expensive dresses, or during which a woman gets wasted on a plane and the end result is not a questionable one night stand but a comedy tackle from an air marshall. So yay! Crass, heavy-handed physical comedy is now gender-neutral! But wait. It’s still crass, heavy-handed physical comedy, even if women are doing it too.

In fairness, there were a few good things. I really like Kristen Wiig. I wanted to give her a hug and then hang out with her. And it was pretty weird to see Sookie from Gilmore Girls not being Sookie (wow, I think this is the most times I have made pop culture references in a blog post, or possibly my life, ever).

My absolute favorite moment in the film happens when Annie, exasperated and exhausted, is sitting at a bar with her cop (boy)friend, talking about how her best friend from childhood is getting married and seems to have all her shit together. “I feel like her life is going off and getting perfect and mine is just like phrrr.. [makes sound of things going bad],” she says.

I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t had a thought like that. I know a lot of people, myself included, who have thoughts like that a lot. That’s a good line. That’s a good moment for a film to have.

But it was not really a laugh-out-loud-funny film, not most of the time. There was too much noise and too much padding around something that was strong enough to stand on its own. I’m inclined to like a film about a woman who doesn’t really know how to make her life work in the way she wants it to. I don’t need a scene where her housemate’s Vicky Pollard-inspired sister (see! pop culture!) lifts up her tracksuit top to reveal that the huge tattoo she accidentally got last night is now infected to make me like it. I don’t need a scene where a bride-to-be shits in the street under cover of a merengue-like wedding dress to make me like it. In fact, as you may have gathered, these things make me less inclined to like it.

I keep wondering what happened to subtlety. Why is subtlety not cool? Why can’t we just make and enjoy a film that celebrates how funny it is that none of us have any clue how to be grownups, how funny it is that we don’t all have cup-holders in our cars or a lot of money or a job we like or a sense of what’s good for us? That stuff is funny, and it’s funny because it’s true, and because it’s a little painful but less painful when we realize we’re not alone, not because it resembles the cartoons we used to watch when we were kids.

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Well, I didn’t plan to wake up today and make some toast and put a load of laundry in the machine and then burst spontaneously into tears and have a meltdown about everything, but that’s exactly what I did.

Oops.

So I thought it would be fun to make a list of all the things I’m currently worried about and share it with you! And then I thought that if I did that it would take me so long to write everything down that by the time I’d got to the end of the list I’d have found new things to worry about, so in fact the list would be never-ending, and let’s face it, you don’t want to read a never-ending list of things I’m worried about, and I sure as hell don’t want to have to write one.

So how about ten things I’m worried about right now? YAY! I bet you can’t wait! In no particular order except the one in which they occur to me:

1. Michele Bachmann.

2. Have I become one of those bloggers who overuses capital letters? Should I go back through everything I’ve ever written and edit out the capital letters so I don’t sound like just another one of those girls?

3. Do I have a “voice”? I went to a talk on “developing your voice as a writer” once. I don’t really remember anything about it, but I do know that it’s a thing lots of people say is important and I do know that sometimes, after I wake up feeling like the world is about to end, I write like I’m writing now, and sometimes, when I’m calmer and I’ve been reading a lot of Geoff Dyer, I write like this. Is there an overlap? Am I just inconsistent?

4. Seriously. Is Michele Bachmann for real?

5. How on earth am I ever going to earn enough money to buy the Man dozens of crisp white Brooks Brothers shirts that I can wear to lounge around the house in?

6. How on earth am I ever going to earn enough money period? I want to be able to buy a big house in the country and fill it with children and dogs and expensive shoes and artwork, or at least to not end up sleeping in the gutter wearing a plastic bag to shelter myself from the unrelenting autumn rain and living off Tesco Value white bread (that stuff isn’t really even bread anyway, it’s like chemicals in a squishy package).

7. What if writing was supposed to be my hobby, not my job?

8. What if I’m destined for obscurity? Not even miserable, spectacular, Jude Fawley-esque obscurity, but plain, simple, “I’m just existing in the margins of things” obscurity? Why does the prospect of that scare me, when fundamentally I value happiness over fame and glory?

9. Does my hair make my face look fat?

10. Should I worry that all of my worrying probably makes me more prone to disease?

BONUS #11: Was this an appropriately diverse list of things I’m worried about? Did I get the balance right? I don’t want to bring everyone down by being too serious, but also I don’t want people to think I’m not serious enough. Life is no laughing matter but also nothing but a laughing matter.

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