Rule Breaker

The other day, after rising, I came downstairs to a row of letters addressed to each member of our household. This was not a good sign. Official looking letters always instil a certain anxiety in me, I find they always tend to say, ‘You owe X amount of money’ or ‘You have failed to return The Breakfast Club for over two years now, are you taking the piss? You now owe £600’ or worse still ‘Hallo English pen pal, when you come to visit? It has been 18 months now, and still you have not replied.
P.S. please sends 250 of your English pounds immediately or our protection racket will kill us.
P.P.S. sorry for using scary and official looking envelope.’

In this instance my trepidation was compounded by a hand-written post-it note from my housemate, Hannah, which said she had gone to see our estate agent. This was serious. I decided not to open my letter; otherwise I might not be able to eat my breakfast.

A few minutes afterwards, Hannah came home looking a little flustered. “Did you read the letter?” she said in a, ‘do you have any idea of the kind of shit we’re in’ sort of way.
“No,” I said, my lips quivering. I opened my letter nervously. It was from the council, and it said I had not paid my Council Tax. It then said in bold capitals, ‘YOU ARE THEREFORE SUMMONED TO APPEAR BEFORE THE MAGISTRATES SITTING AT NORTH PARADE ROAD, BATH AT 11.00AM ON Thursday, 12th February 2009.' That’s a bit overkill, isn’t it? Bold and capitals? It was as if they were taking a disturbing amount of pleasure in my worry, and the only thing they could think of was how to maximise the damage. They stopped short at an army Sergeant delivering a telegram – that was too expensive – so they settled on large, black shouty words. Did they expect me to read it louder, give myself a hard going over?

If you’re interested the due amount was £889.77. Hannah said we needed to phone the council, and explain that we’re students so didn’t have to pay the obscene amount, and that we may need to provide evidence. It all sounded like a lot of bother.

After 20 minutes on hold, she explained the situation, and the council man asked what uni we went to, and she told him, and so he consulted his list of students, and yep, we were on there, so we in fact didn’t owe any money. Now where the fuck was this list when they sent out their ‘You’re going to court you criminal’ letters? He seemed to resolve the situation so easily and quickly that I presume it was laid beside him next to his worn issue of that week’s Heat magazine and an untouched copy of How to do Your Fucking Job Properly: For Fucking Morons.

Why is it that those in power always go straight for these scare mongering tactics, as if you had personally punched their mum in the face, when they haven’t even bothered to check their facts before sending out their death threats? I got the same thing from TV Licensing. A few months after having bought a license I received a letter stating that they knew I had a TV and no license and they were going to be paying me an unfriendly visit soon. They told me to feel guilty, ashamed even. They said live on the edge of your seat, jump at every ring of the bell and knock at the door. They said my heartbeat will never go below 80bpm, that I will develop high blood pressure, and suffer annoying headaches. I will become addicted to aspirin, and subsequently heroin. We’ve seen this before, they said, a million times before, and the only way I’ll be able to pay for my addiction is by performing lewd sex acts on foreign businessmen, stingy businessmen with smelly cocks and pubic wigs. ‘Oh, Doris!’ they’ll whisper as they pull my hair and reach climax. They said I will spend entire days watching the same episode of Deal or No Deal but not noticing because I am distracted by every van that goes past the window. They said they would wait for that one moment when I let my guard down: buttering my toast, only to drop the jar of strawberry jam as they forced entry through my upstairs window. Broken glass and jam everywhere – what is blood and what is jam? The chaos! THE CHAOS!

These people are sick.