In my dreams last night, I assisted my friend, David, and his wife, Jenny, with their business sideline, banking. My guess is that David had too much on his plate, so I took over the returning of unpaid cheques for a couple of days.

On each day, there were five or six overdrawn accounts. Before all else, I had to ensure whether the account holders had any other accounts, such as savings, in order to transfer funds, if required. Then, I needed to try to contact the others to advise them of their accounts’ status. After that, the cheques needed to be stamped NSF and then prepared to be returned in that evening’s clearing post. Then a service charge was to be applied: GBP 18.00 for personal cheques; GBP 22.00 for business cheques.

Sounds like a lot to do, doesn’t it?

In my dream, no one had savings accounts with sufficient funds in them, no one answered their telephones, and all the cheques went back, each day.

I think this dream is about how precarious finances are after six months of this pandemic. Our economy is in dire straits. How will we ever get back to ‘normal’?

If only we could send the whole COVID-19 situation back, stamped NSF.