Part two of the banking task. Good to know the debit card works but need to re-establish contact with online banking. Also wish to exchange six £20 paper notes and one relatively elderly £10 one, now no longer legal tender, for newer polymer versions. Had originally thought that this needed to be done at the Bank of England, handy enough at the moment as we’re actually living on the Bank branch of the Northern line. The website is discouraging though. Seems we’re not the only people with an obsolete hoard and they recommend using a bank where we have an account instead, suggesting that at the BoE we may need to wait hours.
Right so HSBC it is, Difficulty being that HSBC has been closing branches at prodigious speed - 84 last year and 69 this, our original Charing Cross branch being one of the casualties. Worse, of the few remaining in central London only four are full service. So to Tottenham Court Road branch where the queue just manages to avoid extending out the door and into the drizzle. We are, at least, before two o’clock. Two to three is listed at all the full service banks as ‘quiet hour’. Not, apparently closed for lunch, but quiet - conjuring up nursery images of the bankers taking their pillows and heading for the sleeping mats. Turns out the exchange of old notes for new pretty straightforward and we needn’t have had an account or indeed ID.
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