The New Beachhutman Blog

Christ you know it ain't easy, you know how hard it can be.

I'm lying on the sofa here, and I got pictures on the wall. I look around. The place is mine, paid for. These are my rugs on the floor, that is my sideboard. Those are my hats on the wall, my books on the shelves, which are mine, made in the late 80s, in a different place, Harrogate, in which I was very happy. For so long.

Upstairs is my studio. Today I went through some of my old sketchbooks. I found the one I started on my very first trip to Spain, escaping depression, escaping divorce. It was in Benidorm, on a different costa. I found the sketches, the comments, the artists notes. Fascinating to see them.

In my wardrobe are my suits. I have 20. I am going to throw a lot out. I don't need them.

I am happy. I have a home, and soon I will have the language. Already i can hear the sounds in my head, the sounds of me speaking it. I can listen to the radio, the news, the chat on the streets, and understand so much of it. I am still just a bit scared to speak..

But that will change. 

For now, I have a good job, working with lovely people, in a fabulous land, and when I am here, home, I can write and paint and drive  my absurd red Ford  Strret Ka around the valleys and look at teh olive trees  on the hills and the lake and drink a beer in the bars.

Somehow, it's all become perfect.

I know internet banking is a blessing and a boon.

Really I do. Oh yes.

Consider.

I have a bank account here with Unicaja, a bank thankfully (so far) untouched by the international madness. As soon as I had the account, I set up internet banking. Essential you see, what with me spending much of my time out of the country. To do this I went into the branch, signed various forms, and was given a code number and a password, as well as a code card for confirmation. All excellent and trouble free. I went off to China.

Some weeks later I had need of a transfer, and went online to arrange this. Filling in all the files and completing the password checks etc., I received a message that  I was not authorised to make the transaction. Emails to the bank revealed that although I had three levels of security, and was the account holder, I was only allowed to LOOK at my account, not to actually DO anything.

That cost me seventy Euros to sort out, as I had to pay my solicitor to go round the bank branch and sign TWO MORE documents to allow me to actually USE the online facility.

So I was quite happy until my recent trip to the States, when again I had occasion to use the online banking, and make a transfer.

But I was stopped. This time they had introduced “a new level of security” to “protect me”. It involved receiving an authorisation code by post, and using this code, entering my mobile phone number in the online process, after which they would send me a text message, with a further code, which I would need to enter to authorise the transaction.

Except that my authorisation code had never arrived.

And my mobile did not work out of Spain

And I couldn’t enter a non-Spanish number

So I sorted it out when I got back, the other day, and got a new authorisation code, and then went and bought a new Mobile SIM (a more expensive one that will work out of Spain).

My bank level of “security” is now:

• To get in I use a bank allocated user name. This is not my name,.
• I then need to enter a password. To make it more difficult, I have to enter it using an onscreen virtual keypad, the layout of which changes each time it is used.
• I then need to enter the details of the transaction.
• To complete it I need to enter a code from my bank code card, the code requested changing each time
• I then need to wait for an SMS message with a code number in it.
• I then enter this using the virtual keypad
• Then, finally, I need to enter another code from my code card using the virtual keypad.

If I’m lucky, it then accepts the transaction.

How many levels of security protect the nukes the Americans fly around the world?