Happy New Bloody Year.

Hello 2012, Goodbye 2011.

On the one hand I can't say I'm too sad.  It was the year I finally got divorced, finally became debt free and found myself having to start again with only 15 years left until retirement.  Barely long enough to get enough in the bank to provide for my decrepitude I feel, so the chances are I'll be still working well into my 70's.

However, despite the drama, there have been worse years.  2007 and 2008 for a start, both being right up there as the worst of my life.   That was when I realised that my nearly 20 year marriage was on life support with the doctors about to switch the machine off.  A three month trial separation at the end of 2007 was greeted by a very quick decision by the ex at the beginning of 2008 to hang the "Do Not Resuscitate" sign on the matrimonial door... well, Happy New Bloody Year!   The divorce itself, whilst not acrimonious (although it has had it's moments) has felt a bit like that old TV soap El Dorado; it has just seemed to rumble on with not very much happening and then suddenly came to an abrupt end. My only wish was that the process had been as short as El Dorado, which was only aired for a year.  My Decree Absolute took over four years to get issued. 

Far too much has happened since then to be the subject of one blog post.  However, suffice to say there was a lot of fun mixed in with the pain, anguish, financial struggle and I have to say it has all turned out very well.  I'll provide little snippets and gems (including some dating disasters and experiences) through this blog, but the one I'll share with you now inspired the title.

When you suddenly find yourself on your own, with a family to support as well as providing for yourself, financial sacrifices have to be made.  With firm commitments, like mortgage payments and rent, there is only so much you can do, but I did discover the benefits of loyalty card points and vouchers.  Those little things can make quite a difference.  Rather than have loads of cards with points all spread about, I decided to focus on two specific cards; Tesco and Nectar.

I therefore started shopping at places that took the Nectar card, linked my firms office stationery order to it and built up a decent balance.  I had intended to redeem them at Christmas, maybe to get a case of wine that would act as presents for friends, that sort of thing.  My summer Nectar statement had showed a balance of nearly 50,000 points, so I logged on to my account in the November to see how many more had been added. 

It was therefore quite a shock to see a points balance of zero.

Zero?  ZERO?  How on earth...

Looking back through the account I then saw that the points had all been redeemed.  Not by me they hadn't... and then I remembered that the ex had a card also.  I rang Nectar and they confirmed it was a card linked to my account and yes, the points had been encashed already by her.

So, what to do... not much really, except cancel her card, which I did.  She eventually discovered this, presumably the next time she wanted to redeem them and was greeted by an "Unable to access this account" message.

Through some quirk in the Nectar system however, she had still been adding points on her card via her purchases, but into my account, despite the card itself being cancelled!  She had spoken to Nectar and apparently, if I agreed, then the points could have been transferred back to her card, but only on an "all or nothing" basis.  As she'd already had the benefit of all my points once, I didn't feel benevolent enough to agree to that. I think that's karma for you.  Little victories, which, generally speaking, is all men can hope for in the Divorce Courts.

So, let's ring in 2012 - an Olympic Year - and decide whether or not we will be here this time next year.  After all, the Mayans prophesised that the world would end just before next Christmas... or did they?  As the end of the world within twelve months seems increasingly unlikely, the interpretations of the Mayan prophecies have changed.  Personally, I just feel they got fed up of plotting a future calendar, or perhaps even ran out of material to write it all down on.  These days of course, the storage of data is becoming less of a problem as we are all using "the cloud" (I wonder how that affects flights?  Does this mean extra turbulence with all those bytes of data floating around up there?) and I fear for the younger generation in this modern era and the way they communicate.  The wonders of facebook, twitter, mobile phones etc. enable people to keep in touch every minute of every hour of every day.  And they do.  Now in some ways, this is a really good thing - but sadly, such devices, programs and "apps" are widely available to people who really don't know how to use them properly or, more importantly, do not know how to behave online.  Yes, I'm particularly talking about young children here - and more about that in my next blog - "Why children shouldn't have facebook."

Thanks for reading, all comments welcomed.