Coningsby and Tattershall

I got a letter today from HSBC, telling me that following careful consideration they are having to close their Coningsby and Tattershall branch on 2 December 2005. All accounts are being transferred to the Boston branch, and the letter also reminds us that you can use self-service cash machines 24 hours a day, suggesting that we use the HSBC machines in Boston, Woodhall Spa, Horncastle or Sleaford. Rather than the other banks' cash machines in Coningsby and Tattershall, presumably.

I don't know why I've got this letter in the first place. As far as I know, my account has always been at the Boston branch, even when I was living in Tumby Woodside. That's the branch I went to when I wanted to open the account, anyway. I don't think I've ever been inside the one in Tattershall. Perhaps their system automatically registers the closest branch as your local one? Anyway, it's fairly irrelevant to me now I live in Derby, isn't it?

Still, it's sad to hear about that branch closing down. It suggests that the twin villages of Coningsby and Tattershall, where I spent a lot of time as a littlun, aren't prospering in the 21st century. And that's a shame. They're nice places. They have (or had) an old-fashioned friendliness about them that was something unusual even in the 1980s, from what I've heard about other places in those days. Even in the nineties, after I'd stopped going to school and cubs in Tattershall and Coningsby respectively, I used to cycle up to the weekly car boot sale at Tattershall leisure centre on a Sunday, and come to think of it often take money out from the cash machine at the Midland bank on the way. I'm getting all nostalgic, now. I'll have to go back there and see what a dump it always was, just to get it out of my system.

Tattershall is famous for its castle, which is fair enough. It's a cool place, although being red brick (albeit one of the oldest red brick buildings in the world) it doesn't look much like a proper castle should. But Coningsby's number one (and only) tourist attraction is the one-handed clock on its church tower. I have never seen why this should be considered a good thing. Surely that's just laziness on the part of the clockmaker? Oh, I've already put one hand on the thing, I won't bother with the other. The people of Coningsby only ever need to know the approximate time, anyway...