Published in The Sunday Telegraph magazine
And in In your own words, edited by Anna Murphy
19 September 2004
POINDING is a Scottish word. It’s used in Scottish law and means to impound a person’s goods. If you haven’t paid your bills the solicitors will send men in black suits to poind your things. They walk through the house poinding. Table and chairs: £50; television set: £80; wardrobe: £30; pictures on the wall: £150.
They make a list of what they want to auction and come back later to pick them up. In the meantime, once your goods have been poinded you cannot move them out of the house or sell them. If you’re out, they can force entry and take what they’ve poinded.
In the early 90s we lived in a house in Edinburgh. Along with tens of thousands of others our house – my parents’ house – was in negative equity; the mortgage was greater than the resale value. When my parents couldn’t suffer the crippling interest rates anymore the mortgage repayments slipped and within six months we were homeless. We weren’t on the street, but it was homeless enough. Shunting from a borrowed basement flat to various rented places.
The mortgage company sold the house for £40,000 less than the mortgage was worth, which meant my parents no longer had a house but still had massive debt. I think it was about a year after the house had been repossessed that we were in our second rented flat. By this time the family unit was straining at the seams. With unmanageable debt there is no room for manoeuvre and there is no breathing space; you literally feel like you are drowning in debt.
I suppose my father was pushed to some sort of breaking point because he ignored everything: electricity bills went unpaid; the rent was missed; envelopes were never opened.
Eventually they came and poinded the lot in the name of my father’s debt, telling us they would be back in a month to take it away. And that was when my mother, who until then had been passive and confused, took her first step towards control.
The poind list was comprehensive and covered four A4 sides. My mother went through it item by item and then got a lawyer, recommended by a friend. A week later we went back with our own list complete. Our list detailed the origin and ownership of everything on their list.
My mother had written, “Small silver mouse, this was a wedding present from my mother to me; Table, I bought this in Chesham, our first house; Antique clock, a gift from my aunt; Mahogany desk, this belongs to my eldest son.” And so on until it was proved that my father owned nearly nothing. The thing was it was true.
The lawyer couldn’t promise anything, but she would try. The day the bailiffs were scheduled to come arrived. They’d sent a letter asking us to be in at 1pm. My father had gone out. My mother and I sat among her belongings and furniture in the flat in Leith. We watched my grandfather’s clock tick down the minutes until the walls were closing in.
“Shall we sit in the car?” I said to my mum. So we took tea and digestives across the road to sit in her pale blue metro and wait for the men in black to arrive.
We watched through the rear view mirror. A little after one o’clock the two men appeared walking down the street. They stopped at our house and checked their notes. “My God they’re here,” said my mum as they knocked on the door.
Suddenly we felt foolish, hiding in the car. “Wait,” I said, “they’re going away.” They turned towards us and through the folds of their coat we saw a flash of gold. Bibles.
They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. My God. They left and no one took their place. We looked at each other and burst out laughing in relief. My mum smiled like she used to and, for a moment, she could breathe.
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