A narrow minded, global, multi-trillion dollar financial institution...

Barclays Bank appear to have a problem carrying out remedial tasks. When preparing for a trip there are a number of things you must do alongside ensuring your passport is valid, and, in the case of the US, filling out a hundred visa application forms containing questions such as: are you a Russian spy?; have you ever been convicted of a terrorist offence?; do you bring $25,000 into the country with you? If so why? Etc.

One of these things you must do is notify your bank to let them know you will be abroad - apparently they can't envisage you ever having to use your cash card anywhere else but in a 25-mile radius of your branch, and therefore block such transactions. Yet they will provide you with the very latest balance update converted into foreign currency should you need to check while away.

What the fuck? Is that a deliberate attempt to wind me up? Teasing me with how many dollars I have, should I be able to access my own bank account to withdraw my own cash?

It must be. Because the second you dare do something as innocent as try to withdraw twenty bucks, the Barclays international fraud squad start investigating you. This happens the moment 'activity' occurs anywhere away from British soil - sounds very paranoid American doesn't it?! Well I was in America for fuck sake. Oh the irony!

Anyway, the basic gist of my gripe is that whichever retarded Barclays call centre employee I asked to note on their cutting-edge, multi-million pound computer system, that I was going away, in order to avoid this sort of thing from happening, had failed to do so. This resulted in me running around St Mark's square in Manhatten cursing every ATM in sight and accusing the poor machines of a whole heap of things - ranging from being stupid to rascist. In some instances a huge queue formed behind me while I tried to withdraw from my 'checking', 'savings', 'current' and 'credit card' accounts. I don't believe I have any such accounts but those complex machines had many options, which each offered a glimmer of hope that I might be able to access my own cash.

Eventually, well after about an hour or so, it dawned on me that my bank must not have followed my instructions. This annoyed me as I would have to call them.

So if you were a bank and had a phone line for customers calling from abroad, would you stick an automated voice on the line to ask a host of questions it will not understand the answers to? No nor would I. The pay-as-you-go American phone I am using cut out the moment I finally heard a human voice.

This presented a whole new raft of problems. I scoured downtown Manhatten for another two hours before finding a T-Mobile store to top it up. Once topped up I was told to go and buy an international calling card so it didn't cut out again. Once I had done so and finally managed to call the bank the line was closed. 'Sorry for any inconvenience caused,' the robot voice said. Are you fuck, I thought.