02/09/2009

Credit Crunch Tales - Terrance of the tree house

Terrance lived in the tree house for several reasons: solitude, the escape from modernity – but mainly it was because of tax and a hefty credit card bill.

Terrance had certainly lived the high life. He was only an assistant at a local B&Q (a bad one at that), but that didn’t stop him living like a millionaire. His house had all the mod cons – SkyPlus, HD TV and a six-slice toaster. Women would be showered with gifts, friends would receive expensive birthday presents – but the dream had to come to an end one day.

The credit crunch came and Terrance fell off the debt merry-go-round. After narrowly escaping a bailiff, Terrance retreated to the local forest. He spent a few nights sleeping rough, but soon realised if he was to carry on his Robin Hood lifestyle he would have to find a new home. He found an old oak tree and planted his flag.

Running away from his troubles, Terrance became a tree person.

Terrance’s idea of problem solving was escaping to the woods. He had done this when he failed his GCSEs, when his Dad left and when his football team had been relegated. He even ran away for a week when his Mum told him he couldn’t have a second slice of gateaux. But this was the first time Terrance had decided to become full-time feral as a means of solving his problems.

His days at B&Q were not wasted – stealing supplies from the warehouse, for which he still had keys Terrance went about building a tree home. He built a fairytale home where he could run away from his debt problems and live tax-free. But it is a lot harder to build a liveable home inside a rotting tree than Terrance thought. In the end, after several attempts to make it like an ‘arbour-Ikea’ Terrance settled with a mouldy shit hole with windows.

He tried to make pets of the squirrels that shared his domicile. They didn’t acquiesce – they bit him, stole his cereals and pissed all over his toaster. Since then squirrel and the man have led a cold war of attrition in that old tree - Terrance ate one of their babies in the spring, so the squirrels gave him rabies by September.

Terrance can’t go back to the modern world now. He has sunk too far into the wood - he is a Wildman or Sasquatch, a myth that financial advisers tell their indebted clients. And he still owes Barclays around £7,000.

Maybe if you wander down to the woods one-day, you will see Terrance in his little home. He hasn’t had a job for a while, and can’t bring girls back to his tree home, so he spends most of his days unkempt, searching the wood for discarded porn.

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