Shopping mall: books and banking

[mtbc]

Dundee's city center has a multi-level indoor mall at each end of the pedestrianized shopping area. One of those malls is the Wellgate Centre: three levels of stores with some vacant units then a couple more floors of car parking and the library from which I have now borrowed more science fiction: Sawyer's Calculating God and Watts' Echopraxia. The librarians are busy handling the intake of their books returned to other library branches over the holiday then transferred.

After British Home Stores collapsed the resulting department store vacancy at Wellgate was filled by T. J. Hughes who fit in well being a little more downmarket. Wellgate typically has at least an escalator or elevator out of service; the smaller Overgate Centre at the other end of the shopping area was greatly redeveloped and is correspondingly shinier.

Near the Wellgate Centre's main entrance is Dundee's remaining branch of the Bank of Scotland where I have my checking account, not to be confused with the Royal Bank of Scotland who have a branch just a little further down. In Boston I would typically deposit funds at the Belmont Center branch of Cambridge Savings: their automated machine would read amounts off checks and saved me the hassle of filling out a deposit slip then putting everything in an envelope. Since moving back to Britain I had not seen such machines until I switched from Clydesdale: the Bank of Scotland deposit machines are equally convenient, on the receipt printing cash counts by denomination along with images of any checks.

Comments

[wpadmirer]

I'm on direct deposit for pretty much everything, so there's only an occasional check to deposit.

I love direct deposit! Means I don't have to get to the bank at all.

[mtbc]

Absolutely, I visit the bank comfortably less than monthly. Last year I switched bank, sold real estate then transferred the proceeds to US-domicile, so that all required a couple of visits to the branch. More recently with the automated deposit machine there have been holiday gifts from extended family to immediate family: I do the deposits and transfer the funds to the recipients!

[wpadmirer]

It is nice. I think sometimes of the time I spent in line at the bank, and rushing to get there before the 2 pm cut-off for the deposit to count for that day!