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The Second Fiasco in Aberystwyth

For those who know Great Britain, Aberystwyth is a mixture of Llandudno, Blackpool and Transylvania, with a university thrown in for good measure. Garish but conservative, windy but calm, stony but not broke.

My first visit to the town many years ago was eventful. Sitting in a large Asian restaurant, contemplating the ethics of ordering lobster vindaloo, the glass front door caved in as violently as the poor lobsters meet their end in boiling water. A young man’s head did the damage, and fortunately for him he withdrew it without taking the lobster metaphor any further. Five minutes later all was well in the land of the over-spiced cetacean.

[Weird and wonderful Aberystwyth has been immortalised by Malcolm Pryce in his books Last Tango in Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth Mon Amour etc.]

Cotones is a local firm of solicitors. It has two senior partners, Albert Coho and Paul Ness. Cotones specialise in anything. They had branches in Manchester and World’s End [a little village in Wales].

Cotones made their name in buy-to-lets. Property investors buy [mostly but not exclusively flats] ‘off plan’ [before they are built], and can negotiate sizeable discounts. Once built, the investors then let them out for rent. Money is made from rental income, and the increase in capital value of the property. Cotones [‘Buy our services to let us take the strain’] got into bed with a company specialising in property investment, and secured a lot of business.

Paul Ness himself was a dab hand at conveyancing [legal work relating to house buying and selling], but that was before the sea air got him. Whether it was the whelks, mussels & cockles, escapes of raw sewage [now stopped], the caw of seagulls, or just an incompetence gene mattered little to those who Ness dropped in it.

Not for Ness the sensory overload of Stamp Duty Land Tax, Fixtures and Fittings, or telegraphic transfers. Oh no. what lured his lobster was the number of clients he had, and how many different ways he could create to keep them at bay, whilst clocking up his fees.

Coho was the public face of Cotones. Looked like an exile form the 70’s group Village People, he was the slick [but not too slick], competent [but not arrogant], clued up [we know more than they do], and trustworthy [well 3 out of 4 isn’t bad] mush of the buy-to-let experts.

Coho and Ness were very busy. What use is a solicitor [anyone in business for that matter] who isn’t busy? Busy = good. Not busy = struggling. We all want services from busy people, but complain when they are too busy for us.

You could never get hold of Ness, and Coho was the star of the conference circuit.

But there was something strangely comforting in not having your calls returned, receiving only the occasional letter, and forever wondering what was going on. You knew they were busy; busy dealing with your case! And if you couldn’t trust a solicitor, who could you trust?

So, to engage Coho, Ness & Co, it became a question of ‘Buy our services to let you feel the strain’ and be happy with that.

And most were.

Yet when the regulatory authorities found out Ness had botched numerous transactions, not paid various taxes on behalf of clients, neglected to keep proper records and worst of all decided to leave Coho for the neighbouring firm of Pitt & Poss, they came down on Cotones like a…er…a rather unpleasant e-mail!

Ness, Pitt & Poss carried on where Cotones had left off. Coho disappeared, and delegated the task of facing the music to Brandy Rike, an exile from Colwyn Bay. Rike’s tactic was to model Ness, except do it better. Never return calls, or enter into correspondence. As part of the firm’s drive for excellence in customer service, several lackeys came and went, agreeing with irate consumers, calming them down, and then doing nothing.

Again, being calmed down in a world which infuriates you is sometimes worth losing your house for. And it often was. Coho and Ness contributed hugely to Aberystwyth’s grateful homeless. Calm to the point of indifference, dozens of Cotones clients spent long summer nights on park benches, usually having blown what they had left after being declared bankrupt on a lobster krakatoa [with mushroom rice], which came complete with a framed pane of glass to butt in.

Ness is still trading, Coho was last seen in the Algarve. Pitt and Poss have now become specialists in insolvency law [‘Gone bust? Come to us first’].

The regulatory body has now a dedicated collection of unpleasant e-mails which strike fear in the heart of anyone with an over-developed persecution complex. Ness advised them on their choice.

Let the movers and shakers of Cotones [now known as Cohones-‘We put the Heart back into soliciting’] have the last word:

“So, I blew it. But I’m still here, and most of them are not. What have they learned? Even less I’m afraid. We get the odd one right, just to keep the e-mails from the screen, and that seems to be enough these days. Look at Kate Moss. Loses the plot, gets double the work,” said Paul Ness.

Albert Coho: “We promised them a glamorous life, with little effort. I’ve got one with even less. They say what goes around comes around, but it will take some time for the **** from sunny Wales to get here. By the time it does, it will be dispersed in the ocean. Get your betrayals in first!”

The young man, who years ago had put his head through the curry house door reflected:

“I was p***** when my head went through that door, but it changed my life. I used to work for Cotones, it was a nightmare. So I stopped banging my head, let God take the pain away and moved to World’s End. They wrapped up the practice when I started acting on behalf of the clients.”

“But I asked myself then and now I ask you now-why wait until you get to World’s End?

All the signs are there long before…”

JS, 19 July 2006.