I had a bit of an anxious day yesterday.

Normally I’m a placid sort of bloke. Herself may argue this but I rarely get worked up over anything. Yes, I hurl insults at the television, particularly during the news where it involves war, viruses or politicians, and also at inane advertisements. I grant that that covers the vast majority of viewing so I can imagine where Herself gets this impression that I am volatile.

Anyway, anxiety is a different kettle of penguins. It is a vague niggling feeling that something is wrong and that there is little I can do about it. Such was my state of mind yesterday.

Yesterday morning I decided to take the plunge with the banking saga. I went into my old bank account and set in motion the process of moving the vast majority of my vast wealth from the old bank account to the new. I was tempted to buy Roubles as they seem to be going cheap at the moment for some reason, but I resisted. I typed in the amounts and the account numbers and all that sort of stuff and pressed Send Now.

Sure enough, I refreshed the page and there was my old accounts with big fat zeros, bar one where I had left a little in case of disaster. I went into my new account. Nothing!

This was the state of affairs for the next few hours. I trust my abilities and to a large extent I trust the banking system. But fuckups happen. I know this from my years working with puters. I have even caused some myself occasionally [and not always unintentionally]. So I knew my finances were somewhere and would probably end up where they were supposed to land, but there was still that niggling feeling that I had fucked everything up and left us nearly penniless.

I got tired of checking the websites and bummed off to the village for smokes and a coffee. For a brief while I forgot about money worries while I sat in the sun, puffing the pipe and supping my coffee as Penny dozed after her feed of chicken. I paid for the coffee out of my severely depleted [and possibly only] funds and went home.

Later I checked again. The funds had arrived! I was solvent again.

Now I’m in the middle of transferring all my Direct Debits, Social Welfare accounts and every shop that has my card details.

Fuck you, Ulster Bank.