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The Bank Holiday Mistake

10 August 2020

1871. A good year for holidays as the Bank Holiday Act was passed in the UK. This restricted all good citizens from making payments or doing acts that they would not do on Good Friday or Christmas Day. So, a good thing for good citizens then.

The thing is, when you run your own business, a bank holiday is a bit meaningless as you just win a day to sort admin and catch up on all the things you said you’d do the week before.

Maybe I should stick to the spirit of them and do no banking, despite the easy lure of online accounting.

What can be confusing is that England, Scotland and Ireland can have bank holidays on different days. Wales, seems to side with England I think, and please don’t write in to tell me otherwise, as I’m really not fussed if that’s a mistake on my part. This blog is about mistakes after all.

In my haste to blank out bank holidays in my diary I accidentally awarded myself one of my own. My diary did say, bank holiday, except it was for Scotland and I don’t live there.

The happy result of this mistake was that I had an unexpected day off, having kept the time free of clients, on the assumption they’d be off too.

Even though several people pointed out it wasn’t a bank holiday, they were wrong, because I had written it into my diary and once it’s in there it must be true.

I also decided not to do any admin and actually take the day as one free of work, which was rather lovely.

As mistakes go, this turned out to be a happy one and I think I will repeat the hiccup next year.

In fact it occurs to me that many countries have national holiday days and I could have some fun in awarding myself a smattering of those, to supplement the meagre English ones.

We often talk about the global online world and the internet making us all one big population group. So, perhaps it’s time to have Online Bank Holidays and refresh the 1871 Act. I’m sure it could do with an update by now. A little polish to bring it in-line with online working patterns.

I like my mistake and I like the thought of making it again, on a global basis. Why not?

What happy mistakes have you made recently?

Sometimes in life a mistake can turn out to open up a whole new way of thinking. That is something worth taking a day off to celebrate!

Happy holidaying and keep well.