Thursday

Yesterday I went down to First Trust (yet another bank), and filled in a form preparatory to opening an account with them. They have the same logo as AIB, with whom I already have an account, so I thought that it would be a fairly simple matter to get an account with them, and then they could sort out closing everything with the RBS. It was grand to start with, and they said that their account opening person would give me a call tomorrow (today). I didn't really believe them, and when they hadn't phoned by lunchtime I decided to walk down and see them again. This, I felt, would be relatively quick and then I'd go off to Sainsbury's to get some Jif (or Cif, as they call it here) and steel wool, and make a start on the oven. So, I closed and locked the door with the big brass key, and walked down to the bank.

Discouragingly, it was going to be as difficult to open an account with First Trust as it was to do anything with my RBS account. They didn't exactly require police records, but close enough; and when they wanted proof of where I lived, a letter from the RBS wasn't going to cut it. They wanted a "utility bill", whatever the hell that is. Not to mention three months of bank statements from the AIB. She couldn't believe it when I said that I didn't get bank statements. Am I really that odd? So I smiled and said, sure, I'd get those, thinking "Not on your life, sweetheart, I'd rather go to Scotland".

I went home to drop off my passport before going to Sainsbury's, and couldn't open the door.

I couldn't believe it. It was raining, it was cold, my books were inside, I was outside. I spent about 10 minutes, which is a remarkably long time, trying to get in. People walking past gave me strange looks. I giggled, in an "only I would lock myself out of the house in bad weather on the landlord's instructions" kind of way. I considered asking a strong looking bloke to try the key for me. I decided against it. The worst thing was it had been really easy to lock.

I gave up and went to the pub, via Mace (who but the Irish would name a dairy after something you spray in rapists' faces?) to pick up a trashy magazine because all my books were in the house. Apparently it's Cosmo's 35th birthday, and I've discovered that they are a smug self-congratulatory magazine. On the upside The Errigle do fantastic Guinness, and I got a phone call from a recruitment agency who are putting my cv in for another technical writing job. By the time Lara arrived to "save" me I'd had about five pints and was ready to think about clubbbing (at 6pm).

Fortunately her key opened the door relatively easily, but when we tried to open it with mine it comprehensively refused to unlock; and then we couldn't unlock it with hers either. Eeep. An uncomfortable moment ensued, where we imagined not being able to close the front door, ever again, but we accomplished it with a little brute force (without even having to resort to the Swiss Army knife), and vowed to remember not to use the brass key again.