Thanks a wunch!

Every time I have to deal with our bankers, I’m inevitably reminded of the collective spoonerism for their breed. Today was a particularly stellar example of the type. The whole affair has left me in an irrevocably foul mood, which has resisted even the tender ministrations of a concerned spouse and the fevered consumption of large quantities of Ernst & Julio Gallo’s finest Grenache Rosé.

In short (because the full version will either send you hatchet-wielding through your nearest bank teller or bore you to the same brain-numbing degree as 3 large glasses of the above fine wine), an instruction that reached the Sheffield office of our fine moneychangers at 8.26am yesterday morning was only forwarded to their London office at 4.56pm yesterday afternoon, rendering the entire transaction pointless, and causing our company's salary payments to clear on the 1st of March instead of the 28th of February, no small matter when you consider the number of direct debitors, mortgage lenders and the like that will be baying for their 0.454kg of flesh on the last day of the calendar month.

The truly spit-ragingly, marrow-leachingly, embolism-inducing factor in this travesty of financial eptitude is not the nonchalance with which our bank manager treated the affair, nor the 3 hour dance that they required to furnish us with a modicum of information; it was the fact that, as at 5.30pm this afternoon, they still didn't know how the mistake had been made or who was to blame, and they cannot give a reliable timescale as to how long it will take to determine these minor issues.

Where do they make socks large enough to stash a few million in bullion?