Bank Holiday

A bank holiday is a public holiday in the UK, however, you can choose to take it off, or use it towards regular vacation. Meaning, some places are open and some are closed, you just never know. Well, I chose the perfect day to forget my "key"and lock myself out of the house.

I was out on Saturday night with some of the girls and since I didn't want to bring my bulky key chain, I decided to just remove my house key and throw it into my wristlet. When I got home, I just threw everything in the valet tray and called it night. The next day, I decided I wanted to stay in my PJ's all day and watch movies, so didn't bother leaving the house.

Come Monday, I headed out the door to meet my old coworker for lunch, keys in hand; I was good to go. After locking myself out of the house twice before in the past month, I am super conscious about checking my keys before leaving the house. Our front door locks automatically when you shut it, so no need to have keys in hand to lock the door when leaving the house. Anyhow, I went out to Soul for lunch (one of my favorite lunch spots in Aberdeen), walked around town afterwards to find a waffle maker (which was a complete fail), and proceeded home empty handed. When I got home, I grabbed my keys to unlock the door, and what do you know, my house key is not on there!

With Gerald being out of town, I couldn't just call him to come home and let me in, so I went on to plan B. Our management company does routine checks on the house and has a spare key, yay! So I call and get an answer, explain my situation and she goes on to tell me that the Aberdeen office is CLOSED for the Bank Holiday!! The Ellon office is not closed, but they don't have my keys. You see how they can just choose to be closed or not on a holiday; same company, different rules. I go on to phone the emergency line but after 3 unanswered phone calls, I left a message, only to never hear back from them...EVER! They didn't even phone me back to tell me they couldn't do anything. What kind of emergency contact is that? It would have cost me £100 pounds out of pocket to get a locksmith out so I decided against that. My last resort was to hope Gerald left our friend a spare key, since he always talked about it, but that was a failure as well.

Anyhow, after my various attempts of getting back into the house, I was homeless for the night. My amazing friend, Jill, came by to pick me up and took me in, which turned out to be just fine. She fed me taco soup, we watched the Newton Boys, and I also got cuddle time with her sweet lab, Angus =) Also, we had some pretty crazy winds in Aberdeen that night, so good thing I wasn't home alone during it, blessing in disguise.

I'm actually not angry at all, just a bit embarrassed that this happened 3 times in the past month, and out of all the days during a Bank Holiday, while Gerald was out of town! I think I can say, lesson learned - always leave a spare key with a friend or hidden somewhere safe.

So you're probably wondering, what holiday is it exactly on the last Monday in September? Well, it's an "Autumn Holiday," observed only in Scotland; more specifically, in these areas: Aberdeen, Angus except Carnoustie and Monifieth area, East Dunbartonshire, Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, paisley, South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire. The other areas observe this Bank Holiday on a different date of the month.