Yep it's that time of year again, the start of a New Year, which for us accountants means the reckoning and adding up of the results of the Old Year. For those of us in the business, this is known as the Year End.
At the Institute we are in the throes of the Year End. You'll have noticed that it's been quiet round here recently....

I'll spare you the details, but it involves a lot of numbers, and a lot of hours adding up the bloody numbers, and then even more hours spent figuring out which numbers are WRONG.

Because some of them always are.
Even mine sometimes... who'd have thunk it?

The Institutes's Finance team are currently stressed, and ratty, and completely focused on the details. And one detail in particular is starting to really bug me.
Which year would you say we're currently on?

Go on humour me, would you say we are in two thousand and eleven or twenty eleven?

It's a mouthful isn't it? Two thousand and eleven. Remember in the bad old days when only lawyers would talk about being in "nineteen hundred and eighty four"? Well lawyers are paid by the hour, so it probably makes sense they keep the old circumlocution, but everybody else, well we all knew we were in the nineteen whatevers.

I met Wayne in nineteen ninety two. We moved to Scotland in nineteen ninety four, the cherub was born in nineteen ninety six. Not nineteen hundred and ninety six, because that would make him sound incredibly old, non?

We even had cameras back in nineteen hundred and ninety seven

Obviously there's been some kind of mass excitement going on since the millennium - when we got to go into the year TWO THOUSAND, and a New Century... but come on , it's been ten years and we still don't have personnel transporters, intergalactic communications or even a cure for cancer.

I'm getting bored with the old two thousand and whatever year thing. Especially now much of my day is spent discussing two thousand and eleven vs two thousand and ten's income.

Can we all agree we're in twenty eleven?
Try it, nice and snappy, twenty eleven.
See? Easies!

Cheers - got to head off and finish twenty ten's books of account... we have a problem on the designated funds y'all.