by Henry VIII loses his phone for one afternoon and discovers that modern banking has no patience for kings
I once kept the nation’s treasury under lock, key, and armed guard, accessible to me alone. I left my phone in a taxi for four hours and was locked out of my own bank account entirely.
The Missing Phone
I realised the phone was missing only when I attempted to pay for lunch and discovered my card had been declined, a humiliation I have not experienced since a French ambassador once, quite deliberately, questioned my ability to pay for an entire banquet in front of visiting dignitaries. That insult started a diplomatic incident. This one simply meant I owed the cafe four pounds and my dignity.
The Two Factor Wall
Without the phone I could not receive the six digit code required to log into my own banking application, a code sent, apparently, purely to confirm that I am who I claim to be, a demand I found genuinely rich coming from an institution holding my own money, given that I have never once in either lifetime needed to prove my identity to access anything I actually owned.
The Phone Line
I called the bank’s support line from a borrowed handset and was asked a series of security questions including my mother’s maiden name, a detail I answered correctly, followed by the name of my first pet, a question that required me to explain, at some length, that my first pet was a falcon named after a minor saint, and that I did not have a receipt for it, a joke that landed with the call handler considerably better than it had any right to.
The Recovery
Access was eventually restored once the taxi driver, a genuinely honest man named Kwame, returned my phone to the cafe where I had last used it, having noticed it wedged in the seat and driven back specifically to return it, an act of loyalty I have not experienced from a subject in either century and one I intend to reward properly, starting with an extremely generous tip and, quite possibly, a mention in this very column.
The New System
I have since written my banking passcodes on a small card I keep, I admit, slightly too close to the card itself, a security practice Dev has already criticised at length. I built an entire vault system for the crown jewels that lasted centuries. My own personal security setup currently consists of a Post-it note and blind faith in Kwame. I recognise the irony. I am choosing, for now, not to fix it.
The New Habit
Kwame now recognises me on sight whenever I book the same route, and has taken to gently asking, as a running joke between us, whether I still have my phone on me before I get out of the car. I have started keeping a spare battery pack in my coat purely out of residual panic, a habit Dev calls excessive and I call the natural response of a man who once ran an entire treasury and briefly could not access four pounds for a sandwich.
Kwame, on reflection, has shown more patience with me than most entries under my temper would suggest I deserve. Further reading on the wider chaos of modern Britain: interest rates frozen until the economy agrees to behave itself, Apple’s own warning about a looming memory shortage, the full eyewitness account of how I came back in the first place.
