From the Hibernian heights, we take the finest of fictional (as far as I know) semi-holidays from the sage raconteur Sir (if he’s not he should be) Ian Rankin whose detective characters revealed the beauty of P.O.E.T.S. Day – Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. The weekend is yours and all the more so if you claim it early, so emulate the denizens of his award winning books and seize the day, early. After all, the Scots have done quite a bit for us.

Get yourself out of the office, away from the construction site, skip a vote in the Texas legislature with a few cases of beer in your carry-on, or tell your patients that it’s probably just a cold and you’ll check with them on Monday. Declare the workweek over and grab a seat at my bar.

This may require subterfuge. Frequent readers of these electronic pages will have already gotten past the moral quandary that arises on P.O.E.T.S. Day. The lies necessary for a successful escape are watter off their backs by this point, but that may not be true for those new to the site.