Do we need cash?

 

“Cash only, please,” said the café owner. But I do not carry cash.

“We are trying to encourage cash to keep it going.” This was a strange idea to me it seems like asking me to write a cheque in case they are not printed anymore. When did you last write a cheque and do we need them?

There was, however, a till at the back of the café where you could queue and pay by card. It seems unusual. Another shopkeeper told me that it no cheaper for them to bank cash than use a card machine.

We went to the seaside recently to try and get a breeze to cool us down (it did not work because the wind was from the south and very warm). The fish and chips we bought did not help either, they were delicious, but they had gone up to £21.40 (by card) for two fish and one portion of chips. I suddenly realised that there were no seagulls pestering us as they usually do. None screaming in the sky and none on the sand begging for a chip.

“You should try the harbour,” said a woman licking her ice cream, which seemed more sensible in the heat than our fish and chips. “One came for my doughnut yesterday and took it out of my hand.”

But I thought that the seagull population by the harbour was severely depleted and I wonder if it because bird flu has been around again. I am sure the population will recover like the woman at the haberdasher’s stall hopes cash recovers.

She only uses cash. Her stall was on the market and perhaps there was no internet for a card machine. It is a long time since I went to a haberdasher. And here were things you may have thought we had all forgotten in these modern days when perhaps we do not sew. There was – interfacing, bias binding, reels of coloured ribbon all different widths and Petersham (who knows what that it?). I wanted some narrow tape to make a loop to hang towels, it cost me less than a pound. So, I needed coins here and had to search my car where I used to store pound coins for parking.

I was pleased that people still had cash when I went to a craft fair last weekend to sell my books. I told one person that my parents had been disappointed when I was born a girl as they already had two and wanted a boy to work on their farm. He said, “That is nothing, when I was born my sister took one look at me and said, ‘I wanted a rabbit’”.

(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)