I had a bit of a panic yesterday evening.

I needed my chequebook but it was lost.

I remember the days when my chequebook went everywhere with me. The were two ways of getting cash – go to the bank and withdraw some, or cash a cheque. It was a regular routine to enter a pub and ask the most important question – do you cash cheques? If the answer was no it meant going on to the next pub. I had many dry nights.

Now of course it’s all plastic. I can pay for things online, pay for most things with a card or if the need for cash arises, I go to the nearest ATM. As a result I am down to writing maybe one cheque a year.

Now I know where I used to keep the chequebook, but that was in the days when the Back Room was an office / junk room. Of course I had converted that into a hospital ward for Herself and God knows where I had put the fucking thing.

Having ripped a couple of rooms asunder, I found it in the end in a pile of old papers which was a relief. There is just one cheque left in the book [which has turned a sort of Sepia colour with age]. It must be decades old. I must apply for a new one, assuming they still make ’em.

The reason for my dire need was for a job I had ordered. They are out at the front making a hell of a noise as I type. They are putting in new gates, but this time with steel pillars. I’m sick and tired of patching up the old gate and anyway one of the old pillars has rotted away once more.

I hope this one lasts a bit longer.