I was in a hardware store last week to have some keys cut. I tried to pay £4.50 by using Apple Pay on my phone.
As I held the phone over the card reader, Ray, the shop owner said, “Sorry,” and pointed to a small printed notice that read:
NOT FOR TRANSACTIONS UNDER £7.50
I looked in my wallet and discovered that I had no banknotes and only about four pounds in coins.
There were two people behind me waiting to be served and so I decided not to argue or make any kind of fuss but to go across the road to the bank and get some cash from the ATM.
I can’t remember the last time I had bought anything with cash before then. The use of cash is falling generally, with predictions that fewer than one in ten transactions will be completed with notes and coins in 10 years' time. With no limits on transactions when using contactless Apple Pay, I use it virtually all the time.
Ten years ago, cash was used in 60% of payments, but it has been overtaken in popularity now by debit cards, driven by the use of contactless technology.
Nearly 5 million people use cash no more than once a month according to a report by the banking trade body, UK Finance. I must be one of them.
I used to pay the man who looks after my garden in cash but some months ago he gave me his bank details and asked if I would pay him using online bank transfer in future. Consequently, I rarely need to use cash to buy anything these days.
I do try to keep a stock of pound coins to tip the delivery drivers who bring us takeaway meals. Also, it’s good to have some coins to give to the increasing number of rough sleepers that I see around the town centre but coins are becoming more and more difficult to obtain.
Having withdrawn £50 from the cash machine, I was back in the store five minutes later to pay and collect my keys.
“Oh, a five pound note,” said Ray. “We don’t see many of these nowadays.” He studied it for a second or two.
“If you ever get any more like this, bring them here and I’ll give you eight pounds for each of them.”
“What?” I said. “Any five pound note? Are they rare?”
“These are,” he said.
I was a little annoyed but I had no reason to berate myself as I’d heard nothing about rare fivers although I had read about “Kew Gardens” 50p coins that sell for £160.
Ramble 1:
If you genuinely have absolutely nothing to do and you are so bored that your bones are itching, you could while away 13 minutes 8 seconds by going to:
You will meet Christopher. He opens bag after bag of £2 coins that he's just brought home from the bank and he studies every one of them, searching for unusual examples. The excitement in his voice when he discovers a Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games coin worth £30 is comical.
“What’s special about it?” I asked. Ray just smiled and said nothing.
“Go on,” I said, “Tell me. It’s yours and I don’t want it back. You can keep it.”
He held it up to eye level. “Watch,” he said and rubbed the note between his fingers and thumb. I stared intently. Like the asexual reproduction of an amoeba, the note went through a process of apparent binary fission to become two five-pound notes.
Ray was very pleased with himself. “That happens a lot,” he told me, handing back one of the notes. “They stick together when they’re new.”
The new fiver which entered circulation in September 2016, was the first note to be printed on polymer, a thin, flexible plastic and in Ray's experience, they do tend to stick to each other.
Ramble 2:
I had intended to give this post the title “Sticky Money” as not only do £5 notes tend to stick together but in the world of finance, this is a term given to money that stays around for the long-term rather than the money of those that tend to withdraw investments quickly. Quite nice, I thought.
Then, I discovered that “sticky money” has an altogether different and unpleasant meaning and so now, the title is an acknowledgement of Andy Fairweather Low’s 1975 hit.
I left the shop and thought that as I had some cash and it was a sunny day with little likelihood of rain, I would get my car washed.
As soon as I pulled up in the area of the BP filling station where a team of entrepreneurial Romanians have been leased space to set up business, I was surrounded by six of them who set about their work with their usual gusto and enthusiasm.
My car costs £7 to wash and I was ready with a twenty pound note when they had finished. If I tipped them a pound, I would have coins to tip the delivery driver next time he came.
When they had finished, their leader who has excellent English, approached me. I wound down the window.
“Give me twelve please,” I said as I offered him the banknote.
“No need boss,” he grinned, holding out a wireless card reader for me to use.
The world has gone mad.
*****
In my last post, I told you that I had been taking a photograph from the same place of the same view across my garden, once a week for the past year. I'm not going to post all 52 of them but here are six that were taken at two monthly intervals, starting with the first in autumn.
November 10th 2018
January
March
May
July
September 2019
