Polly Vernon

Following reports that, in the LAST year, UK businesses processed MORE

credit-card transactions than cash transactions, I realise I’m probably the last person in the country still using cash-money. All around me, people are waggling Visas at contactless payment hubs, or winking at facial recognition technology capable of deducting the cost of a flat white via info embedded into their irises – and there I am, counting out my penny stashes on to aluminium countertops, or handing £10 notes to Millennial shop staff who initially recoil as if slapped, before taking the paper dosh from me, gingerly, their facial expressions all ‘ What is this bizarre missive you proffer, and why does it bear a picture of our Queen?’

It seems there’s been an epic shift in behaviour – and everyone got the money memo, but me.

‘ WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT MONEY?’ I scream at my Grazia colleagues, one of whom has just revealed she only took cash out on three occasions last year. ‘ Why didn’t you work it out yourself ?’ retorts three-trips-to-thecashpoint- Cazza.

Why didn’t I? I’m not sure. I know only that I feel vaguely uneasy if I find myself out without at least a little folding money on me – you know, for emergencies – not to mention, convinced it isn’t done to use your card to pay for anything that costs less than £5/in a greengrocer’s. When I examine these beliefs closely, I’m forced to admit there really aren’t that many emergencies that can’t be eased with an Uber, and that my five-quid/greengrocer’s rule is arbitrary-going-on-plain-wrong. So I’ve stopped using cash now, too. I’m erratic when it comes to missedmemo-moments: those times when almost everyone spontaneously starts doing something differently, apart from a small handful who feel like absolute fools when they eventually work out stuff ’s moved on, but they have not. I was, for example, an early adopter of not leaving voicemails any more: of realising that a missed call alert, followed by a text outlining the point of the missed call, was How We Do Things Now. How I squirmed for those who persisted in leaving blathering windbag messages after the tone! How I squirm for them still. At the same time, my closest friends will never let me forget the summer of ’98, when I joined them on a group holiday in France, furnished with the travellers’ cheques everyone else had formally abandoned. ‘Got your travellers’ cheques, Polly?’ they’ll say, to this very day, if we so much as leave London together. Modern life. It’s a work in progress.