A new pound note would be so much nicer than another coin

So in just a week all those pound coins I have dropped into pots around the house, stuffed into the bottom of countless bags and left in drawers because they were weighing my pocket down will be useless. I always saw them as an emergency fund to be discovered and used when I was flat broke. But now, in a Groundhog Day way, it’s currency change time once again and, as the new comes in, the old round pound will be valueless outside of a bank. That’s left a fair few shopkeepers unhappy, and some shoppers worried.

OK, so the 12-sided coin is less prone to counterfeiters, but must “progress” always mean the law of diminishing returns?

I have cherished, sentimental memories of popping down to the corner shop near where I lived as a child and handing over a couple of big round pennies for a bag of lemon sherbets. Later it was a threepenny bit, a sixpence, a half crown, substantial chunks of metal saved up for a bouncy ball on a stick or a pink-cheeked doll.

But the first paper pound note I was given was better still: so elegant, tactile and crinkly that I kept it for a long time before putting it towards a Biba dress. And what would favourite relatives, delighting in being generous with a pound note tucked into an envelope, have done with a pound coin that dropped onto the floor as you tore open the packaging?

Then in 1971 came decimalisation, and the new coins seemed smaller, thinner and meaner. Somehow, with them, the cost of everything seemed to edge up a bit and, like spivvish new kids on the block, they eventually banished the pound note with its substantial sense of worth, and its touch of class.

So if we have to change again, couldn’t we have a note instead of another easy-to-displace, unaesthetic coin? It could be the baby sibling to the higher currency notes made from polymer (pace animal fat protesters). Quite aside from tapping into pleasing cultural memories, they don’t get wet or frayed as the paper version did. They are a product of securityconscious modern technology and not easily faked. They pack neatly into a wallet, weigh practically nothing, and don’t get lost among diminutive one and five-penny pieces in a purse.

You might think all this is immaterial as we get ever closer to a cashless society where we swipe cards in supermarkets and cinemas, do online shopping and pay via mobile app. But many of the transactions we need coins for are being affected too. If we can pay to park our cars by card, there’s one fewer argument against the one-pound note.

Then there are the crypto currencies being talked up, where real currency doesn’t exist – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin. But when my son tries to explain how these work all I can think is they sound like sci-fi seducers.

Call me regressive if you will, but memories have their place. Hence we buy antiques and vintage clothes, Frank Cooper marmalade and, of course, old houses because we have a tangible sense of holding onto the best of the past.

I know the arguments for a newer, more engineered currency, but couldn’t we press the pause button here and be allowed to re-live the pleasure of the one-pound note?

It doesn’t tempt you into spending more than you intend, as the fiver and tenner do, nor masquerade as something of little worth so you are tempted to spend more than one. So please Royal Mint, give a little thought to those of us who want an innocent trip down memory lane.