Chasing Paper

I once read a report of a chap who planned to go to a football match, but when he arrived at the ground, discovered that the programmes had all been sold, so instead of watching the game, he turned on his heel and went home. That tale may be apocryphal,  but on balance, I rather suspect that it is true: in fact, I would go as far as to say that it has possibly happened more than once.

Upon reaching the turnstile and finding that there were no programmes, our man went home - apparently.

The more sceptical among you may doubt that anyone would plan to go to an event - be it a football match, a play, or a concert - and not actually watch it because of the absence of a programme, brochure, or similar publication, but there are some football-goers for whom the 90 minutes of action on the pitch is but one part of the experience of going to a game. And I say football-goers rather than supporters because these are the chaps (and I would guess that most, if not all of them are men) who do not follow a particular team, but rather troll around the country (and overseas too, on occasion) taking in games and ticking off grounds. Frequently they visit and 'tick off' other places too, like pubs in The Good Beer Guide, or railway stations.

A selection of non-League programmes from eBay.

It has always been my belief that while women love to make lists (usually To Do lists, often with plenty of things for their men folk to do), men love to tick things off lists, and football provides ample opportunity for that. Apart from the Premier League and Football League clubs (ninety-two in total), there are almost 900 clubs playing non-League football down to Step 6 (that's six promotions below the Football League) at what one might call 'proper' football grounds (i.e. terracing, some cover, floodlights, bar and catering) who will normally also issue programmes. The 92 Club accepts as a member, anyone " who has already attended a first-team competitive fixture played at the current ground of each of the ninety-two clubs of the Premier League, Championship, League 1 and League 2 during those clubs' current period of membership of the League." There is no formal club for the other 891 clubs outside the top 92, but that does not mean that there are not people trying as hard as they can to visit all of them. There is, however, a handy website (https://www.footballgroundmap.com/) that allows you to log the grounds you have visited. According to that, I've been to 190 grounds, but given that the site lists 2,163 in England. Clearly, I have a long way to go. Thankfully I have little intention of even trying to get anywhere near all them  (or even a quarter of them), but I have no doubt that there are people desperate to work out how they can visit them all (before starting on another country).

I'll hold my hands up now and admit that when I go to a football match, I do like to get a programme: I might even be a bit disappointed if there was one printed but I could not get hold of a copy, but if a club doesn't issue one, then it isn't the end of the world. Out in my garage I have a number of boxes containing the programmes I have collected over the years. Sadly, during one of my many house moves during the mid-1990's when my life was somewhat turbulent, one box has gone missing. All of those that remain (bar some Romford FC programmes that are from the period before I started watching them) are from games I have actually attended: at one time I had a large number of programmes I had bought from dealers or football club shops, these were discarded many years ago. An exception is a programme from the 1949 FA Amateur Cup Final, the first ever played at Wembley Stadium, between Bromley FC and Romford FC, which I bought on eBay a year or so ago. It remains the most expensive programme I have ever bought (it was about £15), but obviously nowhere near as expensive as some you will find online or at auction - the most expensive, for the 1882 FA Cup final between Old Etonians and Blackburn Rovers, sold at auction for a world record £35,250. That clearly is an antique and has rarity value, however even recent, more mundane - and one would think, more common -programmes sell for decent prices.

For the football goer who must have a programme, there is now another piece of paper to chase; the teamsheet. Once found only in the press-box, teamsheets are now produced by clubs at much lower levels of the game than in days gone by: the affordability of printers and other computer equipment has made sure of that. So now it is not unusual to see a club official distributing teamsheets prior to a game, which on occasion provokes a rush to grab one from the assembled groundhoppers[1]. 

From The Non-League Paper, Diary of a Groundhopper regularly
demonstrates the importance of the match programme to such visitors.

These days, as programmes rarely feature team line-ups that are even vaguely accurate. At all levels of the game - not just in the Premier League - many now just list each clubs' squads,  and the days of the stadium announcer declaring, "United's team is as per your programme" are long, long gone. As a result, the teamsheet has started to assume greater importance, hence the frequent scramble to obtain one when they appear.

But the humble football programme may, just may, be on its last legs. The internet has supplanted it as the football fan's major source of information about his club, teamsheets provide a more accurate guide as to who is playing, and in any case, print deadlines mean that programmes can never be as up to date as the websites that all leagues and clubs now have. When I write an article for my club's programme it is not unusual for me to find that between my emailing it to our programme editor and the date of publication, whatever  I have written has been overtaken by events. Many clubs now offer their match programmes in digital format and the Evo-Stik South League no longer makes it compulsory for clubs to produce a physical programme, a digital one is deemed adequate and Uxbridge FC recently announced that they will trial issuing only an online programme this season.

The online programme has plenty of advantages: it won't sell out, won't get wet or crumpled in the rain, and collecting them won't take up vast tracts of your living space. The groundhopper who went to the ground only to find that all of the programmes had been sold could have downloaded one on his phone. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't have written the team changes and the score on it.

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[1] Groundhopper: Someone who visits as many grounds as possible, although there is more, much more, to it than that. Groundhoppers frequently construct complex rules that determine the circumstances under which a ground, or club can be ticked. This blog, http://onion-bag.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/definition-of-groundhopper.html goes some way toward explaining the phenomenon.

Any Colour You Like

Perhaps prompted by the reports that come 2040, Britain is to ban all new petrol and diesel cars, my daughter asked me last week if I would consider buying a hybrid, or an electric car in the near future. On balance, probably not, I replied, and the question may never need answering definitively since I will be into my eighties by the time the ban comes into force and for any number of reasons may no longer be driving anything.

The Toyota Prius, possibly the best-known hybrid on the market.

News of the UK's proposed ban comes hot on the heels of a similar announcement from the French government, and the decision by Volvo that all the cars they manufacture after 2019 will be entirely, or at least partially, battery-powered. The UK's move will also see the banning of hybrid vehicles, and so as with Henry Ford's remark in 1909 - that customers could have one of his Model-T's in any colour they liked, so long as it was black - come 2040, consumers will be able to buy any car they like, so long as it is electric, unless someone comes up with a viable alternative fuel source.[1]

Perhaps steampunk cars are the answer? Taken from repokar.com

The reasons for the proposed ban are clear and significant: air quality in UK cities, especially London, is so poor that it is thought to be responsible for at least 40,000 deaths every year.  Twelve-thousand people died in London in 1952 as a result of smog, resulting in the Clean Air Act of 1956, but whereas the so-called "Great Smog" was clear for all to see, the hazy conditions that are the only real outward sign of poor air quality today are easier to miss, but are having a marked and deleterious effect on our health. Obviously, something has to be done, and addressing pollution produced by cars with internal combustion engines is equally obviously a major part of the answer.

The Great Smog of 1952

But there is a whole raft of reasons why addressing the problem by banning cars needs a great deal more thought and consideration than I am prepared to give our legislators credit for. It is one thing to bring in laws to ban the sale of petrol driven vehicles, another thing entirely to comprehensively introduce such legislation without creating complete anarchy. Firstly, since the ban would be on new petrol and diesel vehicles only, the implication is that existing cars and vans on the roads in 2040 would not suddenly become illegal, but - although not currently stated - one imagines that existing vehicles would be given a deadline for scrapping, or at least incur punitive charges in terms of road tax and congestion charging. If not - and with current vehicles easily lasting twenty years or more - the proposed legislation could have little or no effect until 2060, or 2070 perhaps, unless other manufacturers follow Volvo's lead.

Then there is Fuel Duty, which for petrol and diesel currently amounts to 57.95 pence per litre and earns government the best part of £28billion per annum. No petrol or diesel vehicles means no Fuel Duty and a large chunk of government revenue lost, which would have to be recouped somewhere. Another means of fleecing the motorist - sorry, paying for the upkeep of the nation's roads - will need to be found.

Over half the price you pay at the pump is duty - and that is without VAT on top.

Driving or walking around my local neighbourhood, I have seen a few electric cars, but never seen one charging outside someone's property. And as the map below shows, public charging points in the area are thin on the ground. That is going to have to change if electric cars are to be a viable replacement for conventionally powered vehicles. And in our area - which I have no doubt is fairly typical - a very significant proportion of motorists park their cars at the road side, not in garages or on drives, so I remain curious as to how many of these motorists, who may have to park fifty yards or more from their front door, are going to charge their cars at home. Unless of course, there are public charging points every ten yards or so along the pavement.

Then there is the question of exactly where all the electricity needed to charge these cars is coming from? The National Grid, which has more than once in the recent past warned of potential power blackouts as demand outstrips supply, said recently that peak demand would increase by 50% if the country switches to electric vehicles. How will sufficient electricity be generated? There are suggestions that to cope with the increased demand for electricity, we would need to build ten nuclear power stations or erect 10,000 wind turbines. Given the controversy over the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station - not to mention the cost - I for one have absolutely no confidence that come 2040, the UK will be able to service all the electric vehicles that could be on our roads, either in terms of adequate supply or charging points. Unless we start now, building power stations at a rate hitherto unheard of, and covering the whole of the countryside with wind turbines and solar panels, in twenty-three years time there will be a whole load of cars that no one can drive because they cannot charge them up.

A designer's dream, never to be a reality?

Given that every new proposal, for every type of power station - be it nuclear, or coal fired, or wind farm - inevitably brings with it opposition from local residents and other pressure groups, and given that even once any objections have been overruled and planning approved, getting that installation contributing to the National Grid takes years, not weeks (Hinkley Point B came on stream in 1976, nine years after construction began), the announcement of the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles ought really to have come after an agreement to build the requisite number of power stations, generating the necessary amount of power, had been reached.

Then there are the batteries that power electric cars. At present, the maximum range you will get out of an electric car is about 280 miles, but for that you need to buy the Tesla Model S, priced at a minimum of £57,000 - out of the question for the average motorist. For a reasonably priced car - let's say under £20,000 - the best you can get is the Renault ZOE (in fact it is just about the only one you can get) with a range of just about one-hundred miles, although if you can stretch to £30,000, one of their higher-spec models will run to 250 miles. If governments and car manufacturers are serious about converting us all to electric cars, then their maximum range - and battery charging times - are factors to which a whole lot of serious consideration must be given.

The Renault ZOE has a range that won't even get you from London to Bristol on a single charge.

The demise of the internal combustion engine and our conversion to electric cars is probably inevitable, but setting a date and sitting back and doing nothing else is not enough. Government -both national and local - legislators, energy suppliers, and car manufacturers need to get together now to start planning for 2040. If they don't then I shall not be sorry if by that time I have given up driving; possibly I would have no choice anyway.

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[1] Alternatives to petrol and diesel include steam and compressed air - I like the steampunk notion of a steam powered car. See https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/features/eight-alternative-vehicle-fuels-to-petrol-and-diesel-you-never-knew-about/

Twenty-Twenty Vision

Last week I went to The Oval to watch Surrey play Essex in the NatWest T20 Blast; it was the first cricket match I had been to since 2006 when I was coincidentally at The Oval for the Saturday of the England v Pakistan Test match. I used to be a regular cricket watcher many years ago, but like a lot of things in life, my habits and circumstances changed - as did the other people I used to watch Essex with - and I stopped going.

A packed Oval (eventually) under the lights for the T20 Blast match between Surrey and Essex.

When I did watch Essex play, back in the 1970's and 1980's, it was normally one-day games in the John Player League or Benson & Hedges Cup, with occasional forays into the County Championship to watch a day's play at grounds like Valentines Park in Ilford, sadly no longer used by the county side who now rarely venture away from their headquarters at Chelmsford. Essex concentrating matches at one ground rather than taking games around the county is just one of many, many changes that cricket has seen in the years since I stopped going to matches. Grounds generally have improved beyond compare, for instance, the facilities that Essex offered spectators forty years ago would not be acceptable today, indeed many would breach Health and Safety regulations. And on the pitch, the game has changed immeasurably as well.

Valentines Park in Ilford now plays host only to club cricket.

The short form of the game - the matches limited to 60, 50, or 40 overs in competitions such as the Gillette (later NatWest) Cup, Benson & Hedges Cup, and John Player League respectively- has always had its detractors: there have always been people who see the four-day County Championship or five-day international Test matches as the 'proper' format, and view the limited overs game as an entertainment rather than proper cricket. But at least the 60, 50, or 40 over matches gave teams and players scope to build innings, to shape matches by switching tactics and with bowling changes: the Twenty20 game is to many people, just not cricket.

What is indisputable is that Twenty20 cricket has required players to be fitter, more athletic, stronger, and with better reactions. You only have to compare the running between the wickets and the fielding in modern day cricket - especially the Twenty20 game - to the pedestrian performances of thirty or forty years ago to see the benefits that the short-form of the game have brought; even the mundane act of returning the ball to the bowler is conducted with a speed and ferocity that a 1960's cricketer could not have achieved fielding in anger. But Twenty20 cricket demands that as many runs as possible are scored as quickly as possible, and inevitably such an objective means that technique is sacrificed. The debate about the pros and cons of Twenty20 cricket as it affects the standards of play will doubtless rumble on for some time, and by more expert commentators than me, but it is not just at the wicket and out in the field that the Twenty20 has generated discussion, and will continue to.

Off the pitch, Twenty20 cricket has, like other limited over formats, been a hit with the spectators. In 2014, over 704,000 people watched Twenty20 games, compared with just over 510,000 who watched County Championship games in  2015. The game I saw at The Oval was sold out, as are many Twenty20 games, yet many in the crowd - and I'm more inclined to call them an audience - seemed less than entirely focussed on what was going on in front of them. Many people have said that Twenty20 cricket is for people who aren't interested in cricket, (in fact, someone said it to me just last Saturday), and from my own observations, that is pretty close to the mark.

Last week at The Oval, by 6.30pm, when the first ball was bowled, there were rows and rows of empty seats in front of me. They filled up - eventually - with groups of people who seemed equally interested in eating, drinking, and chatting as they were in the cricket, perhaps more so in fact, given the frequency with which they disappeared to replenish their supplies of nachos, cheeseburgers, and beer. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with that - if that's what they want to do, who am I to object? - but conversely, while nipping off to get a snack or a drink occasionally is almost a necessity if you are watching a whole day of a Test match, where play may run into seven hours or more, doing so in a Twenty20 game - which lasts less than half that time and is a lot more fast paced - means missing a fairly big chunk of what you primarily paid for.

I would surmise that for many in the crowd at The Oval, the evening was as much a social occasion as a sporting one. Looked at that way, a warm summer evening spent outdoors in the company of friends, with virtually limitless food and drink, is a lot of people's idea of time well spent. And it comes with the added bonus of being in pleasant surroundings - The Oval is attractive and ticks all of the boxes, in terms of facilities - and the cricket gives you something to watch when the conversation runs dry, even if you are not an enthusiast.

From the perspective of the clubs, the income that one-day games generate is crucial to their survival. The eighteen First Class counties had just 80,000 members (akin to the football club season ticket holder) between them in 2016, so Twenty20 cricket, with its sell-out crowds and significant income from peripherals, keeps the County Championship game afloat. There is nothing wrong with that, even if the majority in the grounds are casual supporters at best, it does no harm:  I am a great believer in the principle that any club, be it a cricket club, rugby club or football club, should maximise their income from people who have little or no interest in the club itself.

A fairly typical attendance at a County Championship match. Photo: Andrew Fox

Twenty20 cricket is a world away from the game I first watched. The pyrotechnics, the white ball, the coloured kits complete with shirt numbers and players' names, the music that greets a boundary or a wicket, it's all a whole lot of razzmatazz that a spectator from a 1960's County Championship game would barely recognise as cricket. In some ways, Twenty20 cricket is emblematic of today's society, where attention spans have been shortened as the internet reduces our consumption of news and current affairs into increasingly bite-sized chunks, while watching a film, or a show, or a sporting event has to be accompanied by food and drink in increasingly industrial sized quantities.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed my first experience of Twenty20 cricket - even if my team did lose. It has made me more interested in the game than I have been for a while, to the extent that I have bought a ticket for one day of a County Championship game at Chelmsford next month. Fingers crossed that the weather is kind.

From Behind The Sofa

Apart from the occasional close-up scenes of surgery, which I may watch through my fingers or turn away from completely, I haven't been forced to take refuge behind the sofa while watching television since the early 1960's. The shows that had me cowering behind the furniture back then, were Fireball XL5 and Dr Who, although while the former only rarely had me doing so - I seem to recall some skeletal robot from one episode that scared me, although I may be confusing it with the show's resident robot, Robert - Dr Who frequently had me torn between watching the show  and finding sanctuary from it. The Daleks and the Cybermen, two of science fiction's most iconic monsters - equalled only by the Borg in Star Trek for my money - were the creatures that terrified me the most, although the Yeti ran them close.

I grew out of Gerry Anderson's creations with Thunderbirds, although I did watch a few episodes of UFO, but I cannot now recall when I stopped watching Dr Who, although I do know that it was long before the BBC stopped making the show in the 1990's. When it was revived in 2005, with Christopher Eccleston taking the part as the ninth Doctor, I gave it a spin, but frankly, it did not pique my interest sufficiently to carry on watching it. There are, however, plenty of people who are fanatical about the programme, and as with many shows, they will drill down into the minutiae, picking up on any errors in continuity or plot, speculating about the actions - past, and future - of the characters, in short treating it almost as seriously as real life. Now, I am not decrying them for their enthusiasm and devotion, far from it, as I have been the same with other programmes over the years, and one part of Dr Who that always has fans and the media agog, is the speculation over who will be the new Doctor.

Christopher Eccleston was the ninth Doctor when the show rebooted in 2005.

The regeneration of the Doctor is a useful device enabling the producers to make a virtue of replacing the lead actor rather than risking the sorts of disappointments that have arisen in other series when a new actor has taken over an established role. I'm particularly thinking of  Alias Smith and Jones, where Roger Davis replaced Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes after Duel's untimely death and the show never recovered.

Alias Smith and Jones never recovered after the death of Pete Duel (left).

Inevitably, each new Doctor has their fans and their detractors, but never before has there been the sort of outcry we have seen in the last few days since the BBC announced that the new Doctor would be Jodie Whittaker, principally it seems because she is, err, a woman. I'm not especially familiar with her work (the only thing I can think of that I have seen her in was Attack The Block), but she appeared in the highly acclaimed Broadchurch, and no doubt she is an accomplished actor, however it is the mere fact that she is a woman playing a role that had previously only been played by men that has exercised many people. Whether you see the move as bravely challenging gender stereotypes and encouraging more women and girls to watch the show, while creating a role model for female fans, or an attempt by the arch- liberal BBC to pander to the PC brigade, depends on your preconceptions and how dedicated you are to the show, I suppose. Or perhaps, given the gender pay gap that has become apparent following the announcement of BBC stars' salaries this week, this is an economy measure.

Jodie Whittaker is the new Doctor. Photo: Colin Hutton/BBC

The controversy over Jodie Whittaker's casting illustrates the difference between how fans and writers feel about a show. While the writers may want to innovate, to try new styles and approaches to reinvigorate a familiar favourite, fans want - if not exactly more of the same - evolution, not revolution. Fans of shows like Dr Who - or Star Trek to name but one other - can be quite possessive and proprietorial, and become somewhat distraught when a significant change is made to the style or content of the show,  just as when bands radically alter their musical style (think Genesis or Yes, who became increasingly poppy in the 1980's, much to the dismay of their hardcore fans). What these aficionados crave are variations on the theme that first attracted them, not radical departures from the tried and tested.

Some people were in favour of a female Doctor...

...some were not...

...and some just wanted to point out the obvious.

Film franchises are different. With each new reboot comes a new actor in the starring role, and it is easier to accept a new face in films where either a single film or a few sequels have come before than it is with a long running TV series that is considered to be continuous. That isn't to say we don't have our favourites for a film role, however. My view is that Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy represents the best version of the franchise, and Christian Bale is the best Batman. Other people will have different views.  Sometimes, however, it is simply the first actor you see in a role that becomes the ideal representation of the character; Sean Connery will forever be James Bond as far as I am concerned, however other people will claim Roger Moore, or Pierce Brosnan as their quintessential Bond. 

There was a rumour, and it generated a lot of debate at the time, that Idris Elba could be the next Bond - once Daniel Craig turns in his Walther PPK - which may have dismayed those who could not see past Bond being a white Scotsman as described by Ian Fleming. But just as Dr Who regenerates, a radical change in Bond's appearance could be explained with the simple strategy of making the character a cypher, by making James Bond a nom de guerre. Personally, I could quite see Idris Elba as Bond, although I could not see Bond ever being portrayed by a woman, since unlike Dr Who, Bond is not supposed to be an alien from some distant world where our notions of gender may be irrelevant. But it is conceivable that Bond could be played as a gay man, because in the real world, where homosexuality once automatically prohibited employment with MI5 and MI6, the intelligence services now welcome people from the LGBT community, and so much so that in 2016, MI5 headed Stonewall’s[1] top 100 employers’ list.

Idris Elba. Photo: Independent

If you are a dyed in the wool devotee of Dr Who or James Bond, you may consider my views a tad flippant, probably because I am not an enthusiast of either, but I maintain that the idea that James Bond is a nom de guerre would work well. Once Jodie Whittaker's tenure as the Doctor comes to an end, and whether it is marked a success or a failure, speculation over who should be the next Time Lord will erupt again, and I'm getting in early with my choice for the 14th Doctor[2], and that would be Professor Stephen Hawking.

The Fourteenth Doctor?

And the more you think about that, the more you will think I'm right, after all, who better to play a Time Lord than the man who wrote A Brief History of Time?

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[1] Stonewall campaigns for the equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people across Britain. See www.stonewall.org.uk

[2] Or will it be 15th, since the BBC's numbering seems to have ignored John Hurt's portrayal? There again, other actors who have played the Doctor in other productions made by the corporation have also been excluded from the sequence.

Old Money

It may be the best part of fifty years since Britain switched to decimal currency, but there still remains the odd occasion when I cannot help but look at the price of something, a newspaper perhaps, and convert the price into old money. "Ten bob for a paper!" I will exclaim (usually just mentally, but sometimes out loud). It proves that old habits die hard...very hard.

"Ten bob for a newspaper!"

The conversion from pounds, shillings, and pence (LSD) to decimal currency back in 1971 was greatly facilitated by the short drama, shown repeatedly on television, called Granny Gets The Point, in which Doris Hare played a grandmother who was taught how to use the new-fangled coinage by her grandson. Naturally, this being Britain, embracing the principle of a decimal system could only be achieved by retaining some non-decimal measure as part of the process, hence the retention of the old sixpence (worth 2½p) and the introduction of the decimal half-penny coin. 

While the old sixpence, which remained legal tender until 1980, was held in great affection - I found one a few years ago and came over all nostalgic - the half-penny was universally unloved. It was a nuisance for shop-keepers and bank cashiers,  and it was ignored by anyone who saw one lying on the pavement, yet it remained in circulation until 1984, retained on the grounds that it was an important factor in the defence against inflation.

The old tanner was held in great affection by the British public...

...the same could not be said for the ha'penny.

Just as the value of the half-penny fell to the point that it was ignored by most people - many were just thrown away - so the penny and two-penny pieces may have outlived their usefulness. It has been reported that prior to the 2015 General Election, the then Chancellor, George Osborne, proposed abolishing the 2p and 1p coins - largely on the grounds that they cost more to produce than they are worth. The plan was abandoned when he was told that similar plans in Australia had met with much opposition from charities who collect a lot of low-value coins. And just as with the half-penny, withdrawing the two bronze coins would inevitably lead concerns about increased prices and increased inflation.

But would it? When cash was king and paying by cheque was rare, and by card unheard of, the argument made sense, but now when the majority of transactions are by card or some other electronic method, it loses some validity. The psychological effect of the .99 price would be a greater driver to keep prices down than the abolition of the 2p and 1p would be to drive them up. Even without the bronze coins in circulation, prices for electronic transactions could remain as they are; only cash prices would need to be rounded up. Ah, but that's unfair on the elderly who still cling to paying by cash, goes the argument, and yes there remains a significant minority of the older generation for whom paying by card for a loaf of bread and a pint of milk remains anathema, but even my old Mum happily embraced Chip and Pin before she died, and would probably have been happy with contactless payment too. And just maybe, retailers would round cash prices down to the nearest 5p or 10p...maybe. 

As the years pass, the number of cash transactions will fall through choice, regardless of what coins and notes remain in circulation. Until just a few years ago, I would draw a sum of cash from an ATM on a weekly basis, but now I find I do so less frequently. Similarly, I used to spend cash every day, now I often go days without using notes or coins. There's the Oyster card for rail and bus fares, an app to pay for food and drink in coffee shops, and the contactless bank card for most other things.  I read somewhere that about two in five British people would be happy to do without cash and rely on the electronic alternatives and in mainland Europe, that figure goes up to three in five, apparently. In April this year, Britons spent nearly £4billion using contactless cards, nearly 150% more than twelve months before, proof that we are moving in the direction of a cashless culture.

In Sweden, cash has become such an underused medium for transactions that some banks no longer accept cash deposits in some branches, and many have no ATMs. In  Swedish shops, cash is now used in only around one in five transactions, compared with the global average of seven in ten, and according to Niklas Arvidsson, an associate professor at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden is likely to become a cashless society by 2020. Even the homeless magazine salesmen take electronic payments, and church collections are 85% cash free. And removing cash from the economy aids the fight against crime. Bank robberies and ATM ram-raids become a thing of the past, while money laundering becomes harder, although as we all know, electronic payment methods are hardly immune, nor are they safe from other types of fraudulent activity.

In 2016, a Big Issue salesman became the first in Britain to accept payments via Apple Pay.

An obvious concern about the movement away from cash is that the ease of use of contactless cards, Apple Pay and the like encourage binge spending, that the value of the transactions are less apparent, and it becomes easier to get into debt. Clearly, digging notes and coins from wallet and pocket focuses the mind on the price of a purchase more vividly than merely tapping a contactless card on a reader, but the same things were said when cheque cards were introduced, and when credit cards first became popular and more widely held.

More insidious perhaps is the likely growth of surge pricing that is more easily facilitated when payments are made through electronic methods. Sometimes called dynamic pricing, surge pricing is a strategy in which business set flexible prices which are essentially determined by supply and demand in real-time. Football clubs use dynamic pricing in setting ticket prices, for instance with Premier League clubs in particular categorising games in different price bands depending on the opposition. The London Congestion charge and some other toll road charges are another example of dynamic pricing, while taxi firm Uber base their fares entirely on this principle.

And the practice is spreading. Last year, Marks and Spencer ran a trial where the price of sandwiches was reduced in the mornings to encourage people to buy their lunch early. While surge pricing for theatre tickets, concert tickets, and football matches is well understood and purchasers will be well aware in advance, a purchase that is made on a daily basis but which may vary in price depending on what time of day it is made is subtle enough to be missed by all but the most alert of shoppers. It is certainly something consumers will have to be watchful for in the future.

The price of your M&S Prawn sandwich may well be determined by when you buy it.

One day it may go even further. Not just dynamic pricing, but pricing tailored to the individual, based on their spending habits. Retailers already send us discount vouchers according to our shopping habits based on the data they collect through loyalty cards, so the day when that data is used to personalise our shopping experience to affect the price we pay at the till cannot be far away. We've come a long way since the half-penny was abolished, doing away with the penny and tuppence would be nothing compared to what could lie ahead.

Wish You Were Here

The picture postcard, long the staple of seaside holidays, with its bland coastal view and desperate platitudes about hotel, food, and weather, ought to be one of those long lost reminders of time past, totally supplanted by social media. Yet as recently as 2006, the number of cards being sent in Britain was actually increasing, with the Royal Mail delivering 135 million that year, 30 million more than in 2003. It may be that in the interim the numbers have dropped off somewhat (these were the latest figures I for postcard mailings I could find), and frankly it seems unlikely that anyone but the over 50's are still sending cards, but their longevity and popularity still surprise me, particularly when, now I have thought about it, I have neither sent nor received a holiday postcard for at least twenty years. And when we go on holiday, it never crosses my mind, or Val's mind, to send any cards - and I very much doubt it occurs to our daughters to do so.

Walk along any seafront, at home or abroad, and the souvenir shops are all stocking postcards, and presumably, people are still buying them, although my guess would be that many, if not most, are bought as keepsakes rather than being written and posted. Those who are buying them to send to friends and family are faced with those twin dilemmas; what to write and when to post. As a rule of thumb, the further you are from home, the earlier the card has to be sent, otherwise the chances are good that you will get home before the card does - and clearly, once you get half way through the holiday and no cards have been sent, then you aren't sending any. 

As to what to write, then writing your cards on day one, or day two, means there is little to write about beyond, "Hotel nice, weather nice, food nice. Wish you were here." But leave it too long and a more candid card might reveal, "Hotel full of drunks, got food poisoning from dodgy shellfish, rained three days on the trot, family at each other's throats. You're better off at home!" So uninspired was I when it came to card writing that I seriously contemplated having a rubber stamp made up with some stock phrases that I could emboss my cards with, because let's face it, what people write on postcards is pretty banal.

Plenty of cards on sale on Brighton seafront recently.

Around about the time I last sent a postcard the price of a First Class stamp was 26p, although a postcard had a special rate of 20p. Now it is 65p (no different for postcards) and for the average family, the cost of sending cards to friends, family and work colleagues probably exceeds the price of fish 'n' chips all round, another reason to upload a few pictures to Facebook with some suitably pithy comments instead. Postcard apps like TouchNote - over nine million cards sent since 2008 - have proven that people still like to send a physical card, although such apps represent an awkward half-way house between the technophile and the technophobe and are probably best for the tech savvy to send cards to members of the family who have so far eschewed the internet.

TouchNote is just one of several apps that allow you to send your own photos as a postcard.

Since postcards date back to the 1870's, conventional wisdom might suggest that with age comes value and that a card from the so-called Golden Age (1905-1915) might be worth collecting and, by extension, be quite valuable - except that during that period, Britons sent about 750 million postcards, or about 2 million per day! Hardly worth anything in terms of rarity value, then, with cards from that era typically only fetching a pound or two.  Postcards were, I suppose, the Edwardian equivalent of email. With the Royal Mail offering multiple collections and deliveries every day, (in 1889, Londoners received twelve deliveries a day) it was possible to send a card and receive an answer within the same day; asking for a response 'By Return Post' had a more literal meaning then than it does now.

We may think we live in frenetic times now, but for the Victorian and Edwardian gentlefolk, twelve posts a day - particular for those unused to them - must potentially have been a source of some stress. John Walker Harrington, writing in 1906 about the volume of postcards being sent in America, said, "Unless such manifestations are checked, millions of persons of now normal lives and irreproachable habits will become victims of faddy degeneration of the brain." The Lord alone knows what he would have made of email.

I started writing this with the apprehension that the postcard was in terminal decline, based solely on my own experience, and while the number of cards being sent is clearly nowhere near the peak of one-hundred or so years ago, the medium seems to be holding up well enough despite the obvious immediacy, ease, and versatility of the social media alternatives.

If you are still in the habit of sending postcards when you are on holiday, then good for you. If like me, you are out of the habit, perhaps now is the time to return to the practise, after all,

Facebook and the like are all very well, but a postcard carries a much more personal touch.