7 April 2021

The other day, buying an ice cream in a remote area, we were unable to pay by card due to the intermittent coverage on their credit card facilities. We had to use – wait for it – shock, horror…..cash.

We were actually very fortunate in actually having cash available on this occasion. We just don’t seem to carry cash any more. It was just a freak coincidence that my husband had money in his wallet. If it had been just me, I would have had to go ice cream-less, because I didn’t even have my purse with me. I can normally operate quite successfully just carrying my phone.

It did, as these things seem to do, prompt discussion about how some things – like cold hard cash – seem to be disappearing, possibly for good, from our lives.

Like a home landline telephone, DVD’s (heck! Even blu-rays!), CD’s, CD players, handwritten letters in envelopes, small televisions, even pens and pencils and notepads – many things are being rapidly superseded by an electronic way of doing things and will be obsolete from our lives before too long. Even the dreaded bill arriving in the letterbox has been replaced by the eco-friendly dreaded bill arriving in your email inbox instead!

Shed tools that used to require a long extension chord to operate now come on a battery version. And the same battery can be utilised over any number of things that dwell in the shed.

If you go to a concert of some sort, chances are your ticket will be a barcode that you have on your phone. Our football membership card this year has become an electronic barcode too!

I’m going to suggest that if we revise this discussion in ten years, some of these things will be dim, distant memories. Just like the things that have, in the past ten years, disappeared from our lives – like street directories, encyclopaedias, vhs videos, credit card imprinting machines, and personal mp3 music players.

As I reach for my reading glasses to have a final edit of this document, however, I note that there are some things that haven’t changed – like my reading glasses, real books (despite there being other options available, they aren’t disappearing any time soon), gardening, and the desire to travel.

What have you got to add to my list in the category of what’s going, going, gone!?!?!?