Cheque mate?

Due to a variety of ignoble past errors, affiliations and not to put to fine a point on it DUBIOUS MEN, I have for years now lived a cash-only lifestyle. This in some ways has a sort of recherche vintage cool about it but does irritate creditors when I can't make 'an immediate phone payment using a debit card' No bank worth it's salt is going to give me a debit card.  It would be a highly ill-advised move akin to employing Nick Leeson if you are Barings. Next stop - international forclosure and penury. HSBC hardly need that on their already guilt stained conscience.

It is only very recently that I got a credit card and I only use that for insane drunken e-bay purchases, or at least did before they closed my account over what I still maintain amounts to nothing more than a horrible misunderstanding. Not to worry! I still have the shower radio shaped like an Avon Skin-So-Soft bottle so I haven't really lost out.

Moving hither, I was concerned therefore to discover that there are no ATMs on the Islands and in the time-honoured tradition of banks - the only branch of Standard Chartered is never open when you need it. Or at least I thought it wasn't. Then I learned of the highly civilised practice locally of everybody having an hour and half lunch break except Standard Chartered.

Pity the poor tellers! While everyone else nips home for a pie and a pint, walks the dog, puts peat on the fire, shears a few sheep, smokes 40 fags or just demands soup with menace from Jacs, the blue neckerchiefed staff are forced to work and witness the horrible sight of Stanley rush hour through the window. Stop! look and Listen! As many as 40 4x4s may be clogging the byways of the city centre.  The words of the old Malibu advert come to mind - 'Oh no man! Its total gridlock!'

'Good' I thought. 'I can do my marking (Ha! The road to hell and all that) eat some pre-delivered soup then stagger down to the bank and get some cold hard cash over the counter and still be back in time to run a fabulously enriching lunchtime club'. As it turns out however, not even that is necessary as nobody much uses cash or credit but the staple of 1950s Britain - the cheque book.

Now I am all for a Luddite approach to technology. The only time I have ever used a chip and pin machine is on the numerous, I grant you, occasions when my mother forgets her PIN in Morrisons. She will get in a mess at the checkout while huge queues accumulate behind her puching any 4 digit number that comes into her addled mind until the machine finally blows up and everyone starts crying and shouting. At which point, I will sigh, put me fag out end enter the correct number before murder occurs. Not in itself a simple process as I am completely blind and can never see the display. Horrible scenes all round I assure you.

But the last time I wrote a cheque was in 1988 and even then I had to have a cheque guarentee card or the bloke in Victoria Wines would chase me out of the shop with an iron bar. I'd forgotton how to do it and further how to go about that most archaic of rituals, 'balancing the cheque book', something I remeber my mother doing religiously every Sunday afternoon, a copy of her bank statement alongside her while I went upstairs 'to play me tapes'. Half an hour of invective, muttering and 'I bought WHAT?' would curl up the stairs frankly destroying my enagagement with Adam Ant warbling his Berundi bletherings, before she finally gave up and took to drawing endless fish on the back of the phone directory. It's no wonder I've turned out like I have.

I was advised to order two cheque books intially and not to expect them to last long and further not to concern myself horribly about the idea of writing a cheque for two quid as everyone does apparently. Pffft! The day I enter a retail establishment and only shell out two quid will be the day both kids have left home and I've given up smoking, drinking and eating sweets. In other words a cold day in hell. Neither does it matter much if you are too flummoxed by drink to remember to sign it. As everyone knows everyone else and where you live I have heard tell of incidents where the staff of The Narrows have knocked on the door at 9am on a Saturday and kindly requested that the hanging occupant now sign their cheque. Brilliant!

When I collected my two shintycrisp cheque books on Wednesday I grinned to myself about my paper based 'liscence to bounce' and immediately stopped poisoning the children with my cooking and headed out for tea. I was handed a stamp in The Narrows shortnening by about ten minutes the writing of my first (wrong glasses) at which point I started muttering about Large Print Cheques and the disability act to a captive audience that I later discovered much to my embarressment was a coat stand.

The next morning I experienced what can only be described as shopper's remorse. I called my mother and enquired about how one might go about balancing it.
'Never mind that!' she squawked, 'the neighbors are in uproar. There is something alien and wrong with that voile panel I liberated from Dunteachin. Its offended the WI. What's the scoop?'

Discombobutated momentarily by her rambling I put down my cheque book and considered the matter
'What voile panel?'
'The purple one. With sequins'
'Ah.'
'What do you mean 'Ah', WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?'
'Those are not sequins, they are miniature solar powered LED lights'
'Are you quite mad? What are you talking about?'

Some time ago, I was  forced to enter a Romantic Liaison with a physics teacher. It wasn't my fault you understand, just one of those terrible cross roads in life where you fail to take the road less travelled and end up spending every weekend in Dunhelm looking at nets and beige faux suede cushion covers. During this miscreant period I bought said voil panel and after a particulalrly mind-boggling evening working out compound interest on a car payment with the physics teacher I locked myself in a cupboard and shifted the LED lights about a bit so that when the heat of the day dissipated and the gloaming darkened the streets, the word 'Knickers' would be seen writ large accross his lounge window.

As it turned out The Physivcs teacher appeared to be unimpressed by a purple jewel encrusted voile panel and it ended up languishing in some forgotton cupboard until liberated by my mother and causing a great deal of upset. Needles to say I never did find out how to balance my cheque book, so I had to work it out all by myself. Which I did. And I can say with full qualification I am skint.

But I can probably get away with a two quid spend.....

Boarh out