Cnut Songs #2: Take The Cash!

Last week, Sam and I had a few days away in North Yorkshire, staying in a Travelodge near York, and visiting Fountain's Abbey (above), The Forbidden Corner (highlight of the trip), The National Railway Museum, Jorvik Centre and a few other places of interest. It was a great boys' holiday and the weather held up most of the time. All good, all good. But being the Cnut I am, I couldn't help but get wound up by a few things...

The first I'll mention is when we stopped for tea on Wednesday afternoon at an upmarket burger chain. Luckily we'd booked a table, because it seems in the post-Covid world, you're out of luck if you try to turn up without a booking. A number of people were turned away without one, despite a fair few empty tables. 

The last time we went to York was exactly two years earlier, and back in that wonderful pre-Covid age, we didn't pre-book anything. We maybe had to queue a little, but we got into whatever we wanted. This time: no booking, no joy. The most ridiculous example of this was at the Railway Museum where we had pre-booked our visit... but then were told we would also have to pre-book a place on the kids' mini train ride. When we went to the booking desk to do this, we were told they didn't have any free rides for the next three hours. By which time we were pre-booked at our next attraction. It won't be long before we'll have to book to use the toilet... and with advancing years, that'll be a lot of bookings.

But back to the burger restaurant, where we had a pretty good meal... until it came time to pay and I reached for my wallet... only for the waitress to stare in horror at the £20 notes I tried to pull out.

"Oh no! I'm very sorry," she spluttered, "but we're card only. (Insert name of chain here, or just say The Establishment) don't take cash anymore. We are a cashless restaurant."

And here I am, shouting at the sea. The last two years has fast-tracked us into a cashless economy, but call me old-fashioned... I like the paper folding stuff. I like to have some note in my wallet and not pay for everything on card. I like the choice. But now that choice is being taken away from us. And the thing that winds me up the most about this is that there was no warning. No signs, as you'd get in a sandwich shop that didn't have a card machine, so identified themselves from the moment you walked in as a "Cash Only" shop. The expectation that I would pay on card - and that I would be able to - was never in question. But what if I hadn't been able to? What if I didn't have my card on me, or there was nothing left in my account, or I'd cut up my credit cards to stop me spending what I didn't have? Would they still have refused my cash then? It's still legal tender, isn't it? Do they have the right to make that choice for me?

I already feel like this column is in danger of making me sound like an angry Daily Mail reader, but this wasn't the only time this happened during our break. Another establishment also refused to accept payment via a £20 note. "I can't take them any more," the lad behind the counter told me, "I got in trouble the last time I did... have you got anything smaller?"

I'll leave it to the conspiracy theorists to tell you why They don't want us to have cash any more. Me, I'm just lamenting the passing of the old ways. We lose a little more of them every day.