Our smallest grandchild has just recently started pre-school. This, by the way, is an institution that I’m sure didn’t exist when our children small. In the school during which your were going to be five you joined the reception class. Then you went into section year infants, third year infants and on into junior school. That’s pretty much how it had always been. Now you have pre-school (not obligatory), reception, year one, year two and so on, seemingly for ever.
When people talk about school years by numbers, I have to stop and work out what it means. This applies right through secondary school too. I have to remind myself that the notoriously awkward “Third Years” of my secondary school teaching days (that age when hormones kick in - although that seems to happen even earlier nowadays - and teenagers turn into stroppy know-it-alls) are now Year Nines, but just as awkward! And Year 12 and Year 13 are still really Lower and Upper Sixth for me.
Actually I think a form of pre-school did exist long ago but it was not available to all. They called it the Nursery Class. Or at least they did in the one my older sister went to. We lived at the time with my paternal grandparents in their council house. My grandfather was a bed-bound, difficult and demanding invalid. And suddenly the house was very full with my grandparents, my parents, my sister and then baby me. And then it seems they offered my parents a place in the nursery class at the local primary school for my three- going on-four-year old sister, on the grounds of relieving pressure on the family or something of that kind. All the nursery class children were put to bed for a nap in little beds in the afternoon. So my mother told me. I never went to nursery class as we moved into a council house of our own and overcrowding was not a problem.
Anyway, getting back to our smallest grandson. He needed a “book bag” - one of those odd, usually blue, bags, slightly larger than A4 size, rather similar to music manuscript bags. All primary schools appear to use them to send home with children messages about events, pictures the children have drawn, and reading books to practise their developing literacy skills at home. Little Lewis hadn’t been given one. It turned out that parents needed to pay for them! Did I have £4 in cash, my daughter asked me. She never carries cash on her person, she told me. She always uses a card. This is the modern way. It was starting before Covid but during lockdown it was encouraged for fear that we might spread the virus through contact as cash changed hands.
And suddenly even the market stall holders were equipped with handheld card readers. All, that is, except for the fruit and veg man at our market who resolutely accepts only cash. Some places initially insisted on your spending £10 in order to be able to pay by card but in my experience that restriction has largely gone. You can even buy your bus ticket contactless! I’ve even heard of homeless people with card readers but that may be an urban myth.
I usually have proper money around, so I was able to provide £4 to go in an envelope for the small boy to take to pre-school.
Mind you, getting hold of actual cash can also be difficult. We are quite fortunate as there is a cash machine in the local co-op store, which is handy as the bank in the village closed years ago and it’s cash machine disappeared. Predictably, the bank is now a trendy and apparently popular bar called, also predictably, The Bank. Banks and cash machines are disappearing all over the place. David Mitchell, writing in the Guardian, says that the GMB union general secretary, Gary Smith, said last week: “Losing face to face services in more places throughout the country is a huge problem for many. The consequences are real and disturbing… These moves to use tech and digital as the primary way to do anything impacts on our older citizens and those poorer hardest of all.” He’s calling for paying in cash to be made a legal right.
David Mitchell (again) reports: “In recent years the banks have moved swiftly to cut costs and so reduce our access to cash and, as a result, force more and more payments to be made electronically. Nearly 15,000 cash machines have been removed in the past five years; between 2019 and the end of this year 2,277 high street bank branches will have closed. This makes cash harder to acquire and it also makes it harder for businesses to deposit cash at the bank, further incentivising them not to accept it.” (Gone are the days when, as a shoe-shop assistant I would occasionally have the job of depositing the day’s takings in a safe deposit box outside the local bank!)
The thing is that if we pay for everything contactless or digitally our banks know exactly what we are spending our money on. So do the advertisers! Which is why we get emails and messages on social media advertising deals on stuff we’ve just bought! Big Brother is indeed watching us!
Besides, it seems silly to me to pay by card for something that costs maybe 50 pence!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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