[[COPY ENDS: What price progress, eh?]]

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THERE'S a model pillar box that sits on a shelf of the tall, thin bookcase in the hall that principally displays my Asterix and Rupert the Bear collections.

You are busy people, and I have not gathered you here today to talk about Asterix, nor yet Rupert the Bear. No, it is the little red pillar box that will lead us to our theme.

You are gripped by the mystery. You sit on the edge of your seat. Let me shove you firmly back in it then to announce that my topic today is money. Yes, money, root of all evil, currency of all concern.

What has cash to do with little red pillar boxes? Well, the little red pillar box does not collect little red letters. It collects money. Bronze coins of small denomination, to be precise, which I never use in commerce now and which, periodically, I collect from the little red pillar box and take to a sifting machine that converts them into proper cash for good causes.

The problem? The little red pillar box hardly gets any donations from one week to another now, and it must be well over a year since I last trundled forth with a wee bag of bronze loot.

We're moving towards the cashless society, brothers and sisters. The only reason I put a paltry amount of coins in my pockets nowadays is to feed charity collection buckets in the mall.

Unfortunately, I still have trouble trying to ensure I pluck a 10p rather than a pound coin from my pocket. I jest. I don't actually give anything. Joke. God, I hate confessional journalism.

We all must confess that, as usual, the Scandinavians are ahead of us on this cashless malarkey. The Denmarkians, as I once heard someone seriously call the Danes, are even considering allowing retailers to ban cash altogether.

They believe cash costs money, in the sense that it takes time for salaried assistants to fiddle about with it. All well and good. But I must say I'm a bit nervous about this, particularly using smartphones to pay, even if I recognise it's the future.

I can swipe my debit card, for example, but still laboriously type in the pin number, as I'm too frightened to try the new method. Automated doo-dahs don't do it for me. For the same reason, I don't use supermarket self-service tills at supermarkets, even when staff drag me towards them.

But, yup, I accept that money is on the way out. It's a bit grubby anyway. And it can make your trousers sag. But it can also make little red pillar boxes happy. What price progress, eh?