When you have grown up counting the pennies, you never forget it. A problem with my card almost had me in tears
Our bank card has been declined at the supermarket. It’s no big deal – a glitch. But I’m experiencing flight-or-fight responses: heat rising up my neck, my heart thundering. I can’t meet the cashier’s eye.
The rational part of my brain understands that this is idiotic. I recognise that knowing we definitely have money in the account is an entitlement in itself. But the irrational part is shuttled back to the many, many times in my childhood and teens when there was never enough cash. Back to carefully counted stacks of two- and five-pence pieces, often hunted out of the back of the sofa or rattled from mostly empty piggy banks.
