Rendering unto Caesar (4)

Cash machines are an improvement on their predecessor, which my parents were subject to. You had to go into the bank during office hours, which was practically impossible if you actually worked. Of course if you were unemployed then you got your money by fortnightly Giro, cashed at the post office whenever you liked, much easier. Once in the bank you'd write out a withdrawal slip, or something, I can't remember how ID worked. I think you needed your cheque book. God knows. Anyway, with cash machines it's just the PIN. Now I know other people are pinning all over the place with those little keypads in shops (honestly madam, you're in Smiths buying a Now magazine and a packet of low fat cheese and onion crisps, could you not possibly use coins? just this once?). But I only seem to get money out every couple of weeks and that's a long time with the state of my memory.

It's not so much that I forget my PIN, it's that sometimes I make the mistake of trying to remember it. I did this the other day, as I was on my way out of the office. Couldn't recall it at all, I was going to be stuck at the cashpoint with an empty head, and ultimately empty pockets. My only hope was that somehow in the next five minutes the number would just pop back into my mind. But then I bumped into a former colleague while passing through reception and we had a natter, and so I forgot that I had forgotten my PIN. I only remembered that I'd forgotten once I had the money in my hand, my fingers having automatically danced the keypad choreography for me. So that's how it works. Leave it to the extremities, they know what to do.

Once I was in Wrexham. Don't ask. Anyway, while I was there I made the mistake of choosing, just for fun, the Welsh language option on the screen. I just about got through the transaction, hitting keys based on the number of syllables in each word, or randomly. I had taken a course of refreshments during the afternoon, which may actually have helped. The next time I used a cashpoint, back in London, the machine assumed I had become Welsh, and gave me instructions accordingly. And there was no means of changing it back, or if there was it was in Welsh. I had to actually go into the branch and get them to change it for me - this was the Mortimer Street NatWest, which would be accustomed to wilful cosmopolitanism, but Welsh...? I haven't been in there since and I think that branch has closed now, which is a relief.