Jonny McCambridge: My deepest secret...I don’t do online banking

My discomfort begins when it is revealed that a colleague is having a baby and a whip-round is to be organised to buy a present.

To be clear, I have no difficulty in making such contributions under normal circumstances, indeed I am even prepared to feign enthusiasm for doing so. But restrictions have scattered work colleagues like seeds in the wind and this particular appeal concludes with the provision of bank details and an invitation to donate the money remotely.

So I do nothing.

But then, inevitably, the follow-up message arrives a few days later.

‘Do you want to give anything for the present?’

‘Sure,’ I respond, with a sense of impending gloom.

‘Well, can you put some money in the account then?’

I wince, knowing that I am cornered. There is no way out. It has to be said.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t do internet banking. Maybe I can post you a cheque?’

The answer arrives quickly.

‘Be serious.’

‘I am being serious.’

This time there is no rapid response. I know what is coming. I wait for several minutes until my phone buzzes again.

‘I’m really sorry, I couldn’t type there for a while because I was laughing so hard.’

I’ve been here before. Too many times. Recently I bought an old car. When going to inspect a vehicle I brought along a mechanic friend to check for things which I am likely to miss - such as whether it has four wheels.

My friend, knowing my nature, took charge of the haggling over price. He had successfully reduced the requested amount considerably when I started to feel sorry for the beleaguered seller and interjected with a higher offer. My friend put his head in his hands.

With the total thus agreed, I produced my cheque book. The vendor, who was born a couple of decades after me, gave the impression that he had no idea what it was and seemed to think that he was now in the middle of some sort of elaborate prank.

My friend, once he had recovered his composure from laughing, asked if he could touch and study the cheque book like an antique. He said it had been several years since he had seen one.

In the end it was agreed that I would pay cash for the car.

I do not make these admissions as some sort of Luddite plea for progression to be put into reverse. I spend more time than is healthy sitting in front of a computer and fiddling with my phone. Like others, my life is now pretty much dictated and controlled by the internet. While I have the natural culchie suspicion of all things modern, I do generally try to move with the times.

And, of course, it is not specifically accurate to say that I don’t do online banking because the whole financial system is automated. Money is paid directly into my account by my employer and there are a dizzying number of direct debits which whittle the sum away to nothing each month. All of this goes on without any direct involvement from me. My point is that the transactions which I take a hand in are dealt with in a more traditional way.

I know that I can access my bank account online. But this requires the retention of a unique code, a password and a ‘memorable phrase’. Unfortunately I have never been able to find a memorable phrase which I can remember.

Also I know that there is an app. On one occasion a nice woman from the bank phoned me up and tried to talk me through the process of installing it on my phone. I say she was a nice woman, but it is also possible that she may have been a diabolical woman who was not from the bank and was instead trying to scam me. To this day I am not sure. All that is certain is that her generosity (or evil intent) was frustrated by my technical incompetence and the fact that I only had 26p in my current account.

And I have tried to change. My bank requires the use of a little device called a ‘card reader’ to make online transfers. A couple of years ago I decided the time had come to embrace progression and ordered one.

It arrived in the morning post, looking not unlike the small personal calculator I used to have when I was a schoolboy. I set it on the windowsill in the kitchen and determined that I would familiarise myself with it after work.

Fate intervened. That day, before we all departed the house, someone left the tap in the bathroom sink running (OK, yes, it was me).

When we arrived home that night the bathroom and the kitchen below had been flooded. The running water has cascaded down the wall at exactly the spot where I had left the card reader. I eventually found it, washed away like a piece of driftwood, in a far corner of the kitchen. It was damaged beyond use.

It seemed that forces bigger than I could understand were at work. A warning had been issued of the ominous consequences of meddling in the unknown.

While I have have not yet repeated the experiment, I know that change must come. There are only three pages left in my trusty old cheque book. Modernisation will soon be forced upon me.

It has always been this way. I only got round to opening my first ever bank account when I realised that student grants could not be paid cash in hand.

At the time, in the 1990s, I was an innocent country boy who had moved to Belfast to go to university. I chose a particular bank because it was giving away a free pair of jeans to any student who opened an account.

This was an attractive offer because I only had one pair of jeans and rather fancied that I would be quite the dandy living in the big city whilst owning multiple pairs of trousers. It seemed impossibly exotic.

A quarter of a century later I still have the jeans, although I can no longer fasten the buttons.

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