Talking to children lately about money and cash, and notes and coins, you know, I felt as though they thought I was living close to Stone Age times.

With so much talk nowadays of the ‘digital age’ and so many things being done by AI, I think to myself ‘where is it all going to end?’ Then everyone, well nearly everyone, says change is great.

Others muse, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ -sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? But then again, that great quill-smith Willie Shakespeare declared a good few years back that ‘all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man (or woman) in his/her time plays many parts’.

I suppose the older we get, the more things we can remember and then compare and contrast with present-day happenings in this crazy world of ours.

The first day of August in 1969 was the start of real change as we knew it. You could say in reality, very small change ‘cause on that day the little farthing coin was no longer what they call ‘legal tender’ in Ireland. I had finished national school that June, and secondary school in Fermoy beckoned. My courtship with Gaelic games had begun, but it was not yet a full-blown love affair. No, that came a few years later.

I fancied myself as a bit of a philatelist and also a numismatist -now there’s a great word for Scrabble! Does any youngster collect stamps or coins anymore? Maybe they do, but these hobbies rarely, if ever, feature on young teenagers’ Top Ten lists as far as I can see. As actual money, coins and notes become scarcer and scarcer, I presume the once-popular hobby will take off again; then maybe it’s too basic and ‘hands on’ for the tech-savvy generations to........

© Evening Echo