The old coinage 2

Let me say at once that I'm not the Collector Type!

Certainly I have 'small-c' collections, in the ordinary meaning anyone might use.

I have a whole room turned into a study/library, crowded with books and maps, which, despite a purge or two when moving house in the past, is still an impressive array of volumes strong on travel, history and photography, although there are many other topics covered, such as maritime matters, languages, clocks and watches, costume, railways and calligraphy. And it spills over into my lounge, where books on architecture, art and cookery are put. And quite a lot of fiction, mainly in the adventure and detective genres. There are major gaps, of course: nothing on sport, for instance; and biography, romantic fiction and comedy are hardly represented. But, taken as a whole, I think my large number of books and other paper material does justify the description of a 'library', particularly as there are a few genuinely old hardback volumes, some of them so large and heavy you could well call them 'tomes'.

I really have a lot of books and maps! And since I keep on adding to it, I must get around to installing some extra shelf space soon.

But it's not an Enthusiast's Collection. I haven't deliberately set out to get a copy of every book or map there is within my particular areas of interest. I don't think there are any 'first editions'. Or if there are, they are there accidentally.

And that's true of my photography too. My current digital archive contains an awful lot of pictures taken by me from 1965 onwards, plus many earlier photos given to me. Ballpark, say 150,000 digital images. I also have a lot of pictures that languish as prints and transparencies. Let's say 15,000 unscanned shots. It used to be more like 28,000 unscanned shots, but I've been chipping away at the digitisation, and have discarded many shots of places that were shot 'just for the record', and have since been re-photographed with a digital camera. They can be junked. But all my 'people shots' are still intact, and I have years of work ahead of me to get those scanned, captioned, and filed away in my archive, where they can be finally searched for in various ways, found, and enjoyed. You want to see all my shots of 'Fat Betty' in Yorkshire? I can present them to you in ten seconds.

But again my photos are not a deliberate Enthusiast's Collection. They have been built up at random, incrementally. I can show you - say - pictures of a great many Sussex country churches; many of the remotest railway stations in Scotland; every pretty fishing cove in the West Country; all the best standing stones on Dartmoor or Salisbury Plain; and most of the meals that I've cooked for myself in the last ten years; but none of it has been methodically put together to an all-prevailing plan, with 'rarity' and 'value' in mind. It has only been filed methodically.

I want you to bear all this in mind, as I turn to what I call my 'coin and banknote collection'. It wasn't created to satisfy a special lifelong interest. The interest was strictly temporary. It tried to be comprehensive, but it wasn't, and I have no regrets about that. When it came to a natural stop, on 15th February 1971, I was pleased at what I'd put together, but undismayed at the gaps.

I intended to gather in examples of coins and banknotes that had seemed a permanent part of my childhood - of British Life, even - but were suddenly going to disappear in the short space of five years. So, like many a youngster, I took to coin-collecting while I could, while the old coinage was still in circulation.

All I did was to examine my change daily and then pop anything old or interesting into a tin or jar.

It had to be put by out of pocket-money, so each coin 'collected' was a sacrifice. That's why during my five years of coin-collecting I had to ignore banknotes. I never possessed any! Well, that's not quite true. After I started work in 1970, I did - at last - have paper money to play with. But it had to go on things like clothes and shoes, and drinking way too much in the way of vodka-and-limes at the pub with my new friends. However, I managed to preserve a pristine ten-bob note before those were withdrawn.

I'm not going to discuss or illustrate every single old coin or banknote I have. I'm just going to discuss my favourite or most interesting old coins and banknotes, and not attempt to be either comprehensive or expert.

Although I wasn't a Collector Type, I nevertheless set about the task of gathering-in examples of the old coinage with method and organisation. Perhaps I had a notion of keeping my collection for ages afterwards, and possibly handing it down to my children, if I were ever forced to have any. Now at nearly sixty-eight, that fate (having children) has thankfully receded. But I still have the coins and banknotes. Sadly, I made no contemporary notes, wrote no contemporary essays, and put away very little supplementary material. (Sigh...what could I have done with a digital camera and a laptop to hand!) But I did acquire proper albums (these must have been birthday presents - surely I couldn't have bought them myself?) and a few booklets on what to collect:

Let's make a start on the coins.

First up, the dear little farthing - one quarter of a penny - which was still around when I was in junior school, though not seen very often. It disappeared at the start of 1961, when I was only eight. It was written as as '¼d'. Two of them would be a halfpenny (next up). Three of them were written as '¾d' - but this seemed to occur only in schoolroom arithmetic lessons! I usually made a hash of working with fractions like this.

I have two examples of a farthing:

I'd like to say that the eight-year-old Lucy Melford (or Dommett, as my surname was back then) handled these very coins when little, and has preserved them or nearly sixty years. But I can't. I wasn't interested in coins at the time. But once decimalisation was in the air from 1966, I did want a farthing for my Old Coinage Collection. So I went to a coin-collectors' shop and bought one. I think it cost me a pound, which is remarkable when you consider that a farthing was 1/960th of a pound. I suppose the shop-owner had to live. I rather think I bought the 1949 farthing, and that the other one (the 1942 farthing) came my way some years later, perhaps from Auntie Peg.

The design of this tiny coin was delightful, featuring a Jenny Wren, that secretive, drab, but lively little bird of the British countryside. I still think this was the most appealing coin ever minted.

Next up, the halfpenny, pronounced 'hay-penny'. It was written as '½d'. A penny and a halfpenny were called a 'penny-halfpenny' and written as '1½d'. Two pennies and a halfpenny were called 'tuppence-halfpenny' and written as '2½d'. I had quite a few halfpennies:

They were all taken from the money that came my way, and Dad (who was very indulgent in this respect) would willingly let me examine his change, which he tipped out onto a bedroom tray each evening. I wasn't so keen on bothering Mum, as she was inclined to pooh-pooh all my childish enthusiasms - but I probably do her an injustice, and she may well have let me go through her purse. My little brother Wayne, incidentally, wasn't in the slightest bit interested in getting an Old Coinage  Collection together while it was still possible. He had other fish to fry.

In the early part of the 20th century, the halfpenny looked like a small version of the penny, and featured Britannia, as with these 1917 and 1931 examples:

It was, incidentally, absolutely normal to find very worn coins in one's change, some going back to the reign of Queen Victoria. Each coin might have passed through a million hands in its lifetime. That's a romantic thought in a way, although in our more health-conscious era, the amount of dirt and germs on these coins hardly bears thinking about. I washed my fingers after touching these! Actually, I consider all coins unhygienic, and that's one good reason why I'd like them to be gone.

Britannia is fine, but half-way through the last century a new design was introduced, featuring Sir Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, as in these 1944 and 1967 examples:

Hurrah! Plunder on the Spanish Main! More than just a nod to the British seafaring tradition, this was an incitement to go a-roving and do fun things. No wonder the kid's programme Blue Peter used the same ship on its badge.

Now the penny. It was written as '1d'. This was the main coin of childhood. It was large and weighty, at least as it felt in little hands, and, along with the halfpenny, was the main coin for buying sweets with. It was also an interesting coin. All pennies featured Britannia, but there was a lighthouse too on some of them. And occasionally, on certain pre-1920 coins, extra little letters next to the date - H or KN - which signified that the penny had been minted away from London, out in the country, at Heaton or Kings Norton. Those were rare!

I had a booklet that showed exactly what to look for, and just how 'rare' the Heaton and Kings Norton pennies were. 

Not that rare, really! But I managed to include a 1912 Heaton, a 1918 Heaton, and a 1919 Kings Norton in my collection. Here's an ordinary 1912 penny next to a 1912 Heaton penny:

And here's a 1919 Heaton penny:

This is a 1918 Kings Norton penny:

I photographed a page from a modern 2019 guide to coin values the other day, and as you can see, these Heaton and Kings Norton pennies can be worth quite a bit in uncirculated condition (click on the picture to enlarge it). 

But mine are way too worn to be worth more than a fiver at most!

Even without these H or KN markings, pennies were fascinating because so many very old ones were in circulation. Here are Victorian pennies from 1863 and 1887, the first of which must have been a 105 years old when I added to my collection. Both are dirty and dusty, and feel greasy to the touch, but it's a rule that you never clean the coins you collect. A sobering thought: Jack The Ripper might have had these very coins in his pocket when he committed the Whitechapel Murders!

And here are two pennies from the very end of Queen Victoria's reign, dated 1898, 1899 and 1900:

I think I am right in saying that 120 of these - ten shillings' worth - was the normal weekly wage of a farm labourer at the time.

Here are twentieth century pennies, from 1902 and 1911, 1949 and 1966:

Next, the threepence, pronounced 'thruppence', more usually called the 'thruppenny bit'. It was written as '3d'. I have most of the later ones they minted:

After the farthing, this was my next-favourite coin. Or at least, the design with flowers was. Early in the last century, the threepence was a funny little silver coin. I have just one of these, from 1932:

It was small, and reminds me of the miniature coins in a set of Maundy Money - presented at one time to selected old folk by the monarch in person. It must have been easy to confuse this coin with the silver sixpence, so they changed the design entirely, the threepence becoming this unusual 'golden' coin, quite thick, with twelve flat edges around its circumference, as in these examples from 1937, 1943 and 1952:

That's the 'flower' design I so much liked. The 1943 coin is almost unblemished: I have a theory that during the war a lot of coins ended up in glass jars, put by for use after victory in the conflict, or just as a little nest-egg for the returning hero. So for several years such coins suffered no wear. 

For Queen Elizabeth's new reign, the threepence was redesigned to show a portcullis, rather than those pretty flowers. I didn't care for it. It was too ordinary. Examples from 1953 and 1967:

Gosh, this is turning into a longer post than I thought possible! I'll leave the silver coinage and the banknotes for the next post.

The old coinage 1

People who know me understand that I'm future-minded where physical money is concerned. I'd be perfectly happy in a world where all payments are accomplished by electronic means, and no coins or banknotes exist.

So far as I can, I live in that world now. Here's a extract from my Money Diary 2020 spreadsheet, showing recorded money transactions over a recent twelve-day period:

If you're curious to see the thing clearly, click on it to get the detail magnified. The rightmost column lists the amounts paid for by credit card, either using my phone and Google Pay, or chip-and-PIN with the actual credit card. As you can see, there were only two cash payments (for very small amounts) in that twelve-day period. I recall that the first one (coffee in The Noah's Ark pub) would have been made using Google Pay, but, being deep in the West Sussex countryside, it wouldn't go through, so I got out a five-pound note. The other, to get a new set of dust caps for my car's tyre valves at Halfords, was paid in cash because I wanted more change for car parking. Another five pound note. In other circumstances, both those payments would have been met with my credit card.

Need I say that my credit card account is cleared in full every month? I don't actually need credit: for me, it's just a convenient way of paying for things I could otherwise buy with money that I really do have in the bank, or in my purse.

I'm not alone. A lot of people nowadays pay electronically, and love it.

There are some who keep on mislaying their phones, and can't say where their credit card is at any given moment. I don't understand why they would be so careless with such essential and valuable items, or what prevents them from mending their ways. But they exist, and they would have a hard time in a cashless world. But it's coming.

Don't I have any fondness for coins and banknotes? Well, I do. But not the coins and banknotes we have used since 15th February 1971, which was the day Britain said farewell to a money system it had used since Saxon days and adopted decimal coinage. It was out with 'old-fashioned' pounds, shillings and pence, and in with a pound divided into 100 pence, like everyone else in the world. Oh, we had to conform. Harold Wilson's Labour government had, by 1966, decided that Britain needed modernisation in all things, no matter what the changes such a policy entailed.

So in December 1966, this article appeared in the family newspaper, the Daily Express:

At least we still used the pound. A new system based on half a pound - the old ten shillings - had been looked at. Australia and New Zealand had already taken that route. They now used the Australian dollar, and the New Zealand dollar, split into 100 cents. I think it was judged to be 'a bit too American' and so we kept the pound. That didn't please everyone in commerce though:

The grumblings were dismissed.

Instead of cents, we had 'new pence'. It was something; a nod to the past, to the familiar. But for people like me, who grew up on pounds, shillings and pence, the 15th February 1971 ('D Day') was the day our currency died. Or at least lost its soul. I was fond of the old coins. I never felt the same about the new ones, which have now (in 2020) become mere tokens, only the pound coin having any value to speak of.

And none of them carry the august weight of history. Prior to D Day, It was an everyday experience to find that the change in your pocket or purse included coins that were decades old, probably quite worn, but many of them bearing dates that took you well into the past. Before the First World War, and into the late Victorian era perhaps. Spanning the reigns of several monarchs, which was thrilling for children, and a matter for patriotic curiosity if you were an adult. The coins were pretty big, too, and when I was a child in the 1950s much could be bought with them. When your weekly box of groceries could be bought with a ten-bob note, you can imagine just how many sweets a shilling's pocket money might buy! 

Once it set the ball rolling on decimalisation, the Labour government (in power from 1964 to 1970) made the process unstoppable. When Ted Heath's Conservative government swept to power in 1970 it was far too late to call a halt. The coins to replace the shilling (with the 5p coin), the florin (with the 10p coin) and the ten-bob note (with the 50p coin) had already gone into circulation. The job was already half-done.

In the run-up to D Day, All households in the country received a booklet giving a pretty thorough briefing on how to mange the changeover. Here it is - click on any of these to enlarge it:

Ministers wore NHS specs then! Designer specs for the masses were thirty years into the future.

It was the era of the corner shop, of being served by a man in a brown overall, and nearly everyone paid in cash.

Apparently it was thought that we'd be clinging to a dual coinage system for some time (as the French had with their Old and New Francs) and would need guidance on how to convert between them. It didn't happen. We got on with it, and adopted New Pence as rapidly as possible, because any other way was an inconvenience.

It was also a world of cheque books. (I stopped using cheques a while back. I used a debit card to buy my Volvo XC60 car - Fiona - with in 2010)

The government were anxious to assure us that prices wouldn't increase with decimalisation. There would be conversion-roundings both up and down. Of course there were...

Good old Michael Smith and Sarah Brown! Interesting prices. I hoped to do a 1971/2020 comparison but my latest Waitrose receipt shows that I bought none of the things they did. Mine includes items like steak, red peppers, asparagus tips, samphire and sushi. Times and tastes change! Sarah Brown took the bus home and paid 6d (2½ pence) for her fare. Well, that extract from my Money Diary at the beginning of this post shows that I paid £1.60 for a short bus ride of one mile from the centre of Worthing back to the Volvo dealer, where Fiona had just had two new tyres fitted. Probably a shorter journey than Sarah's. So on this evidence, urban bus fares are at least sixty-four times more expensive than they were fifty-odd years ago.

That booklet is a social history document in itself. 

I was now going to discuss the old coinage - and the £1 and 10/- banknotes. But I'll do that in the next post. 

Did I like any of the new coins? Only one: the tiny ½ new penny coin. I liked it because it wasn't a decimal coin. You don't have fractions in a decimal system. But they had to mint it so that prices wouldn't go up. It had value: it was worth 1.2 old pennies. In 1971 that still made a difference on small items - such as bus fares, or a lunchtime snack. 

I don't think it was ever a popular coin. But it had the virtue of adding Something Different And Unusual to our spanking-new decimal system. It didn't fit in. In this it was Very British. I found that little coin most endearing. The old and quirky halfpennies, pennies, threepences, sixpences and half-crowns had all been banished in the White Heat of Labour's plans, but they'd had to provide this odd little coin. It spoiled their Neat Scheme. Hurrah!   

The ½ new penny coin lasted only a few years. Its value drained away to nothing during the rampant inflation of the early 1970s, and it was withdrawn. By then it was a nuisance. It was not generally lamented. I doubt if many people remember it at all.

But in its heyday, I had the foresight to pop every one that came my way into a plastic container. I amassed quite a lot of them. I vaguely intended to use them as tokens in card games, or something like that. I never did. They stayed sealed in that container for decades. I had a look at them the other day:

The ½ new penny coin did not have the charm of the old pre-decimal farthing (my favourite bronze coin), but it possessed something of its character. A little coin of small worth, and only in Britain could it ever have existed. And it never would have, if the leaders of commerce had persuaded the government to be even more radical, and introduce a new currency based on the old ten shillings. 

A sobering thought: if we had gone for the 'British dollar' or whatever they might have called it, the US dollar would now - in 2020 - be worth nearly twice as much. I can't help thinking that this would have been a Bad Thing.

Obsolete too soon

I heard a bit of news on the radio that shouldn't have been a surprise. A man had complained that his four year old Sony TV could no longer stream programmes from the BBC iPlayer. Apparently, Sony had decided that they weren't going to update the security software on his TV any more, and the BBC, not wanting to connect with a device that had become insecure, had cut off the TV's access to iPlayer. He was blaming the BBC, but actually it was Sony's decision not to support his TV any longer that was the root problem. He could still of course stream content from other providers - at least for now.

Fancy that. A four year old TV considered too old to be updated, and in effect made obsolete.

But then, it's an Internet-connected device like any other - like a phone or laptop or tablet - and if it's not going to get a security update, it clearly does become liable to progressive disconnection from online service providers. It happens with phones and laptops - you can't expect to use them indefinitely. There will come a time when the update plug is pulled. It may very well be that well before then, you'll have bought a newer, better device, not because you have to, but because you want to.

The thing about TVs, though, is that historically they have been things you get and then keep for quite a number of years. They were once items of furniture, in wooden cabinets! Now they are just large black plastic panels. But nevertheless expensive to buy, and if they are going to be deemed outmoded after only four years, it raises the question of whether they are worth buying.

That's what I'm asking myself.

The answer would be easy if I were a telly addict: yes, it would still be worth it, because I'd want the best TV experience I could afford. I'd be using it enough to justify a frequent replacement schedule.

But I don't watch much television. Nor do I stream films. I might contemplate spending £500 on a TV I can keep for six or seven years, but if the thing is going to be obsolete in half that time it would seem to be rather a poor use of money. Particularly when I could do all my watching on the laptop.

A timely warning then. Replacing my elderly TV from 2008 has now slipped further down my priority list!

I suppose that when 5G finally comes to my village, and all devices in the home can join the 'Internet of Things', it will be usual to replace every device in the house at short intervals. Cooker, washing machine, heater, fridge, freezer, the lot. What a palaver that will be.

It makes you think that it might be wise to hang onto anything that works well, and doesn't have to be connected to the Internet. I'm so glad, for instance, that I still have my eleven-year-old-camera! It needs no updates, and can't be got at by malware, nor can Google or anyone else see what pictures I take, nor track me from spot to spot. 

Supposing they do away with the BBC Licence Fee?

I'm very loyal to the BBC, which is not the same thing as being a great fan, nor does that make me an an uncritical viewer or listener. But in the main I appreciate the BBC as a national institution with, on the whole, high standards, even if - like all big institutions, especially ones that have a long history - it takes a lofty view on many things, and is resistant to internal cultural change. It's a scandal that, for instance, it has discriminated so much between male and female presenters when it comes to pay. But it has undeniably been ground-breaking in its past programming, and commendably willing to try new things that speak to the modern audience. I say hats off to iPlayer. And hats off to the radio offshoot of iPlayer, BBC Sounds.

I especially appreciate the BBC not being in the hands of a profit-driven individual owner or syndicate with an agenda I don't share. It's such a valuable thing that the BBC is legally bound to provide a wide spectrum of public-service broadcasting under a charter, and is independent of owner or shareholder pressure. It might pander over-much to audiences it would like to reach, and it does sometimes abandon audiences it needs to keep; but the charter confines the Corporation to a broad remit that it can't ignore, one that ought to please most people. And presumably it does. It has some very popular programmes.

That said, the BBC's output, taken as a whole, is far from 'populist', and there isn't much that a fat lout and his fat girlfriend (neither with any culture; both with a taste for fast food, low humour and violence), stretched out on their sagging sofa, would find appealing. Unfortunately there are plenty of these horrible people around, and I'm sure they all consider the BBC stuffy, boring, elitist, over their heads, not cool, and not relevant to their slovenly lives. I suspect that there are swathes of people who believe that the BBC is actually an arm of the Conservative government, jumping to Tory orders, and condescending to the poor and low-achieving. Which is strangely at odds with constant accusations that the BBC has a strong left-wing bias, is locked in combat with Tory ministers, and is full of arty-farty lefties in cahoots with the Labour Party, if they are not actually card-carrying members. Clearly, the Corporation is perennially misunderstood, and can't win!

One image I've always disliked is that of the BBC as 'Auntie'. It has never been that to me. I hate the very notion of finger-wagging senior relatives anyway. I have always seen the BBC instead as a national pillar of excellence, one of Britain's flagship enterprises, a reliable provider of rock-solid news and intelligent programme content. I want it to stay that way, and not see the BBC become a dumbed-down privatised company that needs to prostitute itself to survive.

But now its funding is up for discussion again. And whether the current, universal, compulsory Licence Fee should continue.

Well, I do think it's time to rethink how the BBC gets its money. It can't be completely fair that folk who never flick onto a BBC channel or radio station have to pay. On the other hand, the public-service remit means that the Corporation must have an assured income, and can't simply tout for a subscription income.

One obvious solution is to fund the BBC out of personal taxation. So instead of the Licence Fee, those who pay Income Tax have a little more tax taken from their pay each month. It would be an 'invisible' levy, and therefore much less controversial. And the poorest members of society, who pay no tax, wouldn't be giving the BBC anything. (Quite possibly this would include many of the oldest pensioners, and a lot of people on benefits, both of them groups who might have to rely on the TV or radio quite a bit) The snag, of course, is that it looks like a government handout, and would certainly give the government a big say in what the BBC does, and would like to do. The government could veto some important roll-out on grounds of cost. Another snag is that the BBC's much-vaunted 'independence from government interference' would be compromised.

What if some kind of subscription model is adopted? Let's say that, broadly, the BBC's income level is to remain the same as now. I'll be paying a grand total of £155 in 2020 for my TV Licence. It's taken in monthly instalments by direct debit. It works out at, on average, at £12.92 a month.

Let's say that, with a subscription model, the BBC would be aiming to get £13 a month out of me. How would they design the charging structure? Would it be in packages, such as an Entertainment Package, a Drama Package, a Science and Culture Package, and a News and Current Affairs Package? Or would they put a price on each TV channel or radio station? Would live TV or radio cost more than the catch-up version - or less? - or just the same?

Let's say they charged £2 per month per TV channel and £1 per month per radio station, and the cost was the same whether watched live or in catch-up form. Well, these are the BBC TV channels and radio stations I'd want:

TV
BBC 1   £2
BBC 2   £2
BBC 4   £2

Radio
BBC Radio 4   £1

That covers all I ever look at or listen to. Total cost, £7 a month. I'll take it. But of course, the poor old BBC loses out by £6 a month. Its income slashed by 46%. It won't want that.

On the whole, I think the Corporation would sell its output using those Packages. In which case, if these were priced at £3 per month each, I'd go for:

Package
News and Current Affairs   £3
Science and Culture   £3
Drama   £3

Total cost, £9 a month. I'll still take it. But the Beeb is still £4 out of pocket. A 31% cut in income. Oh dear.

Clearly the subscription model is fraught with problems! At least with a quirky audience made up entirely of Lucy Melfords.

Maybe they'll keep the Licence Fee going for another ten years?

All change on HRT

Here's a task lined up for tomorrow that I won't be fulfilling:

And here's one lined up for four days ahead that I also won't be fulfilling:

Why won't I be taking my usual dose of HRT?

Well, I've run out of those Estradot patches. I'm down to the last patch in the last pack. Here it is:

Estradot is made by Novartis, and for a long time it was increasingly difficult to obtain a steady supply. By last October (with Brexit looming) the supply had dried up. Estradot simply wasn't available. The precise reason was not definitely known, but I suspect that Novartis wasn't making enough money from producing it, at least not for the UK market where the NHS would want to buy this and other HRT patches for its women patients at a really low wholesale price. Novartis might have looked carefully at the profit margin on that arrangement, and just said 'no more'.

So my pharmacy (Boots on Burgess Hill) had to go looking for a substitute that was available. They found me FemSeven. I gave it a two-week trial last October without problems, and asked my doctor to prescribe it instead. There isn't much difference between Estradot and FemSeven: it's the same hormone, and works in the same way, leaking into the skin - and thence into my bloodstream - from an adhesive patch applied with strict regularity. The Estradot patches last three or four days, and used to get changed on Saturdays and Tuesdays. (Those were the days I chose for myself when first using HRT back in March 2009) The larger FemSeven patches last seven days, and I have chosen Saturday as my 'new patch' day. The mention of 'right' or 'left' on the task screens refer to which side of me I stick the patch to - it can't go in the same spot every time. If you really want to know, I put them on my bottom.

So tomorrow - and on each subsequent Saturday - it's going be these:

And my tasks app will be showing this:

I think I have mentioned in a past post that in October I still had a stock of Estradot to use up. In fact I had enough on hand to take me through to tomorrow. But of course I can't actually use up that last patch, as I'd like to start using FemSeven on a Saturday, not a Tuesday. That last patch will be kept (along with its pack) as a momento. After all, I took Estradot for nearly eleven years, and it's a link with Other Days when my life was very different and very challenging. So much has happened in those eleven years!

Well, a new era begins. In parallel with Brexit, you could say. A Janus moment.

In case you're curious (probably not), I will explain that I use an Android phone app called Tasks To Do Pro to set up and control all the many things I need to do. Some arise daily, many others at longer intervals, and many are one-offs triggered by an event such as going on holiday.

Currently I've got 345 tasks set up on this app, 95 of them assigned to definite future dates - mostly repeat tasks that keep on recurring. I set up the others when required. These other no-specific-date tasks are all 'recycled', meaning that instead of ticking them off as 'done' after completion, I just cancel the due date, which returns them to the list of undated tasks ready to be set up again.

So with all these tasks set up and ready to go, apart from the date if they aren't repeating tasks, I'm not spending a lot of time fiddling with this app. I just refer to it and see what, at this very moment, still has to be dealt with. It works, just as this kind of app worked for me pre-2005, when I was still working and wanted portable tax investigation case-control, as well as reminders to take my pills.

Naturally - being me - I've invented a scheme for sorting my tasks by topic:

0 is the number prefix for tasks connected with Health and Personal Care
1 is for tasks connected with Money
2 is for Laptop, Phone and Audio
3 is for Photo
4 is for Home
5 is for Blogging and Other Personal Interests
6 is for Family, Friends and Neighbours
7 is for Car
8 is for Caravanning
9 is for Travelling Generally

You can see what's important in my life! This exactly reflects the scheme I have long used to sort my 1,200-odd documents and spreadsheets, and any saved emails, with. It makes any task (or document, or spreadsheet, or saved email) easy to find.

The app lets you choose the degree of priority for each task - colour-coded of course! It's a great app, and if you like organising your life to the Nth degree, then I heartily recommend it.

Am I way too organised? Do I have a life organised to death? Well, it has to be. I am forgetful, and strong personal organisation is a necessity.

I don't think my forgetfulness is a side-effect of taking HRT. I rather think I'd be worse if I didn't. And the HRT seems to be a wonderful general antidote to ageing, keeping the mind alert and the skin toned. Sadly, it isn't a cure for wrinkles - except in so far as it encourages fat accumulation, which rounds me off and smooths out scrawny bits in the face, neck and upper arms.

I'll swear that my HRT patches make me look noticeably younger than I would otherwise appear. So it's reassuring that my doctor tells me that my NHS record is specially marked, saying that I must stay on HRT indefinitely, whatever happens.

As bad as trying to buy tickets online

Dear me. You hear a lot about how difficult it is to buy tickets for events online - the touts get in first, and resell their haul at greatly inflated prices. And then, to compound that, the poor event-goer might quite possibly not be able to use their super-expensive tickets, because nearer the time the event organisers place a ban on accepting resold tickets. I'm rather glad I never get into all that. But I do book my caravan holidays online, using the excellent Caravan and Motorhome Club website. That is, if I can get my booking in early enough.

For caravanning and motorhoming has in recent years become very popular indeed, noticeably more than ten years ago. It must be that a whole generation has discovered the joys of Staycationing. Not just retired old fogies - there are a lot of thirty-somethings with young families too. Which is, in its way, a jolly good thing, as it ensures the ongoing development of the Club network (which will need heavy investment in electric charge points for vehicles, for instance). But it does mean that, for most Club sites around the country, it is no longer possible to turn up on the day, on a whim, and expect to get a pitch. You have to book ahead.

Sometimes well ahead. I've been planning and booking my North West Tour for May and June. Remember, it's only the start of February. But I've had to forego an important part of my Tour because I simply can't get in where I want on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend that precedes the actual holiday on 25th May. I wanted to pitch near Liverpool. There were Club sites at Southport, on the Wirral, and just north of Chester. Any of these would, geographically speaking, do nicely. I did however reject Southport when I saw on Google Earth that the pitches were rather too close to the pleasure park on the seafront - there would be a lot of background noise. Exciting for the kiddies, no doubt, but I prefer peace and quiet. That left the Wirral site at Thurstaston or the Chester site. But no dice. These sites were already - in early February! - fully booked for the Bank Holiday weekend.

That was awkward. There'd be commercial alternatives, of course; and farms; but from experience I knew I'd best stick to proper Club sites.

So I booked the very attractive site at Chirk, on the Welsh border south of Wrexham, which I last visited in 2015. It was a sensible choice if wanting a site between west-central Wales and the Lake District. But it wasn't ideal for a day trip to the Pool. Oh well. I'd explore Ruthin and Denbigh and the surrounding hills instead. That would be very nice. But in fact this hitch with booking the site I really wanted stole a jewel from my North West Tour crown.

So my Tour is already compromised.

There is a minor compensation - Chirk is not near any major cities, and I may not face much traffic either getting there, nor on departure. But it's fingers crossed that the northbound M6 motorway is free-flowing as it passes through built-up Lancashire, although I'd be using it anyway. But once that particular gauntlet has been run, I'll have the prolonged pleasure of a very scenic approach to my Lake District site just south of Coniston, with the Old Man to the west, and the Lake to the east. (I'm very much looking forward to staying in this south-western part of the Lake District for the first time)

If you book a long trip, you are almost bound to run into these pesky Bank Holiday Weekends, when people congregate at sites to meet their friends and let their kids run riot. In the past, I've found that an inland site, distant from any beach, is going to be much quieter. Chirk meets that description; but then so did Chester. I'll just have to remember that next time I go north-west, I need to book even earlier.

Some people, I know, book up to a year ahead. It could be that, because of this, certain Club sites are fully-booked all the time on the major holiday dates. Thankfully they aren't the sites I'd routinely consider going to. But there wasn't a lot of choice in Cheshire and Lancashire. I can see why I haven't visited the North West all that much!