I bought some climbing boots and a chalkbag yesterday, seeing as the whole climbing thing is becoming quite a routine, and I really, really need them for bouldering in Sherfield. But the thing that grabbed my attention was when I came to pay for it all - I got to use my chip-and-PIN on my credit card for the first time! Finally, I feel like we’re heading in the right direction, after spending years and years transferring billions of pounds around the country using the most ludicrously pathetic security system I’ve ever come across. Still, maybe some technologists should realise that despite signatures being sooo technically poor, for the most part, they still work. Most security systems don’t actually need to be perfect to be functional.

Still, in Britain we’re over a decade behind France when it comes to using PINs at points of sale, and when I was travelling around Australia and New Zealand I was grateful that many British tourists ahead of me had got all the checkout assistants well trained - as soon as they recognised a card from a British bank, they used the fall-back signature verification. Interestingly, PINs work fine in cashpoints, but even though I knew them for my cards, their point-of-sale network obviously wasn’t connected up to our PIN verification network (or however it all really works), since I had to sign for everything. Maybe next time it’ll all be joined up better.