Access makes the heart grow...

Bernard Hollowoo d

The sort of chap I envy — in my Walter Mitty daydreams — is a journalist friend who received his current Access•Card the other day, read the advice:

Your Access card isn't truly yours until you sign it. Why not do that now with a ball point pen, please.

and promptly rang up his broker and bought 200 shares in • the Blyk Ball-point Pen Co. That's the way the tycoons make their pile. That's what I call business acumen, and most people just don't have it.

Mind you, there are some Access customers who refuse to be dragooned, and I am one of them. I loathe ball-points, which in my fist commit antics reminiscent of C. Chaplin in that golden oldie — or is it olden goldie? (I'm not a cinema buff) — The Skating Rink. No, I prefer an old-fashioned Parker Duofold in which genuine ink flows from a nib of old-fashioned tractability. It's about an aspect of commercial democracy that I wish to offer advice. Although banks and sundry . financial organisations regularly send me things called credit cards I . have never yet made use of them. I was brought up to believe in the social prestige, conferred by the cheque. Bookies, stallholders and casino cads used stacks of filthy lucre, but the gentleman andhis lady avoided legal tender and instead carried with them slim passports to fortune called cheque books. Until Macmillan's neverhad-it-so-good years, the 'two nations' of Disraeli's Sybil were clearly defjned as a mob of cash manipulators and an aristocracy of cheque users, but in the 'fifties and 'sixties bank accounts proliferated and soon any C or D class, Tom, Dick or Harriet was aping his or her A and B class betters by flashing cheques all over the place. And shopkeepers became extremely -wary.

Some years ago I was paying for a pair of slacks bought off the peg at a well-known gents' outfitters in London when the young counterhand invited me to write my name and address on the back of my cheque. I was dumbfounded.

"Certainly not!" I said. "My name is on the front of the cheque and my address appears in the telephone directory ..." (It was on the tip of my tongue to mention Who's Who, the handbook of the Megthorpe Ratepayers' Association and the membership list of Megthorpe Golf Club, but I thought better of it) ". . . and I'm damned if I'll repeat myself!"

"It's. customary, sir," said the young man who I now saw was spotty.

"Not with me it isn't," I said. 'This is bureaucracy gone mad. Do you think I'm a swindler, a forger, a foreigner or what?"

"All I can say, sir," he said, "is that endorsement and address are house rules."

"Very well," I said, "the deal's off. Has it occurred to you that if I were trying to deceive it would be, simplicity itself to write a false name and a false address? Would the mere fact of duplicating a phoney name and address hinder a real thief?"

"Just a minute, sir," he said, the spotty one with.the outsize Adam's

apple and the thick deposit of dandruff on his double-breasted jacket. "If you'll hang on a moment I'll consult the manager. He has the power, which I do not, of waiving certain formalities."

So I stood fuming while the young man disappeared. Several times, to my intense annoyance, I was approached by customers under the impression that I was in charge of the department and one idiot actually handed me a tape and invited me to measure his inside leg. Meanwhile the post-prandial closing time at the Bull was rapidly approaching.

By the way, I am by no means the only citizen who objects to the new bureaucracy of the cheque. In a Sunday supplement recently I read to my surprise and with mixed satisfaction that a salesman in one of London's really ancient shops — Lobb's, Croop's, Milnow's or Coke's — had been dismissed on the instant for asking a junior member of the Royal Family to write her address on the back of a cheque. The wrong man got the chop: it was the manager presumably who had instigated the monstrous convention.

TWenty minutes passed before the young man returned. He was accompanied by an older individual, bald and oozing pomposity. "Delighted to be of service, sir," he said, offering a hand. "I'm sorry you've been inconvenienced. We'll not need your address, sir."

"And in heaven's name why not?" I said. "You take a second's glance at me and pretend that you caltvZace me in what I suppose Sir Keith Joseph would call categories A or B. Well, I don't care for your methods. Tell me, do you judge by accent, hair-style, cut of suit or what?"

"I can only apologise for the delay, sir," said the manager. "My assistant was doing no more than . his duty."

I did not sign my name and address on the back of the cheque, nor did I produce my driving licence, nor any of my credit cards. The trousers were parcelled and I departed.

A pint at the Bull cooled me down and as I filled my pipe I ran over the disgraceful shopping incident in my mind. I immediately observed from its serial numbers that no cheque was missing from my cheque book and I was left to infer that the apprentice outfitter now had in his possession a curious document reading:

Order form to National Westminster Bank Please supply ( )book(s) containing 25 crossed/open cheques per book. Counterfoil cheques are also available. Please mark as required.

I had obviously signed my name and had entered the €23.75, the price of the slacks, in the box marked, "For Bank Use Only". Still, I'm sure I was right in principle.