A New Year in days gone by was always filled with trepidation solely because of those antiquated darn cheque books. Thank goodness they are a thing of the past in most countries. In the USA one still uses cheques (oh yes they do!) Not frequently thank goodness but it's sometimes a good 'fall back' in case all other payments methods fail.
Today we have our phones, our credit cards, our blessed Apple Pay, internet banking and PayPal, amongst a host of others. Sweden is basically a cashless society so the locals have a payment method called Swish and dear old Zimbabwe had Ecocash, thanks to dear old Strive Massiwe, long before most countries were out of nappies (as the old saying goes).
Mind you Somalia and Kenya had Dahabshiil long before many countries woke up to the benefits of money moving!! And the Bush Telegraph works amazingly in Zimbabwe too. My Horticulturalist sends money to Rennin, the bus driver on the Maphisa route accepts cash for school fees, which he takes to a tree on the 56km peg along the road, where a fellow is waiting to accept the cash. Honourable as the day is long, and it works and always has worked!!
But getting back to those cheque books!!
HeeHooMustBeObeyed, loved his cheque books. He banked with Rhobank, they then changed their name to Zimbank, His Bank Managers through the ages would groan at the sight of one of his cheques passing through the Burrows machines at the end of the day cashing up!! His writing was pretty illegible at best of times, but on the cheques it became worse for some reason. He was even known for having a cheque returned for being written in pencil. Life was exuberant in those days, on a couple of occasions he even wrote his birthdate instead the day's date!!
But I always dreaded the new years as he always wrote, out of sheer habit, the wrong year! It took almost until February for cheques returned by the bank to cease!!
In addition remember those the copious piles of Zimbank bank statements, all in envelopes, all stamped or franked and all delivered to the home letterbox by hand by the trusty postman. There were piles of them on every counter top, drawers full of them, unopened and virginal.
I tried filing them when we first got married, but soon ran out of those awful black and grey speckled Lever Arch files!