Stop being a curmudgeon

 ...I had to tell myself.

My day-semi-job is running a company which promotes digital skills and seeks to reduce the gap in digital access.

We tinker with all sorts of tech - from IoT projects to accept tweets and display it on an LED array, to helping people with mundane online tasks...and pretty much anything in between.

I remember when the Best Beer Buddy and I baulked at the "card only" policy at Small Bar a couple of years back (both of us liking to pay for beer with cash for...well, no good reason) but how, since the pandemic, we both prefer not having to handle cash.

So it occurred to me that my resistance to setting up a ShopPay account at the taproom at the weekend was the very definition of stupidity, since the Brewery is only minimising touch on devices, which is the logical conclusion to paying electronically.

I gave myself a good talking to and did a bit of "security" investigation of the ShopPay app and it seemed as good a virtual money platform as any to try out.  I attached my credit card to it, confident that not only are credit cards a better paying option online, but that my card provider is REALLY switched onto potential fraud evidenced by them having contacted me a couple of times in the past before I'd even realised I might have been compromised.

It didn't take long but I didn't expect to use it any time soon.

Then on Monday we decided to have a little amble around to the Cornubia for a pleasant pint of cask from a brewery we'd never heard of (and can't remember now) and then we thought that maybe we'd see whether the LHG Brew Pub was open and not too full.  

We were greeted, checked in and shown to a seat.  Order via the QR code, we were told.  Sure enough it was a shopfy shop front offering ShopPay as an option (along with others). I leapt into action, ordered a couple of drinks and my email address, then was given a 2FA code and the job was done.  Beer arrived in a moment or two via a cheery server.

I think we enjoyed being in the brewpub more than we have before but we couldn't quite put our finger on why.  Maybe the relative lack of people so noise levels were manageable; certainly not queuing at the bar was a bonus (I don't know why in this place, I hate their queues), even the relative lack of intervention in ordering was made up for staff who seemed very comfortable at their allocated job and made us feel welcome - I don't know, but I'll happily go back on that basis.

So yesterday in the sudden post-bank-holiday-heat, the boy said he wanted to see some leaves.  We walked along the river, through the new bits of Paintworks, then across the road to Arnos Vale cemetary. We walked up quite a stiff hill, but surrounded by trees and wildflowers and everywhere the sound of loud birdsong.  It was a genius move to make this somewhere not just to venerate the dead, but to amble through. 

At the top, we came out to the Wells Rd and then walked down the hill to the Oxford.  I feared they might not have anything interesting on, but I needn't have worried.  Two different BBF beers were there and we had a couple of each in a real pub with table service (but no online ordering).  We mourned the loss of the Thali restaurant that used to be around the corner so bought mushrooms at the Tesco instead and came home.

It's so good to see so many of our favourite watering holes adapting to change and (for the most part) not complaining about those changes. Bravo!