I’m tired, my feet hurt and I’m in work. I need some magic medicine. In my case it’s sausage butties. Nothing else can get me out of my doldrums and get me through the day. So butty and fruit juice in hand (well we all have to make some concessions to health) I head to the till and pay with a crisp tenner, freshly out of the coinshitter (for all those Charlie Brooker readers) and in doing so clean the poor canteen lady out of all of her £1s and 50ps. In my current place of work the canteen staff never complain when you pay with notes, something of a novelty, but it just adds to my guilt when I leave them changeless.

It’s not like we do it on purpose. Change is a difficult thing to acquire. Everyone knows that if you get a tenner out for the bus and get some change by buying the cheapest stick of gum in a newsagents the rest of the tenner will magically disappear. The £2 bus journey effectively costing you £10.

So the problems of change - where to get it and it and how to stop it costing the earth.

There’s been talk of this top up card in London, an extension of the oyster. A very good idea, could eradiate coins all together, not a bad thing apart from the redundancy of the piggy bank. The other solution I see is to simply have a coin shoot on cash machines, only needs to give out pounds and I’m sure they could be easily fitted. All you need is a piece of tube and a hacksaw.

Charlie, the coinshitter lives!