In my continuing quest to convince you of the unbridled joy of cryptocurrency, did you know that the cash in your pocket is legal tender but the pounds in your bank account are not?

As we earthlings are lashed by heatwave and flood, and when even a trip to the sunny south coast feels a somewhat distant and daunting prospect, the current billionaire’s space race was bound to be a tad jarring for many.

Listen to the news, scan the headlines, read your paper, immerse yourself in social media and you’ll soon realise there are lots of things we should be panicking about: the ever-present threat of big tech, imminent collapse of capitalism, re-appointment of The Saj, penalty-taking in our national side and the continued fall-out from the Northern Ireland protocol.

What must I have been thinking? It’s been months since I had a pop at the current government and I completely agree that a good ol’ dig is more than overdue, especially with the fertile ground available of late.

T’other day a squash pal of mine announced after our sweaty tussle that he’d become a cryptocurrency day trader. Wow. Way to go. I kinda wish him well though suspect he’ll end up outta pocket. What it did clearly highlight though was that more and more of us are getting-into, or at least exploring, the murky world of cryptos.

The idea of printing money to solve society’s problems is understandably seen as a bad idea. Excessive spending/borrowing tends to trigger financial crises and creating money out of thin-air ultimately destroys any confidence in it. Notwithstanding, governments with their own currencies and central banks, do print money and create it digitally when it suits them.

One of my favourite tipples, usually enjoyed at Egham’s tremendous Beehive of a Tuesday evening after swimming, is Fullers ‘Hop Head’. However, I didn’t realise that the term is also a well-known collective phrase that refers to those of us that identify as beer-lovers. Nice.

In a similar vein to the earlier discussed relationship between buying and affording something, our desire to retire from the daily grind is often at odds with our ability to do so. We collectively assume that at some point in our mid-sixties we’ll be able to jump ship and clamber off the hamster wheel of work into a twilight of blissful freedom from traffic jams, pressing deadlines, belligerent bosses and unrealistic demands. Sadly, think again.

Better known as the king of the Ponzi scheme, former Nasdaq chairman, Bernie Madoff, died last month having served only a few years of his eventual 150-year sentence. Managing to beguile his well-heeled clients for almost twenty years, his simple plan of robbing Peter to pay Paul was only rumbled when plunging stock markets, initiated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, caused a long-overdue run on his limited funds.

Now, being the technophobic luddite that you all know me to be, this will come as a bit of a surprise: t’other day I not only used a contactless form of payment but then actually declined the offer of the receipt. No, really. Okay, it was only a fiver at my local Costa but one-small-step-for-man and all that malarkey.