Things you used to be good at

The other day I spent a bewildering ten minutes standing behind two women in a supermarket while one of them attempted to get some money out of the ATM.

You know how frustrating it is to be waiting for a quick cash withdrawal while somebody apparently is using a cash machine for the very first time or attending to all their financial affairs right there, right then, rather than in the branch.

You hear the peep peep peep which means they’ve finished — and then they start again.

These days we are encouraged to do this sort of thing online, where we are at liberty to struggle with the vagaries of their “user-friendly” website all day and half the night.

It’s the do-it-yourself age, which the service providers like to portray as being an advantage for the customer but, in reality, is short for “push off and do it yourself.”

That puts all the responsibility on us and has played a part in the rise of the term “techno fear” — being frightened of procedures and devices which may not really be difficult but which baffle us all the same.

The cash machine should really be the least of anybody’s worries but then we all have our weak spots.

It’s all a question of what you’re used to.

I have a car mechanic friend who can handle any problem you throw at him as long as he can do it with a spanner in his hand but give him a modern vehicle on which everything is controlled by a computer and he’s as dumb as I am.

“Use it or lose it” is a saying that covers everything from muscles to the ability to perform simple tasks and it can confront us in any, apparently, simple sphere of life.

I was watching a film from the 1960s, in which everybody was smoking cigarettes — as people did in those days.

One particular Brylcreemed poser went to light a lady’s cancer stick for her with a gadget fuelled by some highly dangerous substance known as lighter fluid.

Gas, it should be pointed out, had been discovered before that time but people still went around with small items full of petrol in their pocket. The method of igniting the fuel-soaked wick was a mechanical one: you snap a trigger down which rubs a textured metal wheel against a piece of flint, thus creating a spark, and simultaneously lifts the cap that covers the wick, enabling the miracle of fire.

Cracked it, lads. Now let’s roast this missionary.

When this didn’t work a couple of times, the smooth guy held the cap down with his other thumb while he applied pressure to the trigger, before releasing it and effectively giving the process a bump start. It worked and his status as cool cat was maintained.

It’s the sort of thing you were expected to know in pre-electronic times, and it made me think about other skills that can disappear if you’re not called upon to use them.

These can vary widely, including (talking of bump-starting) getting a flat-batteried car going by pushing it or rolling it down a hill until it gains a bit of speed and, with the gear lever in second, letting the clutch out, which makes something happen which the defunct battery was supposed to do.

You can’t do this with an automatic, by the way, and this part of the world is full of them.

Those who have only ever owned relatively modern vehicles will, no doubt, regard this as almost Neanderthal in its lack of sophistication but it wasn’t that long ago that damp mornings came with a mournful soundtrack of unhappy engines straining to splutter into life.

Being able to pull off the starting trick made you a resourceful figure deserving of a certain respect.

I’m not sure if the same could be said of the single man’s ability to unhook a bra with one hand but that’s another skill that can be lost through lack of use, in this case, caused by embarking on a long-term, monogamous relationship.

The way things are going in Hollywood at the moment they’ll be bringing up such abilities in court as evidence of a debauched and potentially criminal lifestyle.

Several years ago I used to make a bit of money helping people with their CVs (resumés if you speak American).

I recommended a comprehensive but straightforward list of achievements plus a short section showing you’re a nice person to have around, so I asked clients to name a few things they enjoyed and were good at. Number one among the younger people was “socialising,” which was not really what I had in mind.

But I suppose it is something that can fall by the wayside as life goes marching on.