Michael Harding: The day started badly, with a burst of flame and lots of smoke. It got worse

The General was up early and decided to make toast. That’s how it started. He was using a batch loaf, and as he was about to place a slice in the toaster a piece fell off and fell into the machine.

He tried shaking it upside down, rattling it and kicking it, but the lump of bread wouldn’t budge. The clock was ticking and he wanted to play golf, so he carried on toasting, and all went well with the first slice, which he used as a foundation for an egg fried in butter. But he required a second slice for marmalade, and it was when the second slice was toasting that the machine caught fire.

“Nothing serious,” he assured me, “just a single burst of flame and then lots of smoke”.

[ Michael Harding: I have no intention of getting up on a bicycle ever again ]

The kitchen was like a bomb site. He opened a window, abandoned breakfast and went for his round of golf. He was rushing, and angry, and he whipped up the wallet from the table and put it in his breast pocket. He didn’t even need it, because he uses the phone to pay for most things nowadays, except that sometimes the bar in the club doesn’t handle wireless payments.

Last thing before leaving he brushed his teeth, because he believes that brushing after breakfast is best. He played one round of golf and dropped into town to pick up lamb chops on the way home. It was when he got out of the car at the supermarket that he noticed his wallet was missing.

He searched the car and then underneath the car. And that’s when the lady appeared with two plastic bags of shopping.

“Clearly a woman that likes sorting out other peoples problems,” he told me.

It dawned on the General that not only had the lady with the shopping bags frozen his two cards but as a consequence his phone was also disabled

She wanted to know what he was doing. He said he had lost his wallet and that it was full of credit cards. He even gave her an account of his movements from the time he woke that morning to the moment he indulged in a single malt whiskey at the club and paid with his phone.

“She reminded me of that detective on television years ago,” the General declared. “Columbo.”

“You need to freeze your credit cards,” the woman announced.

But the General didn’t know how.

So she put down her bags and began to manipulate his phone, and his AIB app, and in seconds she had neutralised all his accounts.

“I used to work in a bank,” she explained as she went off with her yogurt and ham, and multiple sachets of cat food, in her two white bags.

A little further down the road the General stopped for diesel. Not being used to his new jeep and still incensed by loosing his wallet and credit cards, he parked with the tank cap on the side furthest away from the pump.

When he saw his mistake he drove around the tarmac apron in a furious rage before reversing the jeep up to the correct dispenser. The man in the shop behind the till watched him, and when he went to pay the shopkeeper said, “I was afraid you were going to fill up and drive off.”

[ Michael Harding: He said he was from outside Islamabad. I said I was from outside Drumshanbo ]

The General laughed and the shopkeeper laughed, but there was an air of unease between them that wasn’t improved when the General reached out his phone towards the wireless pay pad.

Not a ping was heard to sweeten the air with confirmation of a successful payment. And the screen displayed no magic words, like “Processing” or “Approved”.

It dawned on the General that not only had the lady with the shopping bags frozen his two cards but as a consequence his phone was also disabled.

“The shopkeeper resembled Clint Eastwood,” the General observed. “I was afraid he might have a gun under the counter.”

They were on the verge of hostilities when the lady with the shopping bags made another appearance, intent on doing the Lotto. She confirmed that the wallet had been lost. And so Clint Eastwood gave the General the benefit of the doubt on promise that he would return before sunset with a cheque.

The General went home exhausted. A stink of burning bread pervaded the hallway. Scraps of toast lay on the plate he had eaten from that morning. The toaster was lying in the kitchen sink. And his wallet was sitting on the toilet cistern in the bathroom where he had left it after breakfast while he was brushing his teeth. It would be fair to say that he wasn’t amused.