Where has all the money gone?

Comedian Al Murray, the pub landlord, asked an important question when the economy crashed and the recession  began. "Where," he asked the bankers in his audience "is all the fucking money?" This is a good question.
Although only in my mid forties I can recall a time when I was paid cash wages in a little envelope. Folding pieces of paper and round bits of metal (generally round although fifty pences had corners - twenty pences hadn't been invented and thrupenny bits had been phased out) in due course times changed and I was paid directly into the bank, and I then had to cash a cheque to get cash money out of the bank. But it was still money.
Now however we are moving more and more into a cashless society. This is not because we have no money, although in the recession it feels like that, but because we no longer use cash. On  recent trip to "that London" in "Down South" this was brought home to me with a bump. In the North we still but round bits of metal into boxes to get a bit of paper to put inside the window of our car to prevent other people putting bits of paper on the outside of the car demanding that we send them coloured bits of paper with pictures of the Queen on them. Naturally I assumed the same happened in the south. Not so. Down in the wealthy south it is compulsory, if you own a car, to also own a mobile phone and it is a legal requirement, so it seems, to carry it at all times in order to pay for your parking by using the phone. Car parks do not have meters or any means to pay by cash. Indeed in one car park even my phone was redundant and I had to use a credit card to pay for the parking because the meter did not accept cash. What is that all about? Was it afraid of someone trying to pass a forged note or a dodgy Euro coin? What next? Will it demand a reference?
What if, like the dinosaur that I am, you were to leave home without a credit card or a mobile phone (as I often do) but needed to park the car? I would feel rather silly offering other people cash to pay for them to use their credit card to park my car for me. The world has certainly changed. In the old days a man with a limp and facial sores would charge you fivepence to park your car on an old bombsite, but you knew, providing any unexploded bopmbs didn't go off your car was safe for the day. Now you pay £25 (assuming you have a phone and a credit card) to park on an unmanned bit of tarmac knowing that when you come back some low life will have bust your window and stolen your phone charger. he knew you had one of course, because otherwise you wouldn't have been parked there. There will be some excellent CCTV footage of the crime taking place, but no chance of catching the bastard. In the old days the toothless ex-army war veteran would have just breathed his alcohol fumed breathe on the miscreant and frightened him away. Or hit him with a stick.
So, returning to the point from which I have digressed as usual, where has all the money gone? The truth is we don;t need it anymore, and it was never really there in the first place. Money is simple a promise to give something provided it isn't asked for. And the cash tokens we used to satisfy ourselves that the promise would be kept are now redundant, replaced by numbers on an Iphone.
But I for one can't help missing the solid feel of  a coin in my pocket, or the crispness of a fiver in my wallet, the slightly grubby working mans fold of notes in a wad, or the visual appeal of a breifcase stacked with a ransom demand. Somehow a balance on a computer screen just doesn't convey that happiness in quite the same way.