The Eros card, I should hasten to make clear, is the new Evening Standard loyalty card and it enables me to buy the Standard electronically at 33 per cent off the cover price.

It's called an Eros card for the very sensible reason that it bears a picture of the Piccadilly Circus statue that also features on the Standard's masthead.

I also carry an Oyster card, the electronic pass that enables me to get about London on the Tube or buses at a fraction of the full price of a ticket.

Increasingly, we rely on electronic means of payment.
So, one must wonder, what is the point of cash? Why lug about heavy metal tokens that make our pockets bulge, tend to get dropped at inconvenient times and in awkward places and are home to colonies of heaven knows how many forms of health-threatening microbial life? Hasn't cash had its day?

Well, perhaps it will. But not for some time yet. We'll need coins for a while longer. And, from time to time, those coins will need to be updated.

Last week, the Royal Mint unveiled its new issue of UK coinage, designed by the young Bangor artist, Matthew Dent.

The pound coin bears the Shield of the Royal Arms, while each of the six remaining denominations carry representations of fragments of the same Shield, which, when arranged correctly, form another representation of the whole.

It's very clever and I'm sure that, after a while, we will all get used to it.

There is one aspect of the new coins that I don't like, however: there are no distinctively Welsh symbols on the new pieces.

At present, various editions of the pound coin bear images of the Leek, the Dragon and (my favourite, for local reasons) the Menai Bridge.

England, Northern Ireland and Scotland also have their own variants, so everyone's happy.

The Royal Shield, however, has no uniquely Welsh symbol.
There are English and Scottish lions and an Irish harp. But nothing Welsh.
I understand that this is for historic reasons. But, nevertheless, I would like my country's money, if I still have to carry it, to bear some symbol of my own corner of these islands.

So, a plea to the Royal Mint: please ask your talented Welsh designer to come up with Welsh, English, Scottish and Irish editions of the pound coins.

And do, of course, continue minting your still indispensable products in Wales.