The ATM has failed

I do remember thinking, as I walked towards the 'hole in the wall' last Saturday night, that the writing looked a bit slanty on the screen, but such was my urgency for cash I sort of ignored my thinking.

Which is why, when the machine went clunk, clunk, clunk once, twice three times too many, I sort of thought maybe I should have trusted my first instinct. But the screen said that the machine was counting my money and I trusted it implicitly, even though I was thinking 'I only wanted £20 and it sounds like it's counting out £200 ... in fivers!'

In fact, it was taking so long, I let the man behind me see the message on the screen as I'm sure he's thinking 'this doll's put in the wrong pin number and it's eating her card.'

And then the final clunk. Followed by silence. No whirring of doors opening to spit out cash or card. I'm left standing with my hand in mid-air waiting to catch whichever the machine decides to spew out first to discover it's constipated and nothings coming. And the message on the screen says 'the ATM has failed'.

That's when I start doing the irrational things that draw attention to myself, like responding to the machine saying 'what do you mean failed?'. I knew there was no point kicking it because it was embedded into a brick wall and I was never one for self-harming, so the next logical thing to do seemed to be the slide up the door where the money comes out to see if theres any there for me. Of course there's not.

I didn't have much success when I tried to stick my fingers into the 2 mm wide slot to try and retrieve my card either, so I spoke to it again and demanded that it give me back my card. I pushed a few of its buttons just for good measure - well, it had pushed a right few of mine so I reckoned at least we'd be even.

As I moved in to try and look down the 2mm slot to see if I could see my card the man behind asked was everything OK. I told him the ATM had failed and pointed at the screen, only to see that the message now read 'Welcome, please insert your card'. He disappeared rather quickly, I'm not sure what worried him more - losing his card or me.

I had an urge to stick over the slot with sellotape just in case the machine decided to spit my card back out while I went into the shop to report the incident, but I didn't have any sellotape.

The spotty faced youth (that's an exact description) inside the shop had obviously been watching because as soon as I set foot across his threshold he mumbled 'it's not my problem' and then, just to clarify who's side of the war he was on: 'it worked alright until you came.' Part of me wished I'd just filled up with petrol and wasn't able to pay him. Alas, no.

Such began a week with no cash, no cashcard and no debit card. And no husband to bail me out as he was still skiing in blissful ignorance of my dilemma. Of course, I had my credit card, but gone are the days of signing a slip and I can't remember the pin so keep trying to punch in my photocopy ID from work. Have you tried to pay by cheque recently? Nowhere takes them.

Not that I had the card to guarantee them anyway ...