It is half past nine and I am tapping away at a computer terminal in Rye Library next to Rye Parish Church on Lion Street. Opposite me at the other computer station sits Gill Harvey furiously typing away in anticipation of her last contact with Digital Humanity before disappearing behind the Great Wall of China for four weeks.

Gill and Paddy fly out the day after tomorrow. China is no longer the Land of the Starving Millions of our childhood…suburban mothers would threaten to send uneaten meals there if their offspring refused to eat up their greens leaving many of us with a life-long trauma of soggy envelopes overflowing with brown gravy being delivered to hoards of dying Chinamen.

Today I woke at half past seven; enjoyed a Weetabix breakfast; glanced at last night’s washing-up…and ignored it; reorganised my sheet music in preparation for my next concert…a repeat of the Mozart Concert at St Mary’s Church in Rye earlier in the summer on Saturday week across the county line at St Leonard’s in Hythe; locked up the boat...which means putting in the boards; turned off the Calor Gas; frightened away a flock of the infernal starlings that sit on the rigging in the morning despoiling the deck; then took myself off the boat along the catwalk to the electricity hut…two foot high by two foot square…to pull out the plug and disconnect from the National Grid.

With infilling James Joyce could spin this to 600-pages…but for me 900-words will suffice...as a reminder that my focus is what I do all day. A cheery wave from the Chair Doctor as I passed his workshop opposite The Salts; up the Ypres Steps; through the Gungardens; crunch crunch on the shingle behind the church; and down Lion Street to The Mint and the hole in the wall outside Barclays Bank. Glad tidings. Friday’s PayPal transfer arrived overnight.

So I withdrew £20 of notes and converted them into coins by buying a comb at Boots The Chemist for a pound…and complaining about the absence of a GPS Homing Unit in my previous purchase…and then buying a Chilean apple for 25p from one of Rye’s two independent greengrocers. The best prices for Fruit & Veg are in the Budgens supermarket and at the Fruit & Veg Stall in the Thursday market…with a high-priced Farmers Market option on Wednesdays.

Like many Supermarket Objectors I disapprove of rows of identical products with different brand names and extravagant packaging filling up supermarket shelves and masquerading as choice. But small grocers are going the same way.

While apples from the local orchards in Peasmarsh are being ploughed into the ground local greengrocers are selling at identical prices four of five different types of apple imported from all over the world. So on principle I haggled the price down from 27p to 25p by offering a ten pound note as the alternative to my small change.

So in the space of 10 minutes £20 of Digital Credit was destroyed and replaced with Minted Coinage…shifting the distribution of purchasing power between the two from 30.1111111 to 1 to 30 to 1. This is unlikely to destroy the UK Economy but it does stop money being removed from my bank account without my say-so…an ever increasing general occurrence. Now I am only vulnerable to something I can understand like stealing money out of my pocket.

From The Mint to the High Street and down Market Road...passing the time of day with Martin Hutchings…who for once refrained from advising me on the absence of adequate boat maintenance aboard the good ship Vemara.

The mast should come out; half a dozen places need repairing to seal leaks; the bulkhead over the companionway should be replaced; everywhere should be varnished but the cockpit in particular…and not just another few layers but back to the bare wood; all the rigging should be renewed. All this is on my to-do list so I don’t need reminding.

Leaving Martin to take his Daily Mail back to his coffee and croissants at 42 Fishmarket Road I continued across Cinque Ports Street past Post Office Counters and turned in at Rye Royal Mail Sorting Office. What a day of wonders this is turning out to be. September finances transformed. Two Good Yacht Guide orders…a total of four guides worth £80 gross and £55 net.

Now I can say yes to the deal Tony Payne is offering…a desktop computer with a new case and a mix of new and recycled parts inside. One of the two orders was a cheque and there was still time before the library opened at 0930 to collect my Academic Inn Books Treasurer Account Passbook from the boat.

By a quarter past nine I was sitting in the end pew on the third row in the church and chatting to Clive the Verger. Along came three 8-year old girls. Do you work here? Yes I do? replied Clive. ‘We are giving all the money to the church,’ she added. ‘Thank you.’ Clive answered. ‘Yes’ butted in the second girl. ‘It’s at 12 West Street.’ The third girl thrust a piece of paper into Clive’s hand. Here is what it said.‘Shell Sale: Thurs & Fri: 9:00am-9.30am and 5.00pm-5.30pm. All money for St Mary’s Church. Shells under 50p. Sorry closes 12 on Fri.’ I added the vital piece of information to the poster that the sale was at 12 West Street and Clive put it up on the noticeboard.

Are local charities making a comeback? Five years ago the money would have gone to one of the big charities like Leukaemia Research or the Imperial Cancer Fund…to be spent giving the medical profession and drug company executives holidays in exotic places for two weeks after their one day conferences. ‘I’ll ask Ann if she knows who lives at 12 West Street.’ Clive remarked. Ann knows everybody. ‘Probably her grandchildren’ I responded.