Do you remember when you could call your bank and ask someone to send you a cheque book? Since those days, (which we took for granted, didn't we?), things have changed all for our benefit, of course.

Branches don't have phone numbers any more. You get put through to an Account Management Centre where no one knows you or your account.

I have railed against computerised, streamlining procedures before, you know the ones that make me write out two cheques to save the bank having to deal with complicated issues like paying two separate accounts raised by the same company with a single cheque.

My latest two-month brick wall and head activity arose in connection with my elderly mother's account.

My dear mama has banked for seven decades with a bank we will call the Notional Bestchester, (Not Best for short).

She is, sadly, no longer able to manage her own affairs, so my brother and I are additional signatories to her account.

I contacted her branch by letter to ask for a paying-in book and chequebook to be sent to me.

When nothing arrived, I followed up by telephone, four times over the next few weeks.

Each time a new charming young lady in Bristol apologised profusely for the previous omissions and told me that the matter would be expedited.

Then a fifth charming young lady, with an enterprising spirit, dug a little deeper into the arcane Not Best regulations and spotted the cause of the problem.

Cheque-books could only be sent to one address, even when there is more than one signatory to the account.

She would therefore have to address the problem by circumventing the multi-million-pound computer banking system (paid for by us the account holders).

She confided in me that she would have to do it and she paused in order to underline the sheer brilliance of her manoeuvre "manually".

I muttered my amazed thanks at the effrontery of her ingenious plan.

She would write to my mother's branch in Cardiff, get them to send her the books, marked for her attention, and would then stagger back in amazement oh, unworthy reader with her own fair hand, post them to me.

A week later I received a letter from the Bristol Account Management Centre asking me to phone them urgently.

After taking me through the lengthy checking procedure to assure my bona fides mother's shoe size, her favourite doily manufacturer and the name of her maternal grandmother's pet goat charming young Bristol girl number six told me that I couldn't be sent a cheque-book or paying-in book because they could only be sent to one address.

I gave her my assurance that I did not hold her personally responsible for causing the wrath that about to come her way, but as the Not Best representative in the firing line she would have to grin and bear it.

I also wrote to the chief executive of the Not Best Bank, recounting my saga of frustration and comparing the service offered today with those days when I would ring a familiar employee for a quick chat before asking him for whatever I wanted.

The books arrived this week, in separate, handwritten envelopes.

Clearly "manual" is the answer.