I remember a GP friend of mine, many years ago, blaming the invention of the ATM for chronic impatience in the world, writes Clinton Rogers.
I struggled to understand his thought process at the time, but now I get it.
His argument was that as soon as we were able to get cash out of the ‘hole in the wall’ at all hours of day and night, we started to expect everything 24/7.
And over the years, so it has turned out.
Who would have thought a few years ago that Amazon Prime would be ruling the retail world?
Pretty much whatever you want you can get it – the next day.
And if you had told me that I would no longer need to go to the corner shop to pick up a bottle of milk and a bag of crisps, that I could get a company called Deliveroo to drop it at my door as I lay on my sofa, I would have accused you of “delusions of laziness”.
But that’s it, isn’t it.
We have become a combination of entitled and lazy.
At least many of us have.
What is wrong with a walk to the corner shop or the supermarket?
Heaven forbid you could actually talk to people (I think they used to call it social interaction – young people take note).
And now the “takeaway culture” has plumbed new depths.
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In Ireland, Deliveroo has partnered with a company to start delivering food and small parcels by drone, so we can all get fatter and poorer without leaving the house.
So how long before that spreads to all areas?
Will anyone seek my permission before using the airspace above my home to deliver a lukewarm Big Mac to the house next door?
One mid-air crash and those nachos and guacamole will take someone’s eye out!
Deliveroo, like its rivals Uber Eats and Just Eat, began as a delivery service simply for hot food.
You ordered online and within an hour or so some miserable looking driver or cyclist turned up with your dinner.
Now everything is just a phone call away.
I read somewhere recently that Deliveroo has produced statistics showing that in the Hackney area of London the most-ordered item was sea salt crisps.
In Kensington and Chelsea, it was kimchi.
How did we get here?
Who are these people too lazy to get off the sofa to get their own crisps?
And who needs kimchi in the middle of the night?
I’m not even sure I know what it is.
Give it a few years and the NHS will be telling us that obesity levels have doubled – and the takeaway culture is to blame.
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