I have become technologically timid. It wasn’t always so, but a recent bout of nervous sweating about using a bus pass made me realise how prone to technological terror I had become. Electronic cards are my main phobia.

True, in the wider world of technology, every time I try answering my portable telephone, I cut the caller off (it used to work easily until they installed the traditional upgrade that makes everything worse). And, since upgrading to OS X Yosemite on my Macbook, nothing works any more, from the headphones to my writers’ word processing programme.

All this I can live with. I don’t like people calling me anyway, and if I didn’t listen to things or write so much I might make something of my life. But the cards, the cards!

Generally speaking, these involve activity of a public nature and the risk of humanity’s worst fear: embarrassment. I write in the wake of a shock report that four out of 10 people aged between 80 and 89 have used contactless cards for small grocery shopping or visiting cafes and coffee shops.

Damn these hip-replacement hipsters. I’ve never plucked up the courage to use a contactless card. To be fair to me, it’s because they can only be used for a certain amount that I can never remember when I’m out, but which I read here is now £30.

But these 80-89-year old whippersnappers are contactlessing away like there’s no tomorrow. Worse still, 19 per cent of over-50s, my own mob, have gone contactless. They do so up to three times a week, suggesting the activity has replaced procreation.

They’re probably the same smarties who use the oddly named self-service tills at supermarkets. I say “oddly named” because, every time I glance over at these from the normal service queues, I see pretty much every shopper needing someone else’s service to make self-service work.

And there are always queues at them, which defeats the point. As for contactless cards, there are 58 million in the UK, which suggests infants and babies must have them too. Wouldn’t surprise me if the little swine could use them an’ all.

At the time of writing, I have used my bus pass once. I bought it because Edinburgh city’s centre’s parking charges can cause instant penury. However, I hadn’t been on a bus for ages, and even the last time my behaviour reminded me of that television comedy sketch about clueless people: “So, I put the money in here, do I? Then I take a seat? And, at some point later, I get off the bus? And that means standing up and making my way to the exit, does it?”

I was afraid of the pass because, rather than show it to a human-style person, you show it to a machine, which beeps — if you do it properly. The woman in front of me on the way into town to buy my card had trouble with her beep.

The shame! You have to make things beep. If it doesn’t beep it doesn’t signify. It means you have failed. I’m only surprised that the Westminster government hasn’t got round to taxing beeps yet. If it does, I’m sure it’ll restrict such a tax to poundshops and those with ten items or less.

Having secured my pass, I waited nervously for the bus to arrive, convinced I’d be deficient in beeps. True enough, my first swipe over the detector didn’t work. Sweat broke out on my brow. The watching driver scowled. But, manfully, I took a deep breath and, at the second attempt, it worked. I had achieved beep!

I was surprised because, despite the awful warning of the woman on the way in, failures like that generally only happen to me. Everyone gets a beep until it comes to me. Same as I’m the only one whose bank card is rejected at the till for lack of funds. Never seen it happen to anyone else.

Same as no one else ever stalls their car now, or forgets their mobile phone, or puts their trousers on backwards. Only me. Only connect — but make it contactless. Contactless: one word that sums up where the world is going. That’s how the world will end: not with a bang but a beep.

Meanwhile, I’ll still go to the normal tills, paying by the pin number that I’ve painstakingly remembered. And I’ll walk the four miles to town if my bus pass doesn’t beep.