I have decided to resign from the human race, and thought you might like to know why. Some weeks ago, I wrote of plans in the UK to discontinue the use of cheques by 2018. I foolishly assumed that would mean that they would be in use until 2017. I was wrong.

Despite my best efforts to obtain one, I haven't had a UK chequebook for months. Following a lengthy telephone call, I can tell you that NatWest is doing everything in its power to stop people using cheques now.

To deal with the most obvious absurdity first, I am a customer of 42 years' standing, but that means nothing. I can't get past that, but maybe you can.

Once upon a time, when a chequebook contained five remaining cheques, one came across a piece of paper that was a chequebook re-order form. One filled it out and sent it away. Another chequebook made its way to you, or you to it; your choice.

That worked fine, so it was changed. Chequebooks no longer contained 25 cheques, but 20, and no re-order forms. The all-knowing bank computer sensed when you were about to run out of cheques and sent you a new chequebook.

That worked too, so it was changed. Without telling customers, NatWest decided that new chequebooks could only be issued when a customer came into the bank and asked for one. I live 4,000 miles from my branch, so I was a victim of the bank's new policy, which might best be described, Coen Brothers-style, as No Chequebook for Old Men.

So I phoned the bank. The young woman to whom I spoke had limited powers to deal with the matter and, not to put too fine a point on it, limited powers of everything. She told me that I couldn't have a chequebook and I certainly couldn't have 10 chequebooks, which would have solved the problem for the remainder of my life.

At the end of a long and pointless conversation with her, I asked to speak to her supervisor. "Why?" she asked, brusquely. I'm proud to report that I showed sufficient restraint not to say exactly why.

"I am not satisfied with your answers," I said, diplomatically. Her supervisor was only marginally less useless, so I spoke to her supervisor, and then his line manager, and then that guy's line manager.

He told me that his line manager "wasn't there". I asked if he had drifted off silently into outer space, but he had just gone to lunch, or something. To save time, I asked if I could speak to the disappeared manager's manager. That man was also not there. I asked who his manager was, and his manager, and his manager, and four levels of management later, we came to the executive board of NatWest. "Let me speak to them, then," I said. "You can't," I was told.

"OK," I said. "I'll write to them. Please give me the name of anyone on the executive board." The fellow said he had no idea who they might be.

Too much steam is now coming out of my ears for me to remember exactly what happened next, but the critical moment came when I asked for 10 chequebooks. "We can't do that," the man said. I explained the difference between "can't" and "won't", and we agreed that the bank could send me 10 chequebooks, but wouldn't. That was the high spot of the conversation, the only part of an hour's phone call where I felt I had got my point across.

But linguistic progress wasn't going to result in my having a chequebook, which I need in order to be able to pay people I owe money to. Yes, it's that simple. By now, it was as clear as the waters of Bermuda on a fine, sunny day that I wasn't going to obtain satisfaction on this or any other call, but I continued the conversation to see how just stupid it might become.

The final stumbling block was this: if you have a "bank service card", all the contents of multiple chequebooks could be used simultaneously and the bank would be the loser.

This assumes that I would be a big enough loser myself to store all the chequebooks, the service card and the secret number in a place 4,000 miles away that could be easily burgled by people willing to fly for seven hours to empty out the £800 ($1,250) in my account.

I only have a bank service card in the first place because the stupid bank won't accept my Butterfield credit card, because it lacks a chip and pin. It's a classic Catch-22: the bank is too inefficient to help me, so it made me have a card that makes it even less able to help me. Brilliant.

They said I could have an online account, but they'd have to send me a card-reading machine. Unnecessary machinery: yes. Two chequebooks: out of the question. See where this is going? In a nutshell, here's what all this taught me:

1. NatWest views its customers as cretins.

2. It views all non-customers as criminal fraudsters.

3. It views Bermudians and Americans as beneath its dignity and will not deal with them. Their credit cards are worthless and cannot be accepted.

4. Chequebooks are as over as the 1926 Cup Final.

5. So is common sense.

The man I finally spoke to vowed to look into the matter for me. I begged him not to, since the outcome was a foregone conclusion, but he insisted. What the hey, I thought, he won't do anything useful with his time either way. He asked if my phone number began with 809, which it did back in the days when chequebooks were widely used.

Hence my decision to leave the human race and join the voles, not one of whom has these problems. They live largely underground, and so shall I.

Here is a sample of vole thinking: "Look over here: a juicy worm, which I shall not need a credit card, a service card, a machine or a cheque to eat". See how much better the voles have it?

One day, humans, we voles will rise up and eat you. Until then, keep trying to get a chequebook or other time-wasting activities. Your downfall shall not be long in coming.