HEARING about the economic struggles in Greece, where ordinary life is apparently reverting to a cash-only economy, makes me wonder if some of the blame for the whole fiasco falls at the feet of our overall use of technology, and a general failure to appreciate the value of money.

Those of us going to Greece on holiday this summer are being advised to take enough cash - in Euros, of course - to pay for everything we might want to buy while we're there, as some businesses are now worried about accepting payment by debit or credit card, in case they never see the money come through the system. Loading up a moneybelt with that much paper certainly points up what one spends on a holiday, and makes you realise how much we have become used to simply paying for everything on plastic. It's not just the Queen who never carries cash these days.

A friend who came back from Greece recently, who said that as far as you can tell, on the surface life is going on as normal, with only queues at some cashpoints and banner headlines indicating anything is wrong.

It seems far too easy to say that it's all the Greeks' fault for having a corrupt system and wanting to retire early. If we were lucky enough to live in a country with lots of sunshine we'd want to do that too. And probably Greece, just like here, has some of the problems associated with people living longer - needing more spent on healthcare, and with a growing proportion of the population not contributing to the economy by paying taxes.

The amount the Greek government owes seems so large it's difficult to understand - just like the sort of debts lots of us are encouraged to carry all our lives.

The sums of money it is now necessary to contemplate borrowing in order to own your own home, and the deposit you need to save up to get a mortgage in the first place, are so high the only thing to do is to think of it like Monopoly money. Because if you think of it as real it's far too scary.

Here in the South West we're actually insulated from the prices many people face. The thought that it's now considered relatively normal in London to own a house worth £1million is a very odd one - in the world I grew up in, owning that sort of property put you in the very rich bracket indeed.

The money a student now owes at the end of a three-year degree course just for their tuition fees would have bought a two-bedroomed house in Trowbridge outright only 30 years ago.

Which makes the whole Greek thing much easier to understand, because if it's easy for ordinary people to get into debt when they spend money on plastic, and therefore don't see it as real cash, why shouldn't the same be true of countries?