I like a good poetic ode, you know.

‘That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, in some melodious plot, of beechen green, and shadows numberless, singest of summer in full-throated ease’ (Ode to a Nightingale, my introduction, at university to the Romantic poets in all their angst-ridden, nature-loving glory).

‘Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, great chieftain o the puddin'-race!’ (Address to a Haggis, which I can now recite in my sleep thanks to numerous school Burns competitions in the local town hall).

Odes and addresses have been written on and to a breathtaking variety of stuff, from mice and west winds to gowdspinks and the Queen, but never, until now, has one featured the electricity meter.

It’s hard to imagine feeling all sentimental about the electricity meter, isn’t it?

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who has penned verse for a variety of important occasions (including the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the deaths of the last two British soldiers to fight in World War 1 and, eh, David Beckham’s foot injury) has just announced she is writing her most unusual poem yet – an ode to the meter, which will be published to mark the passing of traditional gas and electricity meters, the coming of smart meters and the end of estimated bills.

(Incidentally, and unbelievably, it’s not the first time this end of an era has been captured artistically - late last year the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performed ‘A Requiem for Meters’, a three-minute piece of music played entirely on instruments made from old gas and electricity meters.)

Our electricity meter was in a cupboard at the front door, an intriguing little hideaway that had a whiff of danger about it because it was home to my dad’s assorted screwdrivers, old plugs, bits of wire that “might come in useful” and other stuff we had Not To Touch Under Any Circumstance.

Thinking about it takes me right back there, trying to get a proper peek in when ‘the man’ came to read the meter, listening to its strange whirr and clicks and shrieking at the spiders, sent scuttling when the door opened and the light flooded in.

Like Woolworths and filament lightbulbs, the electricity meter is part of my childhood, soon to become a piece of household history, so I really like the idea it’s about to be preserved in verse.

Turns out bittersweet nostalgia isn’t reserved for nightingales and Grecian urns after all.