Funny thing happened to me today. I needed to generate a £1
coin from a £10 note so that I could use a locker at the swimming pool. Not
exactly a Sherlock Holmes-level of intellectual conundrum, but nevertheless;
life cannot always reflect art, now can it.
So there I am, pondering just what I can buy, that will cost
between one and two pounds, or between three and four pounds, thus ensuring my
handful of change definitely contains a £1 coin. I’ve upped the level of my personal
maths-problem game, you see, and I don’t want to risk spending, say, 95p on a
loaf of bread, and then being landed with a fiver, some shrapnel and two £2
coins. That would be a failure, leading to an awkward conversation with the shopkeeper,
in which I ask if I can change one of my £2 coins for two £1 coins, and the
shopkeeper looks down his or her nose at me and refuses.
I’ve worked in retail; I know that £1 coins are like gold-dust,
and must not be given away willy-nilly or, indeed, if someone asks politely.
They are always the first coin to run out in the till, and it is a pain in the
arse when that happens. You’ve probably got to ask Jane to go and get more
pound coins from the safe upstairs, which will take an age, and the angry
customers waiting for their £1s in change will have started to look remarkably
like villagers with pitchforks.
Also, in a land where the customer is always right (haha),
you really value opportunities where you can say, ‘No, I’m sorry, I really can’t
spare any change,’ when what you actually mean is, ‘I would rather beat myself
over the head with this barcode scanner than open the till again to give away
my tiny stock-pile of gold. Also, why aren’t you paying by card like any normal
person, thus minimising the physical and verbal contact we have to have with
one another.’
I digress.
So, I’m planning my £1.50 purchase of bananas or post-its
from the supermarket, when I catch sight of an ON-THE-STREET BOOK STALL right
outside the swimming pool building. This is PERFECT, I think to myself. Not
only can I indulge my weakness for second-hand books (inherited from my dad;
totally not my fault), but I’ll get my change into the bargain.
Now here is where I experienced the oddest act of kindness I
think has ever happened to me. I found a great book for the princely sum of £2,
presented it to the book-purveyor-gentleman with my shiny new £10 note, only to
find out that he has no change either. Which is when I find myself leaving the
book-stall with the book, my £10 note plus a £1 coin given to me by the
book-seller, who said I could just pop back later and give him £3.
Now I’ve just moved back from France, and I’m not saying
that such a thing would never happen
at a French second-hand book-stall, but I am saying that I think it’s pretty
unlikely. And I know that I probably looked very trustworthy and honest in my
sensible middle-class trench-coat buying my sensible middle-class book about
castles, but still. This bookseller really put some faith in the human
race with this gesture. This was a win for people being nice and
helping one another out. And while we’re at it, aren’t Northerners just the
loveliest?
So there we are. I experienced altruism. I got to go
swimming. And more to the point, I got hold of my £1 coin without recourse to
maths or shopping; instead, I essentially stole a book and was given a pound by
a man in the street.
The fact that it got stuck in the locker because the
swimming-pool hasn’t updated since the new-style coins came out, and apparently
I should really have kept one of the old-style ones if I ever wanted to go
swimming, is neither here nor there.
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