A Penny for your Thoughts....

A Penny Saved...

A British Penny is worth less than a US penny and the small penny we now use here is worth more than twice the value of the ‘old’ penny (of which this post is all about).  There are 100 new pennies to the pound whilst there were 240 old ones.

You see, I have just returned from the shops and there it was, lo and behold, a penny on the pavement.   I stopped and picked it up.   It was in fact a little harder than that suggests.   At 78 years young, I find it quite easy to bend down – it is the getting back up that is the difficulty.

In any event, I picked it up and spat on it for luck.   I know only too well that people over here in London, especially the young, would not bother to do so.   You see, they do not understand and probably never will............

When I was about five years old back home in Ireland, the Second World War was just ending (1945) and everything was as scarce as chickens’ teeth.   Money was also very scarce and to a young child a penny was a Godsend.

Most Mondays, my mother (God rest her) would hand me the enamel bucket and tell me ‘time to do your job’.   That was to go around our neighbours and collect the ‘slops’ – a nicer term would be ‘the waste food’.  Nowadays, over here in London we all have our waste food recycling bins.   In those days, such a nicety was unheard of.

So, away I would traipse door to door where the neighbours would tip their waste food and vegetable peelings into my bucket.   We had about twenty-five houses that I had to visit and the first five or six were easy.   By the time I got to the last one and the bucket got heavier, I was knackered.

It was then across the road to Mrs. Rogers.  She had chickens and one pig.  She would tell me to wait while she checked the contents and if satisfied, she would empty my bucket into one of her own.   She would then hand me a shiny penny.

It is hard for me, if not nigh impossible, to express my satisfaction upon getting paid for doing my job.    As I type this, I am beginning to tingle at the memory.   It is something that has remained with me for the past seventy odd years.

It was then to the sweet-shop where I would spend the penny on six toffee sweets, return home where mum and I would share them between us.

So, I hope that you will now understand how I felt this morning when I found the penny on the pavement.   It might as well have been a hundred pounds..........

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