We started sorting shillings at 10.00 and finished at 14.30. If we’d started four hours earlier, or spent another hour and a half sorting, it would take the tongue-twisting title to a whole new level.
A sixish start spending six hours sorting six thousand shillings sitting on a sagging shelf is not a sentence to be attempted lightly, or in polite company. Even for an alliteration addict like me, it’s a bit much.
Silvery sorted shillings sitting in a sorting tray
The sets of shillings are slowly taking shape. Coincidentally my back is also taking on a new shape, which is much more hunched than it was a couple of days ago. Shilling Sorters Spine is shortly going to be written up in The Lancet. Or possibly the BMJ. One of my friends was once written up in one of them after the premature detonation of a cannon.
We were re-enacting the English Civil War in the Sealed Knot somewhere in Somerset (that’s not a security measure – I just can’t remember exactly where). The mop for swabbing out the barrel was a bit worn and it allowed a glowing ember to survive the operation. When the powder was rammed home the ember ignited the charge while he was still ramming.
This is clearly a bad thing.
Fortunately, because he was using good technique, the ramrod merely took the skin off his palms as it whistled across the “battlefield”. The blast also blew off his shirt sleeves and peppered his arms with fragments of black powder.
And that, when one of the doctors realised this was a rare chance to write up the hazards of muzzle-loading cannon, was how he appeared in the medical press.
We never did find his shirt sleeves…
Just to give you some idea of what the blast looks like I’ve purloined a photo from the web.
Another of my mates was shot in the small of the back (mere inches above anywhere that would have provided a highly amusing and ribald anecdote) by a cannon at Naseby. But that is another story.
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You, sir, are a silly shilling sorter.
Aye. ’tis true. 🙂
Thirty years ago I fired a mussel loading rifle at a target taped to a tree (don’t ask) and yes, the gun was lawfully owned. Imagine how I felt when the lead ball came back and missed my head by a whisker. The velocity of the round was so low, the ball just bounced back off the heavy bark of the tree! Filthy stuff, black powder, but very rewarding. Ian (superb post – many thanks)
I’ve never fired one with a ball in it, but it sounds quite entertaining. Glad it missed you. 🙂
And what do we do with all these coins?
The shillings will be going to a large dealer who sends out thousands of lists every month. He has customers who buy such things in large numbers, having spent years and thousands of £ on building up his postal business.
Interesting. Are they collectors? Can’t really spend anywhere.
Yes, for collectors. They are also used to make tourist souvenirs and in vintage slot machines.
I must be getting old. The intrusive aspirate hadn’t occurred to me at all. Maybe my sniggering days are behind me now.
Your mind is clearly on a higher level. It’s all that communing with nature and thinking that you do. 🙂
Or as I say, old age.
There is always that possibility… 🙂
You and your friends lead very interesting lives fraught with danger, Quercus. 🙂
Compared to the USA, which I know from my TV viewing to be full of rattlesnakes and serial killers, we have no worries apart from indigestion and repetitive strain injury. 🙂
You must be quite immune to danger AND the TV news to survive in the United States. I believe that’s why we all have such stellar senses of humor.
I’m trying to give up TV as I find it more depressing and less interesting than it used to be.
You’re right about TV – I have to watch a bit of news at the end of the day just to be sure we haven’t gone to war or made every household own a pink flamingo or anything like that.
I just assume that if we go to war they will send for me if they run out of soldiers. 🙂
Wow! Between sorting Between re-enactments and sorting shillings, you live a dangerous life. Take care!
I’ve seen “Murder She Wrote” – it strikes me that Maine is a lot more dangerous than Nottingham. 🙂
Tee-hee! That show was so accurate in depicting Maine. 😉
Yes, it was a bit of a shock to find that Angela Lansbury couldn’t be trusted as a guide to Maine. 🙂
Always a bit of a blow. And here’s another one for you. The show wasn’t filmed in Maine. It was shot in Mendocino, California. Hope this isn’t too much of a shock for you. 😉
That explains the lack of mud and lobster rolls… 🙂
Ayuh, as the old Mainers would say.
🙂
That was a fun run between the two of you. 🙂
Thank you. 🙂
[K]not successfully sealed, sloppy swabbing slashed shirtsleeves – sad to say. Well I couldn’t shay yoursh shans shpitting, sho I shupplied thish
Yours is more mature and metrical than mine. Mine is merely built around the puerile premise that an extra “h” is going to appear in sitting and sagging as people struggle through it. 🙂
I’m shtill shniggering
That’s easy for you to say! 😉
🙂
Very nice alliteration! I hadn’t realised being a member of the Sealed Knot could be quite so dangerous! Naive of me, no doubt.
We could have as many as four thousand people on the field in the great days of the society, with cannon, muskets, swords, horses and psychopaths – so our safety record was pretty good. Honestly!
That is an excellent record!
We did quite well, though it did take a lot of work.
I’m sure it did. What a wonderful group to have belonged to!
It was fun, though the toilet facilities were often quite harrowing. 🙂
😀
Ha the wording in this was fun. Had a good time reading it. 👍
🎩-The Hat
Thank you. 🙂