Monthly Archives: April 2022

Day 101 (Part 2)

I may have been incorrect when I said I would post immediately if the talk was good. The spirit was willing but Julia had pasties in the oven with potato wedges and you know how it is . . .

It wasn’t the most sophisticated of meals, but it was filling and warm on a cool night.

The talk was excellent, talking about 24 different coins and the personalities associated with them. They were rather too old for me as I know very little about ancient coins, but it was interesting all the same. As an added benefit, I now have a better idea of the timings for my talk next year and know that I can cover about 25 medallions in reasonable detail.

It covered the famous Greek coin with the owl on, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and the Duke of Wellington. And the widow’s mite, Legionary denarii, the debasement of coins, the death of Archimedes and Hannibal. That’s quite a lot for one evening. I’m not sure how long it lasted but that is a good sign. Usually, by the forty minute mark I am yawning and clinging desperately to the last vestiges of my sanity.

It was, to be honest, a night of mixed emotions. It was fun and interesting, and has taken the hard work out of planning mine, which is good. However, it has also set the bar rather high in terms of quality. Content is not a problem, but quality of design is another matter. I had enough problem with simple slides and plain backgrounds last time. Now it looks like I will have to do a lot better than that.

The pictures are from my collection. The medallion is from the Butlins Veleta Competition in 1954, which was the the biggest dancing competition in Britain between the wars, and probably up to the 1960s.

The other two show an item from my collection of plastic transport tokens. When I was asked to talk at the Numismatic Society it was on condition I didn’t talk about my transport token collection. There is no accounting for taste.

They were provided for a number of reasons – pre-payment, employees, postmen, school children and, in this case, Air Raid Wardens, allowing cheap travel for various categories of people who needed it.

Nottingham City Transport 1d ARP token – size comparison

Nottingham City Transport 1d ARP token

Day 101

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And the decision is . . . that I will make a decision later. I want to get this written before I go to the Numismatic Society and decision making will only delay it.. The talk is History’s Great Names in Coins. It is, according to the speaker going to be “a bit different” and “interactive”. This could go either way. If it’s ground-breakingly brilliant I will come straight back and tell you. If it isn’t, I’ll eat my tea first and then tell you.

To be honest, I don’t generally favour new things, so it’s unlikely my evening meal will be delayed. However, we do have a member who tends to start ranting in a disconnected way halfway through most talks and it will be fun to see how he takes it. It is, as we are often told, wicked to mock the afflicted, so I won’t. On the other hand you can’t blame me for wondering what is going to happen. Will he be engrossed? Or will he be provoked into louder than usual ranting?

A letter arrived for me today. It has taken five weeks to get from the USA to Nottingham and is actually two days quicker than forecast. It seems like a long time. I won’t say anything derogatory about the US Mail system, because it’s generally not too bad and I’m sure it has problems that ours doesn’t, such as long distances, bad weather and bears. These, of course, are all minor inconveniences compared to the challenges faced by the Pony Express and the early Air Mail pilots.

Day 100 (Part 2)

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This was the alternative post I was thinking of making today. I was going to post it later but I thought I’f do it then move on.

this morning I lay in be thinking. I often do that on Sunday, then go back to sleep for an hour or two. I have nothing pressing to do and getting up late helps to differentiate Sunday from other days. On other days I may lie in bed and think, but I do it under the pressur of knowing taht I have to get up.

This morning I thought it would be nice to find a Chinese restaurant that serves businessman’s lunches, as they used to be called, and take Julia out on Wednesday. We used to go to one in Matlock when we were out during the week – a no frills two course meal with coffee for very little money. We lost the habit over the years, and it has been a long time since I thought about it.

That led me on to all you can eat buffets and the lesson I learnt that I actually enjoyed them more if I didn’t fill myself up to the ears. When you are paying a fixed price and presented with a lot of food it is always a temptation. It’s also tempting to fill up on several plates of snacks before attempting to eat several main courses.

The plan I eventually settled on was to eat a good selection of snacks, some pancakes and duck, and then move on to a main course made up of two or three dishes. You still eat plenty that way and get value for money. You don’t however, feel bloated, ill, unable t move or gluttonously greedy. Once I adopted the new method I found myself enjoying the e experience a lot more.

At one time three of us used to joke that we ought to go for one of these buffets and see what the management did. I can, as you may have gathered, shift a lot of food, and it shows. X, as I will refer to him, who was often mistaken for my brother due to size and ginger beard, was similarly placed and Y, the third of us, was built along the lines traditionally used by coopers in making large barrels.

We never did do it. Y died in his 40s, mainly due to an hereditary heart condition. Y died due to diabetes when he was 50, a sad end to man who served in the Territorial Army for 12 years and used to do a couple of ten mile runs a week.

That just leaves me. Sixty three but with a body at least ten, if not twenty years older. I hadn’t until today, really put it all together. It also dawned on me that two of the people who were at Y’s funeral are also dead now. One at 64 as his body just gave out due to weight and lifestyle (much the same as me) and one from a recurrence of his cancer.

It was a sobering thought, and one that made me think seriously before eating during the day. The only difference between me and the others is that I eat better quality fresh food. Several of them took more exercise than I do, and two or three were probably thinner.

It feels like today was a cross-roads. Sorry for being a bit too serious, but it’s something I want to note down for posterity.

And now I’ve written it down I can forget about it.

Pope Benedict XVI

Cardinal Newman

You can decide for yourself whether the pictures are about me getting religion or about me collecting medallions. 🙂

Day 100

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I know there’s nothing mystical about the number 100, but it seems like a good day to have a serious review of my titling practice. It feels like a growing panic is engulfing me as I see the days fall away, and though it’s undoubtedly quicker and easier, it also feels like I’m leaving the blog unfinished. On the other hand, when I write titles by number it hides the fact that some days I just can’t be bothered, wher5eas titles don’t hide it so well. By tomorrow I will have reached a conclusion. The conclusion could be that I carry on numbering, or that I start using titles again. Or simply that I can’t be bothered to make a decision. Watch this space . . .

Another proper step in my poetic progress has been taken. Nothing major, so don’t expect too much. It’s just that so many of my poems are just marking time – same sort of poem, same magazines, more of the same . . .

Last month I submitted some tanka to an Australian magazine called Eucalypt. It’s a well known magazine, which specialises in tanka. I’ve never submitted to it before, and I’ve never sent tanka to a specialiost6 tanka magazine before. Result – an acceptance.

Second result – a feeling that I have advanced a little further along the road to getting better. I know it’s not a very precise measure of either progress or my targets, but it does feel like progress, all the same. Of course, I’m now left wondering what I need to do next to feel more like a serious poet. In the 1950s I could just have worn a beret, but these days it’s not so easy to look distinctively poetic.

Day 99

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We had an email waiting this morning. It had several blurred screen shots, several paragraphs of broken English and a declaration that the would be purchaser would only pay £30 for postage and packing. We deciphered the note, calculated the cost of the parcel and found that it was going to cost a lot more than £30.

The trouble is that some people fixate on the P&P, ignore the fact that eBay charge us commission and fees on our postage costs and don’t appreciate that if we are sending a parcel with £400 of goods in it we want to insure it.

On top of that, this is now the ninth message we have had from him this week and the 22nd we have had this year. Not one of them has actually resulted in a sale. The problem is that as soon as you say yes to one of his irksome suggestions/demands he starts with another.

It’s £400, some of the stuff has been hanging around for a while, and the idea of making the sale is quite attractive. However, the sale is only good if you actually get the money. If anything goes wrong, eBay will undoubtedly side with the buyer and we will end up losing £400 plus postage fees. It’s easier, as I pointed out, to save postage and the labour of packaging and arguing, and just flush £400 down the toilet.

Some deals, as was pointed out to me as a young man working in sales, are simply not worth the effort. It seems counter-intuitive but I made one or two of those sales, including one where I lost the company £7,000 (which was a lot of money 30 years ago) and that always comes back to haunt me.

In summary – today was a day of frustration, annoyance and ghosts from the past.

We had veggie burgers (which we ended up buying from the shop rather than making) for tea, in nice fresh cobs, and I enjoyed them. We also had chocolate brownies as Julia saw them whilst shopping. Then we slept in front of the TV. Is this, I ask myself, where all that hope and ambition ended up?

I suspect there may be a poem concealed within that thought.

For some reason, whilst snoozing, I dreamed of cream teas.

Day 98

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This morning my new office chair was delivered. Part of it was poking out of the box but it seemed to have escaped undamaged. Unfortunately when we opened the box another part was broken. The free next day delivery service seems to involve a lot of throwing things about and only a little padding.

To be fair, I got straight on the “live chat” section of their website and after ten minutes of chat and attaching photos it was all sorted. Packaging 0/10, customer service (so far) 10/10. However, I am waiting to see what happens before I become too optimistic. There’s a long way between promising something and delivering it.

In the evening I cooked roast veg, red cabbage, sausages and gravy and we had a healthy tea. I also cooked chickpea and sweet potato curry for Sunday. The plan is to make veggie burgers tomorrow as I had burger buns delivered tonight. Really we shouldn’t be eating all that bread but you can’t be good all the time.

This is my way of saving money and calories – if I have food and plans ready I am less likely to reach for a takeaway menu and the phone.

Chickpea and peanut butter thai red curry – almost chickpea and sweet potato

In between I put quite a lot of stuff on eBay for work and checked my medallion collection ready to start planning the talk. Miraculously, I found them all. They are in four different locations but they are all there. In size they vary from 16mm to 70mm so it’s not possible to house them all together. I’m thinking of ordering some new coin trays for one of my cases and in that case they might all go together, but that might just be an idle dream.

Top picture features vegetables that we were served at Carsington water in the days we used to go out.

Day 97

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I’m sixty-three years old and I just did something I’ve never done before.

New things are quite common when you are young, but I honestly thought that apart from a colonoscopy I had no novel experiences left in life. I suppose there’s still bigamy and necromancy but, to be honest, I prefer a warm drink and a spot of TV.

So, you ask, what did I do? I “checked all” on my ASDA shopping and pressed the “order” button. It took about ninety seconds to do the shopping. It’s not something I normally do because it’s supposedly bad for the diversity of your diet. However, it will be three weeks since our last ASDA order so it’s not a real duplication. Ninety seconds to do a week’s shopping, and that included selecting the time slot. I’m impressed. Of course, by the time I’ve been informed that much of it is out of stock, I suppose it will take a bit longer.

I’ve just had another poem accepted. It sounds like the magic has worn off a little when I put it like that. I sent ten off, so I also had nine rejected, but it doesn’t sound quite so impressive put like that.

On the other hand, it’s a tanka, so it’s only five lines. I suppose a proper poet would only consider it a verse. Of course, a proper poet would say “stanza”. I’m not sure when this happened, they were definitely “verses” when I was at school.

Medal for the closing of the Central Ordnance Depot 1982 – it refers to the explosion in 1918 which killed 134 people. At the time it was suggested that the factory staff should be awarded a collective VC because of the speed they returned to full production.

Finally, in a day of novelty and adventure, I’ve been asked if I can do another talk at the Numismatic Society. There are two ways that you can take this. My first thought was relief, as it shows my last one, on the Peace Medals of 1919, wasn’t too bad. My second reaction was, obviously, panic. Fortunately it’s planned for the early part of 2023 so I have a year to prepare. As you may recall from the previous one, that’s eleven and a half months to think and two weeks to panic.

My subject is “A Hundred Years of Medallions” and will be about my attempt to form a collection of medallions – one for each year from 1900 to 2000. It’s actually 101 years, but as nobody agrees when the century starts and ends I thought I’d avoid the argument and just add an extra medallion.

Magistrates’ Court Medallion – two new courts were opened in 1996 – Nottingham and Mansfield

There’s an obvious flaw in my plan. After three years of thinking about it, I’ve only just started collecting the medallions seriously. So far I have secured 44, leaving me with 57 to go. I’ll have more by the time the talk comes round, so there will be plenty to talk about. All I need is the slides and photos.

Talking of which, I can’t remember where I put the stick with the last presentation on it, so at the moment I can’t even remember how many slides I’m going to need.

The header picture is a bronze medal designed by Paul Vincze for the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Birth. The others have titles attached.

Royal Wedding Medallion 1947 – a time of national shame at the poor quality medallions that were being produced.

Day 96

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I spoke to someone about Kindles last night. Today I mentioned them in one of my replies to a comment.

This is how it is. I like books. I like sitting in a room with well-filled bookshelves. But I like having several hundred books contained in something the size of one slim book, and I like the ability to increase the font size and have lighting readily available. As my eyes have aged I find the last two points to be of growing importance.

Now, for a moment, place yourself in a forest glade. See the beams of sunlight that penetrate the foliage, smell the damp soil as it sinks beneath your feet, and listen to the birdsong. That is how I see reading a book. With a book you have physical presence, weight, and the smell of dust and mould and paper (yes, I do have a lot of second-hand books). Reading a Kindle is like watching a nature programme on TV. They can show you the sunbeams and record the birdsong, but there is nothing physical beneath your feet, and no scent.

That just got6 me thinking about blue eyes in animals. Specifically, why do very few animals, apart from humans, have blue eyes? How, you ask did I get to this? Simply by thinking that an orangutan on TV is less easy to bond with than one in a zoo where you can see it, hear it, smell it and make eye contact.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of looking on the internet for an answer, an error further compounded by wandering into Quora. That, for those of you who have been fortunate enough to avoid it, is the digital opposite of the British Library, being a worldwide depository for stupidity.

And with that thought on modernity and the digital age, I will leave you for now.

A pile of books

Day 95

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Blood test at 10.20. Think of me sitting there with my sleeve rolled up. I’m hoping then blood flows well, but after the last time I had a sample taken at the doctors I am not optimistic. I really should think about getting my own machine to do finger prick tests, but it goes against the grain to buy medical equipment on eBay.

I took delivery of some medallions from eBay this morning. I spent £22 on four medallions and they all looked quite good when they arrived. So far I’ve only checked one of them out. A similar one is for sale on a dealer’s list (not eBay, which is not a good guide) for £38, so it looks like it was a successful buy. There are more important things than making money, but it’s always nice when you buy a bargain.

I’m sure I will never make a profit on my collection of 1919 Peace Medallions, because I often get locked in a bidding war when buying them, but with the others I try to be more sensible.

When I was younger I used to think that if I paid too much inflation would take care of the problem. Generally this is true as prices do tend to rise with most things. The only problem is that when you are thirty there is a lot of inflation in your future. These days it won’t be many years before downsizing or mortality makes a sale necessary so I have to be a bit more thoughtful. On the other hand, as with the Peace Medals, I tend to think that if I haven’t got it after thirty years of collecting, I shouldn’t let it go for the sake of a few pounds.

The header picture is the obverse of the 1919 Birmingham Peace Medal, one of the commoner town medals given out to school children. The initials MBL next to Victory’s feet, stands for Matthew Boulton Ltd, a factory, set up in 1775 by Matthew Boulton and James Watt to produce steam engines. They later specialised in minting, and ,made the famous cartwheel pennies.

Birmingham Peace Medal – reverse

Day 94

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Failed Haiku is out. Actually it’s been out a few days but I only just got round to looking at it. I have three senryu on page 84. I just looked and realised you can just type 84 in the box at the beginning. There really is a lot I never knew about computers.

The figures for this year are Submissions 14, Acceptances 6, Pending 5, Refused 2, Lost in Cyberspace 1.I’m reasonably happy with that, though it has to be said that I have let three or four chances to submit slide by, and they are invariably the places I find harder to get into. This tends to make the figures favour me.

I really have to get back to the target of 100 submissions and get well out of my comfort zone. It makes me try harder and and puts rejection into context. However, I’ve covered this before.

The rest of the day followed well worn channels. We generally don’t get many calls or customers on a Monday, as we always used to be closed. That was a tradition from the days when the owner did coin fairs on Sundays. I generally worked on Mondays when i was doing fairs because I had regular markets to do or a shop to open (we were opposite an auctioneer that held Monday sales, so we had plenty of trade customers on a Monday).

My slow days were Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I used to go to auctions or other shops in mid-week. Unfortunately so did a lot of other shops so I ended up visiting a lot of closed shops. It was, I suppose, one of the many flaws in my business plan.

Silver Britannia coin

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Life after the Care Farm