Monthly Archives: October 2023

The Destroyer of Dreams

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It’s Human Nature.

Show me  bag of coins and I think of the hidden gem that might be in there. It rarely is. I’ve offered on four lots of coins this week.  I bought one lot for £3 after they decided to  keep the two best coins. The other lots were worth less and they decided to keep them. I was happy with that, as we do have plenty of junk. We are currently building up towards a third of a ton, the level at which the scrap man will call and collect.

The commonest “rare coin” we find in a bag of coins is a sovereign or half sovereign. They were circulating coins until 1914 when they were withdrawn in favour of paper money. People who had them put them away as gold is something people trust in times of economic trouble. The Treasury designed a £1 note over the  last weekend of peace (1st and 2nd August) sent them to the printers on 4th (the day war was declared) and put it into production using stamp paper, which was the only suitable paper available in bulk. They were issued to the public on 7th August. Quite impressive. Over the years the sovereigns and half sovereigns which were put away were either spent or mixed in with a general accumulation of coins.

I once pulled a sovereign out of a paper bag of coins (worth about £10 in total) and told the lady it was (in those days) worth £300. Delighted? Not a bit of it. She snatched the coin from my hand, shoved it in a pocket and glared at me. It was, I speculated, a probate job and she was intent on defrauding her siblings.

Apart from that we’ve had very few rare coins in lots. Probably one or two a year. The clue is in the word “rare”. Take the man with the New Pence coins last week (he still hasn’t written to say thank you for my time and trouble in replying to his query). If they are worth £1,000 each, did he really think he had found a handful of them? Obviously he did, and his £15,000 daydream became a handful of loose change.

I once had someone say “I thought it was too good to be true.” as I told him this on the phone. He had gone through his kids’ piggybank and found 13 of them  All I could do is agree with him.

And, now, back to the photos on my old camera card, what gems lurk in there. You always think it will be good, don’t you? Human nature, as I said. I used three of the best yesterday. Three more today and that’s it. There are a few duplicates as I tend to take back-up shots and a few of the group but I( don’t think I can use them – old photos are a tricky aspect of our data protection laws.

A Haibun and Photographs from an Old Card

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Shakespeare’s Monkey

Another rejection. My words have, again, forked no lightning. This is driven home by the fact that I borrow the words of Dylan Thomas to describe my situation. However, I am convinced that if I write enough, I will eventually produce a sonnet of enduring excellence or a haibun that brings tears to the eyes of an editor. Tears of joy, that is. (It is best to be clear about such things).

new magazine
reading the poems layer
by layer

 

First published in Blithe Spirit November 2022

Sorry, I’m low on inspiration tonight so I thought I’d stick a haibun in and see if I could get away with it. The words of Dylan Thomas are here, if you need a reminder. Or you can hear it here. his was rejected by an editor who took another from the batch. I sent it out gain immediately and the next editor selected it from a batch of three. That’s the thing with acceptance and rejection – it’s not absolute.

Julia found my old Panasonic when she was going through some boxes upstairs. Unfortunately it seems to have been  stored without any leads so we can’t, at the moment, charge it. I’m hoping the charger at work will do the trick as the other shop camera is a Panasonic. The photos for this post are some from the old card. They aren’t particularly interesting, but they do give an idea of the last time I used the camera before I replaced it with an Olympus. This handy, as the pink camera I have to use at work isn’t really good enough.

Royal Mail, Rejection and Rain

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I’ve just had an email from the Royal Mail. They tell me they have now completed their enquiries and the parcel depot manager tells them that he was able to deliver the parcel, so they hope all is OK now.

It’s taken weeks to come to this.

My actual complaints were about the useless nature of their customer contact system.

They didn’t deliver, I had to track it down myself and collect it.

I will be writing a proper letter of complaint.

And I will be asking if they have any vacancies for parcel depot managers. If you need someone to utter inaccurate platitudes, I’m you man. I could do that at the same time as doing a proper job.

I have also had an email from a poetry editor. I have been successful with them before, but It seems that this time I failed to make the final cut. It’s my own fault, as I tried to do too much too soon and didn’t spend enough time checking the quality of the “final” version.

This is the real test of my commitment to submitting more. I’ve now managed as many rejections in the last month as I did in the rest of the year. The result is that I’ve been able to check out my resilience, and have found it’s holding up well. I’m not wilting under pressure, I’m not questioning my talent (or lack of talent) and I’m not holding internal monologues where I prove to the editors they are wrong. I’m just editing the returned poems more effectively and todays returns will be submitted elsewhere on Monday.

That’s todays news. Other than that, not much happened. Apart from the rain. It was quite wet last night and we did get nearly a month’s rain overnight. However, it’s nothing compared to what happened to some people so I’m not going to complain. We got off very lightly. That’s the benefit of living on top of a hill.

Yes, quite wet . . .

Where Does All the Time Go?

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I’ve watched TV, napped, answered quiz questions, read a poetry magazine, eaten  massive plate of vegetables, left eBay feedback, read and replied to comments and suddenly it’s late. And I still have a post to write.

I really don’t know what happens to the time. It’s probably something to do with TV – I seem to be able to spend a couple fo hors watching without really noticing the passage of time. Then there’s the internet browsing. I rarely notice it, but I’m fairly sure that I spend too much time doing it. Sometimes it has a purpose, but often I just realise I’ve drifted off subject. This after noon at work I was researching a pilot who was injured in 1917, and somehow drifted on to TV personality Fearne Cotton. She’s a distant relative of the band leader Billy Cotton. Billy Cotton was a pilot in the Great War. However, there must have been several stops along the way of my journey of discovery, none of which were useful to the job in and and few of which I can remember.

We are having a new set of coin designs to celebrate the changing of the monarch. We have some on order but there is an eight week wait for delivery. They are going to release them for circulation about that time too, though I’m told one has already been seen. The video shows them producing proof coins. The ones fro circulation are produced a lot faster and you wouldn’t want to get your fingers anywhere near the machinery.

This may get people interested in coins again. I’m sure the Royal Mint is hoping so because it makes a lot of its money from sets for collectors rather than just making loose change for the nation.

British West Africa 1/10th of a Penny

Header picture is some of the Alphabet design 10p coins they made – a real damp squib in marketing terms. They didn’t make enough and they didn’t develop the series. They actually ran an advertising campaign when they had already ensured, through low production and tightly controlled distribution, that there was no stock to sell. If a shop assistant can spot the faults you’d think highly paid marketing executives could do the same.

A Busy Day

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Somewhere along the line I have lost a post. In fact, I have lost an entire evening. I’m really not sure how I managed that.

The shop was full most of the day. We had people in as we opened (by appointment), Someone rang to make an appointment for 10.30, but I pushed them on till 11.00, which was good, as someone wandered in at just after 10.30, thinking they had an appointment. They had spoken to the owner lat night and he hadn’t bothered to tell us. Then one of the regulars turned up, And another.

So, despite my supposed planning we still ended up crowded. We had several people call in the afternoon too. One of them had coins worth 85 pence. This isn’t quite the record for the week – someone else brought coins worth 65 pence earlier in the week and someone emailed for a valuation on coins which said “New Pence” on them. All coins had that on them at one time, as that’s what they were called. They became “Pence” about ten years after decimalisation. I suppose they were no longer new by then.

In 1983 the Royal mint made a mistake and made a batch of coins which had “New pence” instead of pence, but they only went into sets, not into general circulation. The sets are probably worth £1,500. Coins from circulation dated between 1971 and 1981 with “New Pence” are very common and are worth face value.

We frequently get people enquiring, thinking they have a fortune in their hand, just to find out they have pennies. It shows the power of one inaccurate newspaper article.

We once sold some 1983 year sets to someone who obviously thought that all year sets had the rare coin in. They don’t. Most of them have the ordinary coin in. He was very upset and claimed we had cheated him. Why he thought professional coin dealers would be selling sets worth £1,500 for just £12, I don’t know.

Kew Gardens – expensive coin

The Kew Gardens 50p is a rare coin you might still find in your change. They only minted 210,000 of them instead of the millions they did for other years. No, I don’t know why. This article is a reasonable guide to rarities, but note the prices are mainly for true “Uncirculated” coins, not ones out of your pocket.  Note the general downward trend of the prices as coin collecting is less popular now – people don’t use coins as much since lockdown.

The header picture is one we often get calls about – the 2007 £2 with the “upside down” writing on the edge. It’s not true. The coins are fed into a machine and 50% of them end up with the edge inscription “upside down”. I have wasted hours on the phone telling people this, thanks to idiot journalists.

A Seasonal Jay and a Lost Coin

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We saw a Jay on the way to work yesterday. It swooped from trees by the side of the road, flew in front of us and dropped into a park on the other side of the road. They are both colourful and unobtrusive, being quite a shy bird. This is the time of year to see them as they collect acorns and stash them away for future use. It’s not the first time we have seen a Jay at that part of the journey as they live in the park, but they rarely show themselves..

This morning I had an acceptance for the revised haibun, which was good. I’m always slightly wary of edits, as I may have said in  previous posts, but this one seemed to work out alright. I try to do what editors ask, as a second pair of eyes can often see what I don’t, and they are helping me for free. There are several possible pitfalls, but we seem to have avoided them.

The owner has been away for the last two days. It’s always relaxing, but it is also frustrating because we end up having to stop what we are doing to deal with customers. At that point you appreciate what he does in the course of the week. I am trying to get things loaded up on eBay but people keep ringing and visiting and generally stopping us working. I’m used to the phone calls because they are a normal part of my day, but I normally rely on him dealing with customers.  It just goes to show what a finely balanced machine the shop really is.

It hasn’t helped that we’ve found it hard to locate a number of the things we have sold. Once you lose one coin in a coin shop it can be quite a performance finding it again and it can take several hours out of the day. It always annoys me when that happens because time is money, as they say, and if you spend an hour looking for a £6 coin there is no way you are going to make a profit. It’s one of those cases where spending five minutes on filing and labelling would pay for itself. Fortunately we are all as bad as each other when it comes to losing things so it doesn’t seem so bad.

British West Africa 1/10th of a Penny

WordPress Hates Me!

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It is that time of year again and I have a blanket around my shoulders as I sit in the dining room and type. It would be easy to turn on the heating, but I’m thinking of seeing if we can make it to November before we start  to use the heating. In the old days, when my parents had a stone-built house with thick walls and no heating apart from an AGA and electric fires, I thought little of working in my room until my hands turned purple with cold. Eventually, when the wiring started to give problems, they had the house rewired and installed electric central heating. There was no gas in the village so it was electricity, coal or buy an oil tank.
The internal walls were so thick that the electrician who quoted for the job had to buy new tools and take a break to restore his mental equilibrium. It was then that we realised how many extensions had been added to the house, and how many “internal” walls had started life as exterior wall.
I suppose that’s why I have an enduring daydream about living in the desert. I like cactus and lizards in the garden would be fun, but most of ll it would be nice to know every day would end up being sunny. We are heading for four days of warmer weather again in Nottingham, but “warmer” is a relative term. This morning we had ice on the car and the alarm pinged to tell us it was 4° C.

You would not believe the trouble I’ve had typing that degree sign. I had to have four attempts and look it up twice. Then, while I had my head down typing I seem to have pressed the wrong button and wiped most of the post. At that point I realised it is so long since I’ve had to recover text that I’d forgotten how to do it. This text looks very small and pale – I do hope it’s going to show up properly when I post. If not, you have my apologies.

You can guess my feelings on the matter from the title.

The header picture is Julia – so much more reliable than WordPress. One picture is all you’re getting – I’m  not giving the computer a chance for more messing about.
Christmas Stamps

Christmas is Coming!

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Julia has been busy today and as I write we have a Christmas cake cooling on a rack. Christmas? Yes, it’s coming soon, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. I’d love to live in eternal summer, particularly since my joints would prefer it, but even if I had to have winter I wouldn’t mind missing Christmas out of the calendar.  It would be a bit of an adjustment for Christians, who would suddenly have a hole in the liturgical year, and retailers would complain, but for the rest of us it wouldn’t be a great problem.

Pom-pom Christmas Wreath

Much of Christmas is about the movement of calories and clutter round the world. To be fair, we all like presents and chocolate, but do we really need them?

It would be much easier to run a business without Christmas (apart from a business that relies on the annual orgy of over-buying), particularly when you look at the yearly tangle of Bank Holidays. I won’t go through it all, because it’s dull and I’m not sure if I remember it all correctly, but the main feature is that if you are running a poultry farm you need staff in every day. Unless it’s turkeys. Turkey farms can be quite quiet over Christmas. If Christmas day falls on a Saturday or a Sunday nobody wants to work and the pay rate is only normal weekend rate. The Bank Holiday, in that case, is on Monday and people are all very happy to work Monday for triple time. I used to hate that.

Robin

So, there we go. Christmas cake is baked and Scrooge is beginning to emerge from his summer hibernation . . .

The Devil drives ’til the hearse arrives . . .

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First post of Sunday. I’m planning several more today – let’s see if the result lives up to the planning. (I’ll give you a clue – it’s not working well at the moment).

So, poetry news. I had an email from Butcher’s Dog this morning  They have decided not to select my work for publication this time (as they put it), and have sent a very pleasant and upbeat email to tell me that. As you know, I have become slightly blase about rejection over the years, but even if you have become immune to it, it’s still nice to be rejected in a cheery manner, rather than the way some people do it.

It also makes commercial sense, as everyone needs to sell magazines, and one of your best markets is the people who want to write for you. I have twice stopped subscriptions to magazines on the basis of the quality of their rejections. There are always plenty of poetry magazines out there who need the money.There are no such worries for Butcher’s Dog,  they are doing a good job and I will be there in the queue next time they have a submission window open.

The other one wasn’t actually a rejection. It was worse than that, it tells me that they like the prose but they think I should rewrite or drop the first haiku and that the title needs work. Some magazines accept or reject without alteration, some ask for, or suggest, small changes. Others always seem to ask for more work. In this case, they ask for the work to be done and the only commitment they make is to look at it again. Most editors either accept and suggest edits or tell you that they would be happy to accept if you make the changes.

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a day or two. In these circumstances it’s sometimes easier just to thank the editor and withdraw the poem. With this one I’m going to give it a go. The opening haiku will be cut. I can’t guarantee writing a better one in the next few weeks so I may as well take the easy way out. The title had been developed after extensive thinking. It wasn’t great, but it was better than the original, and it had several features which were obviously too subtle. The new one is much more in your face and I’ve added a couple of lines to the prose to connect it to the title.

And now it’s time to throw it back and see what happens. If it is accepted it’s just a number, if it’s rejected, it’s no big deal. Regardless of the decision, next time it goes out, it will have the first haiku restored.

Now I just need to decide on whether I add a footnote about the title or not. I hate them, but sometimes you just need to drive the point home.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Grocery Delivery

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Just as I sat down to blog, a text arrived from ASDA. My delivery is 9 stops away and will be here at 8.58. They have no onions. They are sending ordinary fish fingers rather than Omega 3 enriched fish fingers. I never realised, when I was a young boy, that there would be such things as fish fingers that prevented dementia. If I’m realistic, I still don’t. The correct adult helping of fish fingers is four, according to the internet. Four fish fingers, to me, struggles to look like a meal. Even five, as in the picture, leaves a lot of empty space on a plate.

Paprika Potatoes, Fish Fingers and Mushy Peas – Gourmet Fodder

They are sending filtered milk instead of ordinary milk. It appears to be 25p cheaper until you check the quantity – I am only getting half as much so am basically paying twice the price. They will be getting that back. They will also be getting the carrots back – they are sending a kilo of carrots instead of the swede I ordered. I already have a kilo of carrots coming. Apart from the fact that swedes and carrots are different things, who needs two kilos of carrots? I once told a family member that I thought some of the substitutions were worked out by idiots. They told me that they were actually worked out by algorithms. It’s the algorithms that are worked out by idiots.

The driver apologised for being late but he had had to sort out a problem enroute. He called at an address and found nobody in. When he rang the number on the account they told him they had moved and would like him to go two miles away and drop the groceries at a different6 address. He couldn’t do that because it was not the address on the account and it would have set his timings out. So he rang the office for advice, and they weren’t answering the phone. Eventually he had to ring and tell the people he couldn’t deliver. He was a little upset that someone would be without groceries tonight. Me, I’d just have been annoyed that someone had messed me around, but ASDA delivery drivers, to be fair to them, really do care about their customers.

Vegetables – Carsington Water