small change

It's terrible how long the little things end up taking.  My collection of raffle takings and tea money from the beekeepers' meetings had risen to two of the proper bags for change that banks give you, one paper bag labelled with a post-it note, and a small tupperware box, plus another bag with seven pounds in it from sales of wax to members, and fifteen pounds in notes from Friends subscriptions. Since we get no interest on our current account, and are not down to our last fifty quid, I'd kept putting off going to the bank while the lovely gardening weather continued, but I was beginning to feel guilty about it.  Besides, I ought to work out what's due to the person who buys the prizes for the raffle, and raise a cheque for her for the next committee meeting.

It took quite a long time to count and double count the contents of each bag.  If I had to count change on a regular basis, making up a float or something, I suppose I'd be quicker, but I wanted to be absolutely sure I'd got it right.  Once I was satisfied that the beekeepers' cash came to exactly one hundred and five pounds and sixty pence, not a penny more, not a penny less, I thought that as I was going to the bank to pay in change, I might as well swap out some of the beekeepers' pound coins for part of our ever expanding collection of small change.

We can't be alone in having one of these.  Small showers of loose change spill out of the Systems Administrator's pockets while sitting down, especially since Marks and Spencer seemed to decide to improve margins in menswear by 0.001% by economising on the amount of material used in trouser pocket linings.  The coins get scooped out of the sofa and dumped on the coffee table, then end up in a couple of pots on the window sill in the study.  Useful pound coins and silver are recycled for car park machines, and to have the right money at the farm shop, while the collection of coppers and five pence pieces grows.

It takes ages to count out five pounds worth of five pence pieces, and almost as long to organise a pound in pennies, scrabbling for them among the other contents of the pots.  There turned out not to be enough two pence bits to make up a round bank bag total as specified on the bag, so they had to wait for another day.  In the end the grand sum of eleven pounds of small coins from the pot went off to the bank, replaced by eleven useful pound coins.  But god, it took ages.  Those machines in Tesco that count the coins for you, if you just chuck them in, and give you a voucher for the total, less commission, suddenly seem a bargain.

The bank took ages as well, as one of the two cashiers on duty was having such a lovely chat with the customer she was serving that she completely stopped doing any actual banking, so that they could both concentrate on their discussion of dancing at parties, and which West End shows they'd been to.  As the queue behind me lengthened to five people I glared at her, and she gave me an offensively radiant smile, and told her customer how everyone should perform a random act of kindness each day.  I thought that her's might have consisted in getting on with her job so that the rest of us could go and get on with our days instead of standing in a queue.  It's probably just as well that the other cashier was free first.  The happy couple were still chattering away by the time I'd had my hundred and five pounds and sixty pence counted again.  The woman at my window was much, much faster than I'd been, though the money was by then counted into bags, she did have scales, and she gets more practice than I do.