Nothing to report, well not much...

Not a lot to write about today. A quiet day at work, but it did give me a chance to catch up on some of the admin stuff I have to do.' Well will you look at that' I said to myself when I found a fiver in the drawer underneath the papers. A five pound note. Isn’t it funny that back home in NZ we don’t call a five dollar note a fiver or a ten dollar note a tenner. Somehow it just sounds wrong.

Money has some funny names, well I think it does. A tanner was a sixpence, and probably still is. In NZ a shilling was a ‘bob’. Is there anyone out there who remembers 'bob-a-job week’? It was something the boy scouts used to do. No boy scout today would think it worth his while to do any job for a mere ten cents. Though according to Wiki (so it must be true) ‘bob’ is British slang. And why do the Brits call a pound a quid. I ever did like that word. Wiki has something to say about that too. 

Quid (singular and plural) is used for pound sterling or £, in British slang. It is thought to derive from the Latin phrase "quid pro quo".^[3] A pound (£1) may also be referred to as a "nicker" or "nugget" (rarer).

I get ha’penny or a half-penny, but why on earth a half of a halfpenny was called a farthing. Aha. Good old Google. It has something to do with a fourth or a quarter. I have also discovered that a florin, which is what we used to call a two shilling piece was also a British term, haven’t clue why thought. Google again tells me that it is from the Latin for flower. Don’t get the connection there at all. So while I’m on financial bender a five shilling piece was called a crown so a two and sixpenny piece was half a crown. I never remember spending a crown but the half version definitely rattled around in my pockets. .

That makes me think of a science teacher I had at Hutt Intermediate School. Mr Ritzema. He was a long nosed moustachioed chap with a funny accent. Ask me why money makes me think of him, go on… Oh alright I’ll tell you. During a science class when he was telling us about acids he asked if any of us had a penny he could use, and yes I was first to whip out my purse and offer him one of mine. He carefully put the coin into a small beaker of acid. When he drew it out it was almost paper thin. I was the envy of my classmates and many of them offered to buy it from me, but I didn’t want to part with it. Still don’t.  I very clearly remember my very first science lesson with him. It was all about the amoeba and paramecium.

I tod you I didn’t have much to write about today.