Pleasant surprise

Every evening I empty my pockets and toss any coins under a euro into a jar. This collection has built up over time and I've been neglecting the chore of sorting the coins and bringing them to the bank.

As part of the clearing-out of the house in readiness for re-decoration, these tossed coins came to light, not just in the jar but also in a number of plastic bags. Sorting and counting and bagging began on Tuesday while the clearer-outers were working upstairs and has continued since then until now, finally, I've more or less reached the end of the process. As first the jar and then the bags one by one were emptied, so the accumulated total grew and grew. I'm delighted that I am faced with the task of lugging to the bank bags of coins to the accumulated value of over a thousand euro. It's hard to credit, but it's true: my casually tossed collection of 50- 20-, 10-, 5-, 2- and 1-cent coins has amounted to a nice tidy sum over time.

This windfall couldn't have come at a better time, with costs for the work on the house increasing rather alarmingly from day to day.