Sherlock

I hadn’t realised until recently that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the 50p coin. The world’s first hexagonal coin. This event preceded decimalisation by near on two years.

For nearly all of my school years we used the old currency, and did sums using pounds, shillings and pence. That’s how I learnt to count, the 12x table as important as the 10x table.

At the time this coin entered circulation, sitting alongside the equivalent ten bob note, I would have been an avid reader. I loved Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, and probably read most if not all of them. All borrowed from the local library of course.

I still love reading, but time is short in the evenings and at weekends. And having spent a lot of time looking at screens and print during the day, the eyes need a rest. I haven’t read a good novel in a long time. Something to look forward to in retirement ?