Small Town Trials

We went down to the town this afternoon with a very short to-do list. Buy stamps, post one small package, get some English £10 notes for the piggy banks of grandchildren, ours and friends south of the Border. 

There was a queue to get into the post-office (which is in a corner of a convenience store, since the one that stood proudly in the High Street has morphed into a fabric store and an opticians). Come back in ten minutes, said the lady. 

Ten minutes later the queue had grown, so TM volunteered to wait while I went to the one and only remaining bank (the other two closed around the time the PO did. One's now an estate agents, the other is as yet unsold). 

It feels very odd going into a bank with a mask on. I got some suspicious looks, but I'm not a customer so they wouldn't recognise me, even without it.

 I asked if they would swop my Scottish tenners, just withdrawn from their cash dispenser. 

Apparently the only way to do this was for me to pay the Scottish notes into my account, immediately withdraw them, then they would pay out with English notes. 

The only problem - I don't have an account with them. Rules is rules.

Unfortunately, the only way I can think of to obtain said English notes is to break the rules and go to Berwick ... or Edinburgh where HSBC will be able to oblige. And we could see the sea. After all, it's only about 3 miles outside our permitted travel area .... So maybe tomorrow ....

By the time I got back to the PO, TM was just getting to the front of the queue.

He wasn't too long inside. There was time for a walk down to the river. And the light was getting better all the time,  the Canongate Bridge and the Abbey, looking mellow in the sunshine. 

That, and a fish supper from the chippie have gone a long way to cheering me up.