Camouflage

I came in from mowing and found this strange object on MY windowseat. 

What on earth can it be?? 

And if you have managed to work that out, how on earth did that particular wrapping happen? 

There was an exam this morning. An uneventful one, happily. And the afternoon has been outdoors.

I've planted out 90 onions and 20 leeks. And there was time to get the mower out and get a lot of grass cut before I decided to call it a day. 

As I was mowing I was reminded of the days when I was paid 'a bob' to mow the lawns at home. 

Those of you who grew up in Britain will probably remember 'Bob a Job Week' when Boy Scouts and Cubs touted for jobs around their neighbourhood. They'd wash cars, wash windows, scrub steps, mow lawns, walk dogs and so on, in exchange for a shilling. 

For some unknown reason a shilling - or 12 pre-decimalisation pennies - was known as a bob. There were 20 bob, or shillings, in a pound.

Life became a while lot more straightforward with decimalisation on 15th February 1971, when a bob became 5p. But it was a controversial change sweeping away many centuries of the idiosyncratic evolution of the British currency. The romance of thrupences, silver sixpences, florins and guineas was replaced by what my father called 'toytown money'.

I still have eight silver sixpences, from Edward VI and George V, which went into the family Christmas Pudding every year: highly prized if we found any in our servings. But which without fail were always mostly found in Dad's bowlful of that delicacy. It remains one of life's great mysteries...