If I Had A Coin

A pound coin minted the year I was born. It's in fairly good nick, though its grooves hold the grime accumulated from each of its many custodians through the years; traces of skin from striking miners, affluent yuppies, drug dealers, withered old blokes in the betting shop. It's done its fair share of travelling, been tossed as a decider on a Welsh rugby pitch, jammed in a pool table in Bethnal Green, jingled by a beggar on the Royal Mile, dropped carelessly on a bomb-blasted Belfast street. It's seen its own worth go down with age (I know how it feels); when I was a baby it would have paid for a pint of beer all by itself, but now it'll barely get you a glass of Coke. Maybe someday it'll just be a relic, a symbol of a bygone age. But for the time being, it's going to get me a Mars bar.

So it's official: even coins have a more interesting life than me.