Money and memories
A scrunched up £10 note found in my pocket brought back a flood of memories.
I was telling Adrian the other day how, at times, I have partial recollections of a face or an event, but cannot place it correctly and I'm not even sure whether it is a true memory or part of a dream, or of what I feel could be a parallel reality.
Sometimes this makes me feel that I'm losing my mind and leaves me quite frigthened.
But in this case I know exactly what this note reminds me of.
When I was 12 or so, I volunteered to sell some weekly family magazines, printed by a Catholic publishing group, at the back of the parish church on a Sunday, and I did it every week for over 10 years.
Every so often a woman in her 50s would come and buy 'Famiglia Cristiana'. I remember that she would always hand me the money (always banknotes as we had the Lira then) very neatly folded in a square not larger than an inch.
She also looked rather absent minded and she would normally wear something too warm for the season, quite often a smelly raincoat when it was sunny.
I hadn't thought about that woman for over 20 years.
*
Apart from counting the newspaper money, I would also count the collection after mass.
I recall that often, apart from the occasional button, there would be some foreign and exotic change! I loved it and I would always day-dream of going far away one day.
*
And talking of money, I always find it rather insulting when (it hasn't happened in a while) people I meet for the first time assume that Adrian (london1952 ) being 14 years, 7 months and 10 days my senior is my 'Sugar Daddy'.
Oh, how wrong they are!
I was telling Adrian the other day how, at times, I have partial recollections of a face or an event, but cannot place it correctly and I'm not even sure whether it is a true memory or part of a dream, or of what I feel could be a parallel reality.
Sometimes this makes me feel that I'm losing my mind and leaves me quite frigthened.
But in this case I know exactly what this note reminds me of.
When I was 12 or so, I volunteered to sell some weekly family magazines, printed by a Catholic publishing group, at the back of the parish church on a Sunday, and I did it every week for over 10 years.
Every so often a woman in her 50s would come and buy 'Famiglia Cristiana'. I remember that she would always hand me the money (always banknotes as we had the Lira then) very neatly folded in a square not larger than an inch.
She also looked rather absent minded and she would normally wear something too warm for the season, quite often a smelly raincoat when it was sunny.
I hadn't thought about that woman for over 20 years.
*
Apart from counting the newspaper money, I would also count the collection after mass.
I recall that often, apart from the occasional button, there would be some foreign and exotic change! I loved it and I would always day-dream of going far away one day.
*
And talking of money, I always find it rather insulting when (it hasn't happened in a while) people I meet for the first time assume that Adrian (london1952 ) being 14 years, 7 months and 10 days my senior is my 'Sugar Daddy'.
Oh, how wrong they are!