In for a penny in for a pound

IN FOR A PENNY IN FOR A POUND

In the old days of the twentieth century English ladies with a command of words and a little ladylike modesty would describe the urge for minor excretion as a wish to spend a penny. This odd euphemism derived from the public lavatories of the day, when access to a cubicle was achieved by dropping a penny into a slot in the door.

But at least there were actually public lavatories for people in a hurry, an advantage seldom provided in rich North American cities.

Nowadays this privilege may be 240 times more expensive. Twelve pennies used to make a shilling, and twenty shillings a pound. In that famous, exotic, Islamic caravanserai in Knightsbridge you need to put a pound in the slot. Yet another reason for not going there.

In current English behaviour the penny has been and gone. In a supermarket, especially if there is a large car park, you may have to pay a pound to release a trolley from the line. When you take it back to the line the mechanism releases the yellowish coin. It seems that people may take the trolleys home, children may play funny rough games with them, crashing them into each other, sometimes (not so funny) crashing them into parked cars, when the supermarket may have to pay up for redecorating the Rolls.

Far better to keep those dangerous trolleys safely locked up on the line.

A friend of mine even has a flourishing business repairing trolleys. He should take a hint from our sexy scenes on the ABC highway and provide them with bumpers all round.

Now let us take a step back into Old English History. Perhaps Old African History might tell a similar story but OAH was never taught at my schools.

In the old days villagers used to have common lands to grow their crops and graze their animals. Then, in the early nineteenth century, the Wicked English Landlords (WEL's) got Parliament to pass an act (wasn't it the Enclosures Act?) to allow WEL's's to take over those common lands, fence them in, and keep out all those deserving, impoverished, hungry villagers. Shame and Shame again!

We never did that in Barbados, where you and I can be official farmers without the need to own a rod, a pole or even a perch of land. All we need is a stake, a length of rope, an ability to tie a good knot and, possibly a bucket for water, and then we can feed our beasts on land which belongs to somebody else! The Mistress tells me the bucket is now unnecessary.

But, back in Old England, the Common Man (that's you and Leacock) got very stroppy about the deprivation of their ancient liberties. No good at all, for Parliament, at least not

then,  didn't have a single CM in it, only those  damned rich WEL's. Nowadays the UK Parliament is full of CM's with long memories. Sc..w the  WEL's they say, and none can say them nay. So any CM may walk across  WEL land without hindrance, although, mark this, he may still not feed his beasts on land belonging to somebody else. Compare the CM in our Socialist Barbados!

The only thing the English CM is supposed to do, as he walks across land belonging to WEL's is to damn well close the gates, so that WEL's beasts can't wander out to eat the roses in CM gardens, or get in the way of CM's new car on the road. That might even make the CM ask  for Legal Aid to get free legal advice in order to prosecute the WEL's  beasts for being free on the  road.

But the extended Leacock family may be able to help. One brilliant son-in-law proposes to use the  trolley technique on the gates across WEL's lands. Just open and lock the gates with the trolley-line technique, with the pound lock operating under a macintosh against the English rain. One single golden pound will get you there and back, across the WEL's fields, without expense and with a growing certainty of a future halo.

Another son-in-law is a WEL with his own land and beasts, with cattle allowed only grass to eat, and with my clever nursing daughter for his wife. Surely the

family should be able to solve the problem and even to support Leacock in his oldest age. Especially when the WEL is a believer in that Enumerator-of-the-Hairs-of-my-Head, who is the same Statistician-of-Sparrowfall all over the Multiverse.      

Let me hear your comments: e-mail me at jackleacock@jackleacock.itgo.com

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