See a penny, pick it up…

…All the day you’ll have good luck. Remember that old adage? It’s something my mum told me way back when and it has always stuck with me. I can’t walk past a penny on the ground without sticking it in my pocket and keeping it safe, and I encourage my children to do the same. I actually ‘feel’ luckier with a found penny in my pocket, it’s a promise of something good that could happen.

Another phrase we used to hear a lot was “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.” I remember a friend who hated pennies or shrapnel of any description. He would empty out his pockets after a day at work, throwing them into the drawer, and every now and again he’d take out the bigger coins and throw the rest into the bin.

His belief was that this process saved him money by lightening the load on his trouser pockets so they didn’t need replacing so often. But to me it’s a terrible waste. One of my prevailing memories as a child was regularly emptying out my moneybox and piling up my one and two-pennies into piles of 10. I’d lay them all out and count them up. My mum would bring me money bags from the post office and I’d bag them all up and take them to be changed into crisp £1 notes and 50 pence pieces that were double the size of the meager portions we’re served up nowadays.

I still think there’s a lot to be said for these phrases. I encourage my children to look out for and pick up pennies, pocketing the little nugget of copper (are they even made of copper these days?) and pontificating on what good luck will befall them. I should probably be smothering them with anti-bac handwash but I also subscribe to the old saying about the bit of dirt.

This week, just after I picked up a penny, I dropped my phone smashing the screen. So far, so bad luck. But then the nice people in the fruit shop replaced it for me for nothing, all because I had that good luck penny in my pocket. So there you have it – without that penny I’d have had to spend £130 on a new screen. And the moral of the story is “Look after the pennies and the apples will take care of themselves.” (or something like that)

Tuesday, 21st June 2011

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