If you have enough information in your life about the inside workings of the Oxfam bookshop, now is the time to look away. 

This is all about money.

So, I may have mentioned before that our manager (aka as the cat) is away (aka off on long-term sick leave) and we (aka the mice) have been playing – actually not just playing but putting on a full theatre spectacle.

As I also mentioned before, we have been clearing out the boxes of ‘stuff’ which had been shoved under chairs or pricing benches/left/ignored etc.

And the latest (of many) were the two large plastic storage containers labelled  ‘foreign coins’.

They had been there for years and donations were added, and added, and added and nothing was done with them.

Well, us mice had better ideas.

A lovely mouse who had left the shop, came back to sort them out. This was someone who was a former assistant postmistress – so who better to put in charge.

She sorted. Found the UK money and put it through the till. She sorted the the foreign coins into bags to be sent off to Guildford where ( hopefully/presumably) they have a an expert.

She found farthings, pennies, a couple of florins, a few threepenny bits ( pronounced if you are young, or not from here, threpunny – just in case  you needed to know) and much more.

There were also foreign banknotes and I asked that she put them to one side on the basis that they were probably worth less than 2/6d (that is 2 shillings and 6 old pence – which of course if you are old, and British, you will know is a saying which means not much.)

But worthless but attractive notes could be made into a table display of some sort, I thought.

So she and I were looking through bags of farthings (which was 1/4d which means I/4 of an old penny and the name comes from Old English word fēorðing) and pennies which are much larger than current pennies and, and and…

And, I was also looking at the notes she had put aside and they were really interesting.

And here is Fernando Antonio Pessoa who it turns out was a poet, writer, literary critic, translator publisher,  philosopher and one of the most significant Portuguese figures of the 20th century.

When I first saw him, he looked like a unamused  Poirot to me – shows what I know.

Here is a lovely Seychelles note – just so pretty.

There were a lot to look through and I am no, no expert on how to value them but I have been learning a little bit.

Apparently what you want are uncirculated notes as in, in pristine condition. Mmm we don’t have any of those.

I am sure there are notes which even if previously circulated, are still worth a fortune but I am not sure we do.

And another thing, like books, prices you find from America, are not trustworthy, they always try and charge too much.

So, back to the story.

I was musing on how to display these notes and leafing through them whilst my ex-postmistress was painstakingly and cheerfully sorting through the coins and other stuff, when a passing volunteer stopped.

He said, I have one of those metal tree things and I clip notes and stuff that are mementos of my travels and some of them are notes.

I said, we could do with something like that.

And he said, I can make that.

We had a defunct stool ( the cat had said that despite the fact that it was missing a strut and dangerous to sit on, we could not thrown it away because it was Oxfam property. That was about three years ago and it had been sitting there – excuse the pun – and whilst he was away, it was going to the bin) and our volunteer book it up and took the seat as a base.

He also took one of our many donated/left walking sticks, and I got him some wire coat hangers from the local dry cleaners.

And hour or two later he re-appeared with a money tree.

He had drilled holes in the walking stick, bought some pegs, unwound the coat hangers and made us this.

So, I have put aside the notes which I think might have some value and they will go off to Guildford but in the meantime we will display a money tree with the ‘valueless’ notes .

Rarely does it happen that money grows on trees.

But on a good day, us mice are on a roll.