If it were kids, it wouldn't bother me, Pat. Like you, I was a coin seeker, even one of a lower order than you. Change was put in students' lunchbags if they ordered from the canteen (the tuckshop we called it) and some kids never checked the bag after withdrawing their ordered food. Bags went to bins which went to a big incinerator. Some of us used to scrape out the ash from the tray and comb though it for coins. Mostly it would be coppers but on rare and jubilant occasions, a carbonated threepence or even a sixpence could be had. Legend has it that a shilling was once found but I never saw the blackened evidence. And we had to run the gauntlet when the stroppy caretaker would chase us away.
Bill
> On 6 Aug 2014, at 5:48 pm, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi Bill enjoyed this reminded me of when I was a child living by the beach
> -we used to check on the sand by the right hand side of deckchairs to find
> coins -perhaps I could start again but these days we don't have the hire
> deckchairs so much
> Cheers P
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Bill Wootton
> Sent: 05 August 2014 11:14
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Beach detection
>
> Beach Detection
>
> In pale half-dawn the pot-bellied shorts wearer
> sweeps, sweeps, seeks what lies beneath,
>
> doing the disc wave, knapsack-backed,
> furlined headphones enclamped,
>
> covering territory at a hover, pausing now
> to scrape unhurriedly before replacing
>
> sand divots. Soon, surely, all these
> healthy mornings must pay off.
>
> bw
>
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