Do you remember when...?
Dec. 5th, 2012 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dormouse1953The window cleaner came this morning. He charges £8 to do my windows. When I went to my wallet, I had only crisp twenties, having been to the ATM at the weekend. "No problem," he said, and produced a tenner and two pound coins in change.
Suddenly I remembered being in a shop with my parents sometime around 1960 and someone proffered a five pound note. The assistant rang a bell and the manager came out of a back room with great ceremony, examined the proffered currency note in detail and pronounced it the genuine article. I'm sure this happened several times during my childhood.
I suppose this was a hangover from Operation Bernhard, the wartime German counterfeiting scheme that had left a large number of fake white fivers in circulation. The white fiver was apparently withdrawn in 1963, but I don't recall ever seeing one. I'm sure this would have been the later blue fiver, introduced in 1957.
I presume that when the white fiver was withdrawn, this practice stopped. Certainly, by the time I started university in 1970, I don't recall it ever happening. Then again, even then, I could get by by cashing a cheque for £10 every fortnight, and I suppose I might have asked for it all in pound notes to avoid having to split a fiver. (I recall my first grant cheque was for £100 6s 8d and I suppose about half of that went to paying my hall of residence fees. I remember my trepidation in 1971 (after decimalisation) when I decided to buy the complete Asimov Foundation trilogy in the Panther paperbacs at 25p each. 75p was a lot of mony to spend on books in one go.)
Suddenly I remembered being in a shop with my parents sometime around 1960 and someone proffered a five pound note. The assistant rang a bell and the manager came out of a back room with great ceremony, examined the proffered currency note in detail and pronounced it the genuine article. I'm sure this happened several times during my childhood.
I suppose this was a hangover from Operation Bernhard, the wartime German counterfeiting scheme that had left a large number of fake white fivers in circulation. The white fiver was apparently withdrawn in 1963, but I don't recall ever seeing one. I'm sure this would have been the later blue fiver, introduced in 1957.
I presume that when the white fiver was withdrawn, this practice stopped. Certainly, by the time I started university in 1970, I don't recall it ever happening. Then again, even then, I could get by by cashing a cheque for £10 every fortnight, and I suppose I might have asked for it all in pound notes to avoid having to split a fiver. (I recall my first grant cheque was for £100 6s 8d and I suppose about half of that went to paying my hall of residence fees. I remember my trepidation in 1971 (after decimalisation) when I decided to buy the complete Asimov Foundation trilogy in the Panther paperbacs at 25p each. 75p was a lot of mony to spend on books in one go.)
