Mile of Pennies

Did I ever tell you about the Mile of Pennies, a money-raising charity stunt that took place in my natal Shropshire village of Hadley in about 1947? The idea was to create, literally, a mile of pennies on the pavement (sidewalk), people putting their pennies down and feeling good. We urchins were fascinated. A MILE of money at our feet, and we couldn't touch it! Ah, but wait. Un truc!
In the old money there were 12 pennies to a shilling, and there were intermediate coins worth threepence (the bronze "thrup'ny bit") and sixpence (the silver "tanner"), and of course the silver shilling at twelvepence. If someone put down, say, a tanner, they left six spaces representing six pennies before the next coin was laid. So, voila le truc: Deggy and Philip and me walked along the line of pennies, and every time we saw, say, a threepenny bit or a tanner or a shilling, we would put down a penny and surreptitiously pick up the coin of greater value.
But of course we were not surreptitious enough, and we were caught in flagrante delicto. A very indignant lady - the kind known to scousers as "her with the tin tits and the iron arse", ie large, corseted and vicious - grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and took me to my house, where she declared my crime to my father. I fully expected him to beat six kinds of sh.... out of me, but, to my surprise and my relief, he told the Battleship that is was HER fault for putting temptation in my way, and that she should get off his property before he set the gerbils on her.
Good old dad.
I glowed.
Then he clipped me round the ear.
And I glowed some more.