Loose Change

Today I came up with an evil plan to get rid of the numerous unwanted 5 pee, 2 pee and one pee pieces that are cluttering up my home. Yes.

Oh sure, I could count them all up and put them into those silly bank bags like some kind of sucker. But no. My plans for exchanging these small, bulky, unwanted currencies into larger, denser, more powerful coinal instruments are devious and evil, oh yes.

Item! My local train station does not always have a helpful man (or woman) behind the ticket counter to sell tickets. In their absence, a 'Permit To Travel' machine is offered. The idea being that you put some coins in, and get a ticket saying how much money you put in. This is almost as good as a ticket (except it isn't a ticket, so isn't) but at least it lets you get on the train without people jumping on you accusing you of being some kind of manky non-fare-payer.

But my point, and I do have one, is this. The permit to travel is often refunded to you IN CASH, rather than taken off the money you pay for the ticket once you eventually find a guard.

Do you see how this works yet? The guard will usually hand you back a nice shiny pound coin - and not the pocket full of loose change that you originally unloaded into the machine. Thus, useless small money is exchanged for useful big money. No commission or anything!

So it was earlier today that I found myself at the train station, funnelling all of my 5 pees into the Permit To Travel machine. It takes a surprising amount of time - and once I got up to about £1.60 worth of loose change, the machine took against me, clearly deciding that some kind of shindiggery was going on, at which point it promptly dumped all of the coins back into the coin return tray. Which is behind a flap which now WON'T OPEN because of all the 5p coins behind it! Swizz!

Further dabbling revealed that the machine was also not in the mood to accept a regular pound coin, perhaps on account of the fact that it turned out to be a New Zealand dollar. It has a kiwi on it and everything. Somebody obviously slipped it to me when I wasn't looking. Bah.

Anyway, eventually I turned still more loose change into a permit to travel, and a bit more precision thumping resulted in me being able to open the flap and retrieve the rest of my change which was so rudely rejected on the first attempt. Next time I go to the train station, I'll do the same thing again. Slowly, more and more of my loose change shall be converted into proper money. And then I shall be king of the world.

On a side note, the machine says it only takes "5p 10p 20p 50p £1 £2" but I wouldn't mind betting that it'll take 1 pees and 2 pees as well. I'll have to try that next time too. Can you even contain your excitement?