In my occasional series of memory posts I link to my second (now discontinued) blog “Age of Innocence” . In this two part post I look at growing up and playing dangerously…
Play places didn’t get more dangerous than the London to Birmingham railway line It was relatively easy to get up on the tracks and put half pennies on the line for the trains to squash and expand to the size of a penny in the optimistic hope that this would double the value of the coin and shopkeepers wouldn’t notice. (This never worked by the way).
This was rather like in 1969 trying to tile the edges off of a half crown coin to double its value to make one of the new 50 pence pieces. (This didn’t work either).
Have Bag, Will Travel 