John Arnold: ‘When we had cash, you had to cut your cloth to suit your measure’

Talking to children lately about money and cash, and notes and coins, you know, I felt as though they thought I was living close to Stone Age times.

With so much talk nowadays of the ‘digital age’ and so many things being done by AI, I think to myself ‘where is it all going to end?’ Then everyone, well nearly everyone, says change is great.

Others muse, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ -sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? But then again, that great quill-smith Willie Shakespeare declared a good few years back that ‘all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man (or woman) in his/her time plays many parts’.

I suppose the older we get, the more things we can remember and then compare and contrast with present-day happenings in this crazy world of ours.

The first day of August in 1969 was the start of real change as we knew it. You could say in reality, very small change ‘cause on that day the little farthing coin was no longer what they call ‘legal tender’ in Ireland. I had finished national school that June, and secondary school in Fermoy beckoned. My courtship with Gaelic games had begun, but it was not yet a full-blown love affair. No, that came a few years later.

I fancied myself as a bit of a philatelist and also a numismatist -now there’s a great word for Scrabble! Does any youngster collect stamps or coins anymore? Maybe they do, but these hobbies rarely, if ever, feature on young teenagers’ Top Ten lists as far as I can see. As actual money, coins and notes become scarcer and scarcer, I presume the once-popular hobby will take off again; then maybe it’s too basic and ‘hands on’ for the tech-savvy generations to come.

Getting back to the farthings, I can remember sweets when I was very young at prices like ‘tuppence three-farthings’. There was a great kind of marketing ploy in the old-fashioned pricing regime. A ‘Peggy’s Leg’ for tuppence three-farthings seemed better value than spending a whole thrupenny bit on the purchase. Similarly, in bigger shops, an item for nineteen and eleven pence was a way better than having to fork out a pound note. I always felt there was a great sense of satisfaction in ‘getting change’ back.

That autumn of ‘69, as I sallied forth on my post-primary education in St Colman’s, I had one thing on my mind. That was getting a new bike, well, no, not new -not spang new, but a second-hand boys bike I’d seen in the window of Casey’s Bicycle shop in MacCurtain St. I had a few quid from blackberry money, but to supplement this, I had to make a tough choice. 

By then, I had accumulated hundreds of coins. Most were old but not worth an awful lot. In my collection, I had maybe seven or eight farthings. I’d seen an ad somewhere offering half a crown each for them. Eventually, I sold them to a dealer in Fermoy and got 2/8 each for them. That extra cash bonanza helped buy the bike, but I’m still sorry I parted with the little coins bearing the woodcock. You’d often hear tell of someone who ‘knows the price of everything but the value of nothing’, and I think more and more people will be thus described in the future.

You see, using credit, card-tapping, revoluting and online buying makes immediate satisfaction easier to obtain. When we had cash in the pocket, you cut your cloth to suit your measure. Living within your means wasn’t just an option, it was the only way to proceed. Look, I’m not saying we should return to poverty-stricken times or subsistence living - God knows half the world still lives that way out of necessity, not design. I just think the coming generations, with endless access to credit, never-never and loans, will never truly understand things like frugality and affordability.

In my youth, if you had a few bob, you could go somewhere or buy something -if cash was absent, then you simply did without.

Of course, affluence is mighty and the ability to buy whatever one wants whenever is the norm, but if and when the day comes when cash is no longer king or queen, whew, I shudder to think what society will be like. I’m not a prophet of gloom or doom, but there’s no point in living in make-believe.

We’ve had the Euro for 24 years now, and we had decimalisation for 31 years before that. Young people find it hard to get their educated heads around ‘the old money’, when copper, brass, and cupro-nickel coins all co-existed happily in our pockets. Four farthings in a penny and two ‘ha pennies were worth the same. Two thrupenny bits were worth a tanner, and two of the coins with the wolfhound were equal to a bob or a shilling. Two of them gave you a leaping salmon coin- the florin, and add a sixpence to that, and you’d a half crown. The crown was an old English coin worth five shillings, but when we started ‘minting’ our own currency in 1928, we didn’t produce crowns. The ten-bob note was a small fortune in a teenager’s pocket in 1969, and a pound note – well, they were few and far between.

In 1972, when I attended my first hurling final in Croke Park, two pound notes (£2) got me in to see Kilkenny beat Cork in the decider. I always thought there was fierce spending in the old money- after all there were 240 pennies in a pound -two hundred and forty coins, and in 1969, you’d buy a lot of things for nine or ten pence. The Evening Echo was only tuppence back then! Having cash in shops was always an opportunity to haggle over the price, and in fairness, some shopkeepers were great, and they’d throw off a few pence.

I knew of a country shop where there was a kind of ‘tiered pricing’-depending on the customer purchasing.

 ‘And what can I get you?’ ‘Could I have five slices of ham please?’ As the ham is being sliced, the person behind the counter shouts to a relation below in the sitting room, just off the shop; ‘How much a pound is the ham?’ to which comes the immediate reply, ‘Who’s it for?’ As they say, it all depends who you know! The only place I see regular haggling nowadays is at the Car Boot Sale in Rathcormac, where every euro is well spent.

Back in 1981, we went from Spain across to Tangier by hydrofoil. The Moroccan city markets were like what we probably had in Ireland in the 1600s. The currency there then was the dirham so we cashed some of our pre-bought Travellers’ Cheques into the local coinage. Pale-skinned, foxy-haired Irish people were seen as soft targets by the wily street traders. We bought a miniature leather ‘camel’ for about 3000 and felt great as the dealer had asked us initially for 9000. After much walking away and slapping of hands the deal was done. A few hundred yards further on near the outskirts of the market we saw that same camel with an asking price of 1500 -but sure we were young honeymooners, and we still have the camel just near the television! All the boxes of coins and stamp albums are above in Paddy’s room, sure I’ll hardly part with them now.