Dirty Money

When I was 8 the tooth-fairy left a pound under my pillow. She moved so softly I did not stir, and at an unknown time in the night afterwards I woke.
"Wow! A pound. A whole pound - And it's all mine."

My eight year lucid brain was once again fulfilled with belief. And in my hand was money.

The concept must have escaped me, for the next thing I did was inexplicable. I had been lovingly and tightly tucked in by by mother and this new pound I balanced on the tip of my tongue. Quickly it agitated into a wobble and lost itself over the side. It had fell straight down my throat.

Then I had learned my first lesson in money. You can't eat it. You may have five thousand pound coins but no food, and then you would die. I did not, thankfully, and feeling I had lost something that I wanted I went to my parents bedside and told them.
"I swallowed the pound the tooth fairy left".
I cried but not for my own well-being, but for the pound. My parents were more concerned for me and brought me to a hospital where an X-ray showed a pound about to take the choice between my lung or my stomach.

It decided not to hurt me first time around and went for my stomach. Later I shat that pound into a bucket and my devoted granny fished it out with some rubber gloves. There were ideas to have this pound put on a chain for me to keep - after all it had been right though me. I had other plans – it was those irresistible sweets I'd taken as an early vice. The exchange was made, the sweets were mine, and the pound was in the system.

So somewhere out there was a pound that had been right through my body; and it was in someone's pocket. Now the old pounds have been withdrawn and replaced with the new pound. So there is only one thing left for me to do. Swallow a new pound.