30 Jun 2015

And Then A Lucky Find….

Yesterday was dig in the garden day, or at least a small part thereof; a small part of the garden and a small part of the day. It proved to have an exciting up-side.

While excavating the hole for our Mexican Orange Blossom, which the instructions told me… no, really, plants come with instructions nowadays… had to be twice the depth and diameter of the root ball, I started finding, as you do, rubbish. This particular rubbish came in the shape of small, very dirty yellow metal discs.  In all I guess I dug up close to a hundred of these discs so I scrubbed one up with a wire brush the better to see what rubbish I had.

They looked like coins of some sort. Could they be old? I know that close by, when these houses were being built, they found the remains of a small Saxon settlement but these discs didn't have the word 'Saxon' anywhere on them and even if they had, how long ago did we stop using that money then? Even I don't remember using it so it was a long time ago and would most likely be worthless now anyway, right?

I concluded, looking at the foreign lookin' lettering on 'em, that they were probably some left over small pocket change from  a long ago holiday taken by a previous owner of this drum and upon returning home they'd just thrown 'em in the garden.

I disposed of these coins in the organic trash bin. What? Hay, come on! I'm kidding okay? It's a joke! Of course I didn't throw them in the organic bin. I put them in the correct trash bin as designated by the local council. You think I'm stupid?

However, earlier in the excavation, and this is what got me really excited, I found an extremely rusty, battered Matchbox toy tow truck. Now that's got to be worth a pound or two. I'm guessing it used to be one of those shown below but, sadly, it's nothing like that now. I'm wondering if I have to report this rusted-out old toy truck as treasure trove.

                     Coin          Truck

Bringing up the back bit, did you catch the Daily Politics? They had that Caroline, mad as a sack o' cats, Lucas and Peter, surprisingly sensible, Lilley talking about hydraulic fracturing and the climate. This being the BBC, Mr Lilly's contribution was pretty much restricted to saying, 'Good morning' while being introduced.

Quote;  Ray Bradbury.

“Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.”

4 comments:

A K Haart said...

I recently found a little plastic cowboy in the garden. Very faded, he looked as if he once sat on a slightly bigger plastic horse and I'm sure I remember something similar from the fifties.

Mac said...

A K Haart,
Page through these pictures and you may find him;
https://www.google.com/search?q=1950%27s+toy+cowboys&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=0BqWVfHvMeeY7gbItaSgAw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1172&bih=963#tbm=isch&q=1950%27s+toy+cowboys+on+horseback

A K Haart said...

Following your link (thanks) it's very similar to this one:-

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/238992108/horse-and-cowboy-with-lasso-1940-to?ref=market

Mac said...

Happy to help Sir.
When I’m looking for something with Google, I quite often find it easier to find the ‘item of interest’ by clicking ‘Images’ at the top of the page which is how I quickly found the little tow truck and the coin I'd love to fine.