Guineas are long gone, but the memories linger on
No matter how much Guinea comes out of our pocket, the memories stay fresh in C8’s minds, sometimes pleasantly, sometimes traumaticly, leading to other financial thoughts.
Marli Davies of Wentworth Falls recalls: “The fee for my education at a girls’ school in the 1940s was twenty-one guineas a term and three terms a year. Can you imagine that now?”
Guinea brought music to the fingers and ears of Blaxland native David McKay: “Mum and Dad found a big black piano for me in Marks Point in 1957. It was lowered by ropes from the upstairs veranda and cost 90 guineas. Nanna said she’d pay £90 if Mom and Dad paid 90 shillings. Is there a symbol for Guineas?”
Thornleigh’s Ron Vernon agrees with Daniel Flesch on the 99 cent tactic. Ron says: “When I was young prices were often quoted as 3s 11d halfpence – the closest you could get without saying 4s.”
Helen Scanlon from Northbridge would like to point out: “No one has yet commented on Lewis Carroll’s The Mad Hatter.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland‘ In Tenniel’s drawing he is the one wearing a hat worth half a guinea, marked 10/6. As far as I remember from my childhood, doctor visits were also 10/6.”
Then an oddity from Malanda in Queensland. “When I was a little kid and I said ‘hey’ to my parents or my grandparents,” John Andersen recalls, when they tell me somethingI would immediately say, ‘The straw makes the bull fat, the hay makes him skinny, take him to the exhibition and sell him for a guinea.'” Families have strange sayings.
Returning to Mr. Fraser, Paddington’s Rob Hosking suggests: “Fang was, of course, Agent 86’s dog. Be SmartIt is best known for lying around and once lifting its head high enough to detonate the fuse of a conventional bomb. It’s a bit of a stretch, Rob, but the timing makes it possible.
A more mundane suggestion comes from Peel’s Donald Hawes: “Australians love alliterative nicknames. We had a ‘Ticking Bomb Turner’ at Broken Hill High School in the early 1960s. When it went off in a rebellious classroom you could hear it a few grades away. Then there was the fairy-tale-sounding teacher dressed in Carnaby Street clothes, Puss in Boots“More princess-like than cat-like.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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