Off topic, but a bit of light relief

FIFTY YEARS AGO

Can you remember what you were doing exactly fifty years ago yesterday?
(That's assuming you were born.)

On the morning of February 16th 1972 I was attempting to collect
dinner money from a class of 35 assorted malcontents and troublemakers.
The new coins had only appeared that morning, and a few kids had been to
the shops and got them in change. Otherwise, we were using €˜old money.

As an aside, for months before D Day the government had been
distributing large quantities of the €˜new money in the form of
(worthless) plastic coins. These were for children and adults to
practice with. Lots of these coins went into the schools, and most were
stolen and taken home, in the belief that come D Day they would be legal
tender.

The central problem with Dinner Money was that the price was 1/9d per
day, and there was no exact decimal equivalent. Most kids paid weekly:
1/9d times five = 8/9d (eight shillings and nine pence). In New Money
they now paid the nearest equivalent to 8/9d, which was 44p. But some
parents couldnt afford either 8/9d or 44p on a Monday, so they sent 9p
dinner money on each day of the week when they had it to send. This
meant that if they managed to send 9p every day from Monday to Friday
they had sent a total of 45p. But the €˜rich kids had only paid 44p! In
the Proletarian Peoples Republic of South Yorkshire that was a
political scandal just waiting to happen. So it was decreed, in a
hastily distributed instruction from the West Riding County Council
Education Dept that a separate Decimal Dinner Money register had to be
kept, in which it was to be recorded which kids had paid five
consecutive lots of 9p in the week. On Friday afternoon the main
educational task was the distribution to these children of their one New
Penny change. If a child had only bought four dinners that week there
was no penny, and this was perceived as being grossly unfair. Letters
soon started to come from parents, along the lines of, €œHe missed the
Wednesday before last but then he had Thursday and Friday dinners, then
last week he had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I made sure he had the
Wednesday so there was five in a row. So could you send the penny
please?€� and €œHe was off on Tuesday for the dentist but he had all the
other days so could you send the penny please? Its not my fault his
teeth are bad.€� These matters had to go to arbitration. Luckily the Head
had little sympathy with these claimants and never paid up.

I wonder if anyone else who was teaching at the time remembers this fiasco?

Bill