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My father-in-law died last year. He was 96.
So we had his house to sell – not done this before. The rather nebulous local couple, the buyers, wouldn’t say if they wanted furniture (new family). All the kitchen stuff, yes. No contact. Oh well.
First week this year we had our house roof retiled – been dreading it. An exhausting experience.
‘Now we can relax,’ we said.
An email: the buyers want to move in asap: 23^rd Jan. Yikes! 6 days. My f-i-law had kept Everything, neatly ordered, but… everything. In a panic to clear the place we had to let important stuff go. We knocked ourselves up getting it ready. Took the keys to the estate agents (their rapacious natures came to fore – we’d still had to leave things because we don’t have, nor can afford, transport).
‘It’s 25^th, they said. We have their email for 23^rd. Went to notify the conveyancers that we’d handed the keys in.
‘Ah,’ they said, ‘we’d sent an email this morning…’ (we’d left by then). ‘It’s been changed to the 12^th Feb.’
All those papers, items, we’d had to let go….
It has now moved to the 6^th Feb. Ok, that’s doable.
Only we both came down with exhaustion, and a Winter bug – as time ticks away.

I was thinking, are there loose parallels here with the Brexit fiasco? The rather nebulous buyers image, for one: the unknown before us; those calling the shots.
We’d met a number of Leavers recently – and, boy, are they mad! They are furious. They are adamant, dug-in, come what may. No negotiation.
For whatever reason, 52% of people who voted want Out. It shocked us all. What infuriates them most is that there was No Plan. There’d be to hell to pay if the govt reneges on this deal. A new Ref would probably be the same result.
Because people don’t like to be pushed about, basically. And hurt pride? Yes; they know they have been made fools of. This arrogant stubbornness is the flip-side of the so-called ‘bulldog spirit.’
As for us: we will have to try and snatch-back as many worthwhile things out the jaws of suicidal, ruinous, Brexit.
But I wouldn’t trust my judgement, or that of anyone I have met, to decide on this vitally important topic. There are so many hidden levels of investment – from greedy-eyed Brexit MPs, making a killing off other’s misery, to rumoured ‘special relationships.’
So, who would I trust? Ah, yes, that question.
‘If Corbyn gets in,’ one Leaver said, ‘he’d bring the communists in.’
‘I didn’t think there were any of those left,’ I quipped. He chose not to hear. And Theresa May – surprised everyone with her tenacity, but there’s No Plan B. She was never a decision-maker.
I get the impression she has tried to appease both sides, and fallen down the gap in between.

I rather like that image: between two stools. An image doesn’t claim to special insight, truth, veracity; it just to be striking.
This is why the best cartoons are so important. They catch a fleeting moment, expression, in an image, and open it up. We love the entertainment an image gives. They can please, but also mislead. They don’t change anything, but they do ease the tension, allow in nuances.

And I feel for Northern Ireland and Eire in Brexit: what an impossible situation!
Scotland… I am a little wary. The hard-line Independence people are as furious and one-dimensional as the Leavers.
Think of them as the ‘Scots Wha-Haers’ that the great Scottish writer Hugh MacDiamid inveighed against, in his 1926, A Drunk Man Looks At A Thistle.

‘Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled’ (The Brus, by John Barbour, 1375: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44292/44292-h/44292-h.htm
And get that date: 1375, ye Chaucerians) as the only criteria for Scottish identity?
And yet, I always preferred William Wallace to Robert the Bruce: Wallace, a man of the people, crushed by the English. And is there an echo of that ultimate religious sacrifice in that?
It is said the Independence Referendum in Scotland failed because the Media, Arts, Medicine, Health, Research, etc, were afraid of being shut off from sources of research grants, and knowledge.
Ahem? Nudge, nudge? But then the Tory Party of UK has  gone out of it way to ignore anything to do with Scotland, so…

The people: what are we, and where are we now?

On William Wallace: if anyone has a tour of the Houses of Parliament, stop in Westminster Hall for moment, because that is where Wallace was tried, hung, drawn, and quartered. Some authorities have it as Smithfield: See Wiki for English vindictiveness and vengeance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wallace

I’ve stood out by Stirling Castle, and gazed over the Firth of Forth to the Wallace memorial. It is a tower, set against high, dark, hills.
I felt a shiver of awe.

Leather Money

Alexander Del Mar, in his book, Money and Civilisation (Burt Franklin, 1969), makes the suggestion that in the reign of King Edward 1 of England, the state of the coinage was so bad that he had to resort at one point to issuing leather money. The debasement of the currency prior to this was due to the inheritance of the bad practices and abuses of coin under the previous monarch, Henry 111. Coin-clipping was rife, and consequently many coins were found to be lower in value per weight of precious metals than their actual value in cash.

The leather money probably took the form of lozenges of cured leather, stamped or branded with the royal insignia. This was suggested to be the chief form of payment for the labourers who built the Welsh castles in the 1290s: Caernarfon, Conwy and Beaumaris.

I have this vision of cattle from the Welsh Marches driven to London markets, and their hides returned to Wales as money.

Why this huge castle-building programme, in a period of already rocky finances? Following the prolonged disturbances and shifting alliances of the last Welsh princes, and particularly the rebellion of Llywelyn the Great, these castles were strategic to the suppression of the North Welsh stronghold of supporters. Immediately prior to this were the extensive campaigns in Ireland under the previous monarch to further establish an English hegemony; and later on were the Scottish campaigns against William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. All the participants were played off against each: Wales was used as a base for English expeditions into Ireland; and Welsh interests were exploited to weaken support for Scottish independence. These long campaigns were, of course, enormously expensive.

And then, in 1290, he finally expelled the Jewish population from England. This followed over a century of sporadic but intensifying hostility. The Jewish people were only allowed to work in the fields of money lending and finance schemes; although Crown Princes and Kings used their expertise. And then Edward banned them from that, and tried to force them to work only as traders, artisans, farmers. Ten years later they were forbidden to work as merchants.

Moneylending, along with interest payments: usury, was considered a highly unchristian occupation (Jesus ejecting the money-lenders from the temple etc) and so only suitable for non Christians. In later years banks, for instance the Medici Bank, manipulated accounts through foreign exchanges in highly complex schemes, in order to gain the best rates. These schemes were used knowingly on the accounts of archbishops and even a Pope. It was all to avoid being labelled as ‘usurers’. The end product was virtually the same, of course.

By expelling the Jewish citizens Edward 1 hoped to recoup more cash by seizing their assets. In effect he further crippled the economy. And the tight reins he held on import and export licenses prevented expansion of markets; it held Britain in stagnation.
Nice one, Edward One!

The use of leather money was a practice borrowed initially from Russia; it was also known in China, India, Venice, and even France in later centuries.