…I s’pose yeez would’ve had to be there… but I’ve been giggling away all morning at the memory of it… come with me, back more than 50 years… picture the young Master Gallacher, newly minted apprentice at the redoubtable Clydesdale & North of Scotland Bank Limited, Govan Cross Branch in Docklands Govan in Glasgow… the freshest Trainee Master of the Financial Universe... the personnel in the branch were great guys… the Manager, Mister George Galloway, the epitome of the pin-striped Scottish Banker, defender of his clients’ pennies and bawbees… bowler hat and constantly furled umbrella as much a part of his uniform as his distinguished manner of addressing staff and customers alike… his number two, nominally adorned with the title, the Bank Accountant, Mister William (call me Bill) Melvin, was a man with the detachable banker’s daily stiff white collar on his immaculately white shirts and regimental-style tie, and sparklingly polished shoes… now, sum’thing we junior members learned as Scottish banking yoofs was a practice called ‘cleaning the banknotes’… no, Mabel, not money-laundering, but the art of sorting the various denomination banknotes into their proper bundles… y’see, back then, several banks in the UK were permitted to issue their own banknotes… we clerkies had to separate them into their respective banks, and denominations, facing them all the same way round and the same way up into bundles of 20 and then these bundles were packed into 25 of each of these, making a ‘brick’ of 500 notes… all of these were held together with rubber bands… on the day I recollect, Bill Melvin decided to show us young whippersnappers the expert way of counting, bundling and packing these while we stood around in amazement (supposedly) at his ‘note-cleaning’ genius… and it must be said, he was good… and fast… he ended up with one particular bundle of 500 pieces, strapped with the usual crossed rubber bands… it looked immaculately compact… he beamed with a superior look on his face… ‘that, gentlemen… that is how you pack notes’… and to prove his point he threw the bundle several feet into the air in the office… unhappily, as he waited for the package to descend, the rubber band broke, and the assorted money cascaded everywhere…
…a downpour of currency… it sped off into corners and shelves like fiduciary confetti… the astonishment and thunder that crossed his face was majestic to behold… but not for more than a nano-second, as all of the rest of us sped off onto the mens’ room, so as not to let Bill see our joy, and hear our repressed squeals of laughter… so, to Bill, wherever he may be at this time… thanks for the mem’ry… the day it rained money and we couldn’t laugh… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!
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