Choose your currency wisely, says Laurie Dealer
Businesses in Bristol have created their own currency, a decision fraught with danger, says Laurie Dealer.
I mean, who is going to monitor this thing…what if one person ends up with all the ‘Bristol Pounds’ leaving the rest of them short of their Bristol’s…so to speak…who is left holding the baby?
Let face it, Bristol has had more than enough time since the Palaeolithic era when cider bottles were first found just off the high street in what is now Shirehampton to create something more imaginative than the ‘Bristol Pound’. Considering its reputation for trading insults and produce like wool, fish, wine, grain, piracy, cider jars, hayseeds, tobacco, tropical fruits and people, a better name is surely required.
What about Cider Coupon, or Wurzel Wedge, Thy Token Zun, Brizzle Prizzle…Pieces of Eight, Holloway’s Penny-go-lightly, Brunel’s Button, Mickey Mouse Voucher, Worthless Manuscript Created In An Effort To Drum Up Interest In This Day And Age When Short of Killing Someone Barely Registers…I mean come on…
This type of pseudo-currency exchange is an age old tradition that always goes tits up. My father Leighton Dealer spent his mid-life crisis trading tabs…not cigarettes, but tabs run up in bars when there’s too many days at the end of the month. He had tabs with a host of food, coal and clothing retailers. While the good people of the town got into hock at every turn in the build up to the Winter of Discontent those same defaulters would trade tabs with each other because they didn’t have any money of their own.
For example, Big Dave the farm hand at Bovine Farm owed Butch the butcher three shillings for meat pledged in good faith. Big Dave had a pair of old boots that my dad wanted so he would take the boots and take a portion of the tab as payment, say a shilling. My father would initial the transaction (LD) and Big Dave owed Butch only two shillings and my dad now owed Butch one shilling after taking the boots.
Big Dave would take the tab into town and show it to Butch, who would amend his records. Occasionally Old Ma Dealer (Leighton’s wife and my dear old mother) would go to the butchers for more Chitterling only to find that my dad had been busy trading Lord knows what and discover that our tab was up to the hilt. Then the sparks would fly. Then she’d go to the grocers, be maxed out again, then the sparks would fly again.
She forced my old man to deal with the debt crisis and he spent the best part of the next decade trying to recycle as much as he could against the traded tabs to reduce his debt to the towns merchants. He’d scavenge old furniture, electrical goods, screws and nails, and batteries from house clearances then store it at home. If anyone needed something no longer made, or a chair, or some widget for a-was-name, they pop by Leighton Dealer’s garden, take what they needed an initial a tab, that Old Ma Dealer would take into town and show the relevant shop owner.
By the time the Winter of Discontent dug in he’d reduced the household debt to less than four shillings without actually ever passing any money over to the countless vendors found in the High Street.
Then his brother Wendell Dealer showed up out of the blue on a three-speed Grifter (see Family, the life blood of the used truck industry). Wendell spent the next two weeks on the High Street creating tabs at every shop like it was going out of fashion. He acquired a fine horsehair coat, a hand-made pinstripe suit, patent leather shoes, leather wallet, fedora, a full tobacco tin and a seasons ticket for Corinthians FC, the towns finest amateur club….all on the never never.
When his credit limits were reached on the High Street he turned his attention to the townsfolk. He got people to give him lifts around town between pubs and restaurants and took their tabs from the local garage, totalling £3, four shillings and three pence of debt, for their trouble. He got drinkers to buy him shorts and pints, then initialled their tabs proffered by the landlord, only for the drinkers to hand them back. After a week the landlord had a two guinea tab for Wendell without Wendell ever making it to the bar.
He did the same to get tobacco, creating 10 shillings worth of debt without stepping foot inside the newsagent, and he signed off eight shillings of IOUs at the butchers from Sally, who had nothing to trade that I knew about. One time, I saw him light a cigar with one tab lit by a newly acquired gold-plated lighter. I didn’t raise any objections.
That fortnight Wendell signed off tabs that wiped out the total debt of at least 34 families in the town and significantly reduced the overall debt of another 105 families who were maxed out on tabs to proprietors of various outlets, as well as obtaining a two shilling tab from my father for offering to return a host of long overdue Haynes books to the library.
Then one afternoon a week later at the butchers, Sally ordered filet mignon believing she was in credit thanks to uncle Wendell’s generosity. Butch readjusted his book and sought Wendell’s whereabouts to reclaim Sally’s newfound credit. My father had the unpleasant duty to inform Butch that he’d sent Wendell to deliver a red GPO van to the candlestick maker and he had not been seen since. Butch left he tab at my fathers place to be settled in a timely fashion.
Perturbed, my father sought legal advice from the towns family solicitors Mason, Mason, Mason and Mason, who confirmed that the tab system, in place for more than decade and the backbone of the towns way of life, was not worth the paper any of it was written on. As you can imagine, my father was not best pleased.