A Quid

This morning my train of thought has gone steaming off very fast in too many different directions. A bit like the Manchester Victoria to Leeds service, but at least with this one you don't end up in Leeds.

(No offence to the people of Leeds. I just don't care much for the city.)

The train stopped at the new pound coin. I'm ancient enough to remember when a pound was a note, but now we have pound coins. They were introduced when Margaret Thatcher was PM, and some bright sparks said the new coin should be called a Maggie because 'it's hard, brassy and thinks it's a sovereign.' Many years on, they have decided that the pound coin is too easy to fake, so they've introduced a new design with twelve sides, like the threepenny bits we had when I was a little girl and we kept a dinosaur in the primeval back garden.

Like all British currency it will have The Queen's head on one side, but they haven't decided what to put on the other. There's going to be some design competition to decide it. So, what's thoroughly British that we could put on the new pound coin?

Plate of fish and chips?

A football? A cricket bat?

A teapot? (I really like that one.)

As a children's author, I'm very happy that I'm part of something we do well. Children's literature from the UK has done well around the world. So I think the reverse of the pound coin should show Pooh Bear, or Aslan, or the robin with the key in The Secret Garden. What do you think?

Here comes the train again. The Railway Children?