It’s been nearly two weeks already, but the British press cannot get enough of the Jane-Austen-meets-Roald-Dahl story of the specially engraved £5 notes.
You will recall that earlier this month, the owner of a Scottish art gallery announced that he was secretly circulating four £5 notes embellished with a hidden miniature portrait of Jane Austen by Graham Short, an artist who specializes in teeny-tiny engravings.
Short’s creations, which take months of painstaking work, have sold for tens of thousands of pounds, and so the reporters covering this story have decided, on the basis of little more than wishful thinking, that the Austen fivers could net similarly vast sums for anyone lucky enough to find one.
So far, we’ve learned that one of the magic fivers was spent on a sausage-and-egg sandwich from the Square Café in the southern Welsh town of Blackwood, another paid for two pies from Granny Jean’s Home Bakery in the Scottish town of Kelso, and a third purchased a snack at Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe in the Leicestershire town of Melton. No word yet, as far as I can tell, on where the Northern Irish note was dropped.
In case you want a leg up on the competition, however, a web site called AngleNews has helpfully supplied instructions for checking whether your fiver includes one of the hidden portraits, plus a list of the serial numbers of the four bills, each of which includes the Austen portrait encircled by one of four Austen quotes. (I’m delighted to see that one of them is Mary Crawford’s immortal – and, in this context, highly appropriate -- witticism, “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”)
It’s hard to believe that the current atmosphere of breathless interest will be sustained much longer, unless one or two of the bills turns up quickly. And although we’re all hoping for a heartwarming finale – Priceless Fiver Pays for Blind Girl’s Eye Operation in Vienna; “It’s a Miracle!” Joyful Mum Shouts -- there’s no particular reason to think that will happen.
Unlike the Golden Tickets in Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which were packaged with an easily identifiable food item produced in relatively small quantities, the Austen fivers are swimming in a vast sea of currency. They could spend months sitting unnoticed in a piggy bank, a trouser pocket or a bank teller’s drawer. We could be in for a long haul.
2 comments
Feb 8 2017 09:08PM by Graham Short
'Priceless Fiver Pays for Blind Girl’s Eye Operation in Vienna; “It’s a Miracle!” Joyful Mum Shouts' I like your thinking! But sadly I think you may be right about being in for the long haul. With 450 million fivers currently in circulation it is doubtful that any more will be found. I hoped that people would find them before Christmas and sell them on an internet auction site, and pick up a few bob to help with the seasonal festivities. Regarding the note destined for Nortrhern Ireland, I flew from Birmingham to Belfast, hired a car and drove to Eniskillen. The note was spent in Charlies Bar in the high street, just down the road from a cathedral. I'm not sure if my visit to Charlies Bar was mentioned in their local newspaper? I think not. So this may not turn up. I must say, I really enjoyed reading your blog. Graham
Feb 8 2017 11:44PM by Deborah Yaffe
Hi, Graham! So kind of you to drop by and comment. It's great to have such a fascinating Austen-related story to write about. I hope to be in the UK this summer, and I will certainly be closely inspecting ever fiver that crosses my palm. . .