Poem of the Day - Brass In Pocket.

Ten Pence Story Out of the melting pot, into the mint; next news I was loose change for a Leeds pimp, burning a hole in his skin-tight pocket till he tipped a busker by the precinct. Not the most ceremonious release for a fresh faced coin cutting its teeth. But that's my point: if you're poorly bartered you're scuppered before you've even started. My lowest ebb was a seven month spell spent head down in a wishing well, half eclipsed by an oxidized tuppence which impressed me with its green circumference. When they fished me out I made a few phone calls, fed a few meters, hung round the pool halls. I slotted in well, but all that vending blunted my edges and did my head in. Once I came within an ace of the end on the stern of a North Sea Ferry, when some half-cut, ham-fisted cockney tossed me up into the air and almost dropped me and every transaction flashed before me like a time lapse autobiography. Now, just the thought of travel by water lifts the serrations around my border. Some day I know I'll be bagged up and sent to that knacker's yard for the over-spent to be broken, boiled, unmade and replaced, for my metals to go their separate ways... which is sad. All coins have dreams. Some castings from my own batch, I recall, were hatching an exchange scam on the foreign market and some inside jobs on one arm bandits. My own ambition? Well, that was simple: to be flipped in Wembley's centre circle, to twist, to turn, to hang like a planet, to touch down on that emerald carpet. Those with faith in the system say 'don't quit, bide your time, if you're worth it, you'll make it.' But I was robbed, I was badly tendered. I could have scored. I could have contended. Taken from Kid

Copyright Simon Armitage.

Have you ever heard anyone say, "A bad penny always turns up..."

The proverb, also used allusively in simile and metaphor (see quot. 1766), refers to the predictable, and usually unwelcome, return of a disreputable or prodigal person after some absence.

Like a bad penny it returnd, to me again.
[1766 A. Adams in L. H. Butterfield et al. Adams Family Correspondence (1963) I. 55]

Bring back Darsie?
Little doubt of that—the bad shilling is sure enough to come back again.
[1824 Scott Redgauntlet II. ii.]

Just like as not he'll be coming back one of these days, when he's least wanted. A bad penny is sure to return.
[1884 R. H. Thorpe Fenton Family iii.]

Who's dead, when and what did he die of?
Turn up like a bad penny.
[1922 Joyce Ulysses 149]

‘I miss Bart.’
‘Oh, a bad penny always turns up again.’
[1941 A. Updegraff Hills look Down vi.]

‘Stop worrying. The bad pennies always turn up.’
‘Oh, Adrian, I don't think she's a bad penny, not really.’
[1979 G. Mitchell Mudflats of Dead iii.]

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