Guineas are long gone, but the memories linger on

No matter how long the guinea has been gone from our pockets, the memories remain fresh in C8 minds, sometimes pleasantly, sometime traumatically, and leading on to some other fiscal thoughts.

Marli Davies of Wentworth Falls remembers that, “The fees for my education at an all-girls school in the 1940s was twenty-one guineas per term, and three terms per year. Imagine that now?”

Guineas brought music to the fingers and ears of David McKay of Blaxland, who says, “My parents found a large black piano for me at Marks Point in 1957. It was lowered with ropes from the upstairs verandah and cost 90 guineas. Nanna said she’d pay the £90 if Mum and Dad paid the 90 shillings. Is there a symbol for a guinea?”

Ron Vernon of Thornleigh agrees with Daniel Flesch about the 99¢ ploy. “When I was young,” Ron says, “Prices were often quoted as, for example, 3 shillings and eleven pence halfpenny – as close to four shillings as you could possibly get without saying so.”

Helen Scanlon of Northbridge would like to point out that “No one has yet commented on Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ who wears, in Tenniel’s illustration, a hat marked 10/6, which is of course half a guinea. Doctor visits were also 10/6, I recall from childhood.”

Then, an oddity from Malanda in Queensland. John Andersen recalls, “As a young boy if I answered my parents or grandparents with ‘hey’ when they said something to me, I would straightaway be told ‘Hay makes the bull fat, straw makes it skinny, take it to the exhibition and sell it for a guinea’.” Families do have the oddest sayings.

Stepping back to Mr Fraser, Rob Hosking of Paddington suggests that “Fang was, of course, Agent 86’s dog in Get Smart, best known for lying around, and, in one instance, just raising his head up just enough to blow out the wick to the traditional bomb.” It’s a bit of a stretch, Rob, but the timing makes it possible.

A more prosaic suggestion comes from Donald Hawes of Peel, who thinks, “Australians of all ages love alliterative nicknames. We had a ‘Timebomb Turner’ at Broken Hill High School in the early 1960s. You could hear him several classrooms away when he blew up at an unruly class. Then there was the fairytale-allusive teacher in Carnaby Street gear, Puss in Boots, who resembled the princess, rather than the cat.”

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