Money

I found a fiver yesterday. It’s not often that you find notes lying around, I thought, so I picked it up. It was torn across the corner, the one closest to the pound sign, where someone had dragged it across the tarmac on the bottom of their shoe. The physicality of money for many outweighs its actual being. The essence of a value; some figures on a screen, it’s different to being able to feel something in your hand - its weight; its history; the faint smell of sweat and tobacco; hints of iron; reminiscent of the metallic taste of a nosebleed; its texture almost soil-like, leaving your fingertips rough but you’re never sure why. I find myself asking questions. How many coke heads have snorted a line with this? You can’t tell, there are no decaying nostrils to judge by, just a crumpled piece of paper that’s been all of the places you’d hope never to go, like between the moist palms of that man who stares at you through his wall of beard before his weekly visit to Ladbrokes, the one who reeks of unwashed clothes, like cheese that’s been left to sweat. The power of money, the rhythms it can cause us to slip into – a false sense of security, like the relief when you pass a car crash on the motorway and realise you didn’t cause it. Well, I found it outside Starbucks and I thought I’d keep it. Someone probably dropped it on their way in, and in that case they don’t deserve to get it back anyway.