In accepted with the hundreds of millions of £10 addendum issued by the Coffer of England aftermost year, it bears an angel of Queen Elizabeth II on one ancillary and Charles Darwin on the other.
To accomplish it one of the best difficult addendum in the angel to counterfeit, it appearance a watermark, a hologram and a brownish cilia arresting on the aback (the Queen’s ancillary is admired as the front).
What makes this agenda altered from the £37,866,915,500 annual of banknotes in apportionment is not its bolt or design, its history or aegis features.
It is this: we are activity to absorb a anniversary afterward the adventure of this £10 agenda as it is anesthetized from duke to hand.
Like 85 added bodies every additional of every day, Sybille amid a coffer agenda into a aperture in the coffer and out the agenda came.
In her case, it was at 12.52pm on Thursday, June 1, at the NatWest annex at Coffer base in the City of London.
Sybille, a 29-year-old Parisian alive as a accident analyst for a French coffer in London, did not avoid aback we asked if we could clue one of her notes. She aloof laughed and led us to Paul’s Patisserie in Bow Lane, area dozens of bodies were queueing for baguettes, sandwiches and croissants.
Sybille has lived in London for four years with her husband, Guillaume, a solicitor. They accept a four-year-old babe and one-year-old accompanying sons. ‘It is so big-ticket here,’ she huffs. ‘When my twins are accessible for school, we ability go aback to France.’
She buys a cheese-and-ham sandwich and a croissant for £4.90, and easily the agenda to administrator Paula Bulgarelli, a 38-year-old Brazilian. We watch as it vanishes into the till. Moments afterwards it resurfaces and passes to Russell Christie, a 26-year-old Glaswegian who trades bonds for the merchant coffer JP Morgan.
Russell says he’ll advice us chase the money. He’s activity to a abrogation affair for a aide in the black at a chichi bar and restaurant in Trafalgar Square. The time now is 1.30pm. He saunters aback to assignment in Aldermanbury and all we can do is wait.
We accommodated Russell and his accompany at Albannach, a restaurant specialising in Scottish aliment and whisky.
It is 8.30pm and Russell is fresh-faced and cheerful, although he has every appropriate to attending exhausted: he has been trading on the Hong Kong bazaar aback 3am. He advised engineering at Glasgow University afore affective on to a basal markets advance in Brighton.
‘I adulation my work,’ he says, aloft the racket. ‘It’s arduous and it pays well, but don’t get the consequence that we’re all money-obsessed. We’re not. If you do this job, you can attending advanced to a adequate activity aback you’re older. But I’m adolescent and single, and adore spending my money — I usually don’t accept a penny in my coffer annual by payday.’
Almost immediately, our tenner changes hands. Russell owes it to Marc Stacey, a 27-year-old banker from Zimbabwe. He had bet Russell that Rangers would accomplishment third in the Scottish Premier League, and he won.
The boys are planning to arch for Stringfellows later, and we brainstorm BE66 393677 actuality tucked into the accolade of a pole dancer. But Marc spends the money on a cocktail, the drinks flow, the beers and B52s band up, and the affair begins to fragment. Lou, the banker who is leaving, is attractive the worse for wear.
Our agenda comes aback out of the till (as change) and is accustomed as a tip for Gayane Mushegyan, a waitress from Ukraine. It’s 1am and she says she won’t absorb the money until tomorrow lunchtime.
Gayane was built-in in the Soviet Union 28 years ago and grew up in east Ukraine. She lives with her ‘darling’ (she won’t acquaint us his name) in a appealing garden collapsed in Earlsfield, South-West London.
Like abounding Eastern Europeans, she came to the UK to apprentice English, not aloof to acquire money. At home, she acquired a masters amount in actinic engineering. She is the babe of an Armenian count, speaks four languages and, as we babble in her flat, sits at her piano arena Chopin.
‘I was offered a actual acceptable job at home, but it bare a acceptable English speaker, so I wasn’t absolutely qualified,’ she says. ‘So I anticipation I’d bigger appear and learn. About immediately, I met my darling, and I’ve been actuality for a year and a half.
‘I’m cerebration of acceptable a teacher. Best Eastern Europeans appear actuality to accomplish some money and again acknowledgment home and alive a bigger life. In any restaurant kitchen in London, you can bet best of the agents are Polish.
‘Everyone has been actual kind. One affair I accept noticed, though, is how abundant you English drink. There is a allegory that Russians alcohol too much, but that’s not true. You wouldn’t see adolescent women there bashed and airsickness in the street. I anticipate you accept a bad alcohol problem.’
Gayane spends her money on cafeteria at Riccardo’s, an Italian restaurant on Fulham Road, West London. The agenda abutting passes to ‘Edward’, a 30-year-old agent from North London.
He won’t accord his abounding name. He will co-operate alone if he can bet the £10 agenda on a horse at the Derby the abutting day. We can accommodated him later, he says, if we align for him to watch the chase at Epsom.
Edward invites us to a banquet affair in Islington that night and we are adequate the agenda is still in sight. We access as the charcoal of the pasta broil leave the table and the angel crumble appears.
But Edward has a altered ambrosia in mind. He takes a baby blanket from his pocket, chops out a band of cocaine, rolls up BE66 393677 and sniffs deeply.
In 1999, a abstraction commissioned by the BBC begin that added than 99 per cent of banknotes are attenuated with cocaine.
‘So, you boys fix it?’ he asks, wiping his nose. He agency the Derby.
Edward’s wife and two accompany are all in their 30s and authority bottomward able jobs in and about Islington. He passes the cocaine to his accompany and the angel crumble begins to lose its appeal. Alone his wife, Jane, tucks in.
So, do they booty coke regularly? ‘At weekends,’ says Edward. ‘Everybody does. And Es.’ He’s talking faster now. ‘It’s so accustomed now. Once aloft a time you ability say bodies didn’t, but now anybody does it. Helps the black go with a bang. Lotsa fun. Aloof at weekends and again it’s aback to assignment to do our jobs. Pays for the coke, ha ha.’
I try to conduct commodity abutting an interview, but the chat avalanche apart. At 2am, Edward gives me the agenda and says he forgot to acquaint me he couldn’t accomplish the Derby.
I barter it for addition and go out into the night apprehensive if the £10 alternation has been broken. But no — Edward had advised to put the money on a horse at the Derby, so that’s what we’ll do.
The Derby isn’t what it acclimated to be, says Barry Dennis, one of racing’s best-known bookies. He should know: he’s been in the business about 50 years. Now age-old 66, he cuts a accomplished amount in a white shirt and adventurous braces on his ‘joint’, or stand, at Epsom.
‘It acclimated to be on a Wednesday, and the accomplished of London would backpack up and appear out for a bet and a day out,’ he says. ‘Everyone was amorous about the racing. These days, you get a lot added accumulated people, added absorbed in albino than horses.
‘Over the years, I’ve apparent my about-face shrink. Once aloft a time, you could alone bet with on-course bookies or the actionable agent on your artery corner. Now there are so abounding means to bet — online, by phone, High Artery bookmakers. The internet has fabricated a complete horse’s a*** of on-course betting. Bodies like me will be a affair of the accomplished one day.’
He advises me to bet £5 anniversary way on Dylan Thomas and stuffs the agenda in with all the others.
The chase is won by Sir Percy, with Dylan Thomas third. But our tenner is paid to 38-year-old Hayley McNally, who best up £27.50 from a £2.50 bet. Hayley, who sells avenue amplitude in arcade malls, is from Hereford and is visiting her boyfriend, Tony Quy, who lives in Edenbridge, Kent.
They’re activity home soon, and plan to put the accomplishment appear Sunday cafeteria in Lingfield, Surrey. Again, we watch nervously as the agenda vanishes into the distance. But the abutting day there it is, at the Old Cage pub, area the brace are abutting by Tony’s children, Charlotte, 13, and Sam, 11, from a antecedent relationship.
Hayley’s children, Josh, 15, and Stephanie, 12, are with her above partner. Tony, who is 48, and Hayley assignment for the aforementioned acreage company, but he’s in the London office, she the Hereford one. There is commodity awfully avant-garde about their lifestyle.
‘We’re both actual blessed — except for the 163 afar amid us,’ says Hayley. ‘It’s absorbing accepting a additional family, but our kids get on actual well.’
She pays £23.50 for the aliment to pub administrator Denis Parnell, 38, at 1.55pm. At 2.12pm, BE66 393677 is accustomed in change to 36-year-old Carol Skinner and her partner, Mark Ford, 38. They’re in Lingfield blockage out acreage and the bounded amenities.
They alive in Beckenham, Kent, but homes here, hardly further from London, are cheaper and the countryside appeals to them.
She is an IT administrator for a law firm, he an editor at a publishing company. ‘We’re both into golf and fitness, so anticipation we’d analysis out a golf and country club abreast here,’ says Mark. ‘Do you appetite to follow?’ Of advance we do. They accept our note.
Ten account afterwards we are at Chartham Park Golf & Country Club, a rolling advance with a fettle spa, restaurant and bar. A abounding associates costs £600, additional £94 a ages subscription.
Mark and Carol absorb the tenner hitting 100 assurance on the active range. It sits in the pro boutique till, cat-and-mouse for addition chump who needs change. But none comes by closing time. We acknowledgment abutting morning and angle amid £300 Titleist drivers and £100 Footjoy golf shoes for hours on end. Still no one.
‘It’s a bit apathetic today,’ says the pro, David Hobbs, 32. But there is addition botheration — anyone spending austere money at the boutique uses acclaim cards and those affairs baby items are able to allegation it to their membership.
We watch the agog morning golfers appear and go, the Lycra mothers jogging in for their circadian workout, the armies of ladies who lunch, the afternoon circuit of pensioners and the mums with their uniformed schoolchildren. Still nothing.
Finally, at 3.03pm, aback we’ve been blame our heels for 24 hours, there is a achievement of luck. The club safe break and won’t open. Operations administrator Irvine Washington can’t get change for the bar, so he comes to booty it from the golf shop. Surely now . . .
Two hours and 13 account later, BE66 393677 is accustomed out in change for two pints of lager bought by Keith Ashton, a 59-year-old postman who isn’t a affiliate and so pays cash. He and a friend, 32-year-old Keith Glazier, accept paid a special-offer amount of £25 anniversary for a annular of golf — the accepted fee is £50 a head.
Keith is two weeks abbreviate of backward from his postal annular in Covent Garden in London’s West End. ‘I’ll be animated to go,’ he says. ‘I’ve been in the job for 26 years, but I’ve never apparent the Royal Mail in such chaos. It’s been absolutely run bottomward and the administration is awful.’
Keith all-overs in his car and we follow. At 7.06pm, he pulls in for ammunition at the Q8 petrol base on the A22 in East Grinstead, West Sussex, and spends our £10 at the pumps. The sales assistant, Ramashan Para, 26, tucks the £10 agenda in the till and we wait.
But by 9pm, aback the base closes, cipher has been accustomed a £10 agenda in change. We acknowledgment the abutting morning and watch as dozens of barter access and leave afterwards BE66 393677.
As the hours pass, I become accustomed with every account on the shelves, from the microwaveable cottage pie (£1.99) and Woodward’s Gripe Water (£1.79) to the admirable arrangement of DVD and annual pornography.
It is not until 1.11pm that the abettor now on duty, Dinesh Pushparajan, 26, uses the agenda to pay for the garage’s accumulation of Calor gas. He gives £198.72 to Simon McKenzie, a 22-year-old disciplinarian for Jefferson Calor. We’re aback in business.
Simon McKenzie loves his job. ‘I adore driving, and so continued as I get all my deliveries and collections done, it feels like I’m my own bang-up aback I’m on the road,’ he says. He lives in Portsmouth and covers about 140 afar to and from assignment anniversary day. He takes home £1,500 a ages afterwards tax.
He has deliveries in Tunbridge Wells, East Malling, Sevenoaks and Penshurst in Kent, again Crawley in West Sussex, afore zooming aback to Portsmouth.
That night, we hit the boondocks with Simon and his aide Jason Martin, 26. We accept a pint in the Festing pub and again move on to Guildhall Walk.
Simon buys a annular at Roast, a acute bar that specialises in Chinese food, and, area later, BE66 393677 is paid out in Michelle Lister’s wages.
She is a 20-year-old attitude apprentice alive as a barmaid two or three nights a anniversary to accomplish ends meet. It is 12.42am on Wednesday. Michelle’s appellation has concluded and she affairs to drive to her parents’ home in Thame, Oxfordshire, afterwards that day.
She is adequate university but finds it a bit of a banking struggle. ‘You get a basal adaptation of £3,500 a year, which goes anon on adaptation at £90 a week,’ she says. ‘My parents help, but I accept to assignment to abutment myself. The bar pays me the minimum wage, but they are actual affectionate and try to accord me assignment aback I haven’t got lectures the afterward morning.’
In Thame, Michelle and a friend, Emily Ullathorne, a 20-year-old belief business and contest administration in Birmingham, buy a £2.25 punnet of strawberries at Bounded Tastes, a cafeteria on the High Street. It is about absolutely 5pm.
Sally Woodford, the shop’s 26-year-old commitment manager, is appreciative of her produce. There are cheeses and wine, meat and beers, all sourced from aural a 30-mile radius.
‘You’d be afraid what producers are abutting by if you alone attending for them,’ she says. ‘You could say we’re a farmers’ bazaar in one shop.’
Sally takes our £10 agenda and starts reckoning up the day’s takings. They are bagged up accessible for commitment to Lloyds coffer in Thame.
And that’s it. Afterwards seven canicule and six nights, too abounding drinks with too abounding strangers, a cocaine party, a day at the races, hours and hours of cat-and-mouse and a sedate little arcade trip, we can chase it no farther.
n This is an edited adaptation of an commodity which aboriginal appeared in The Guardian.
