h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Joey's were silver thruppenny bits not 4d's. Sorry.

I worked in a bank in the 60's. I had a new customer, a foundary labourer, who had won the pools and couldn't write his name, just an X. I went to a lot of trouble to help him open a bank account, get references and eventually we were able to cash his cheques; although most were cashed in the pub up the road. I tried very had to get him to understand about crossed cheques and the security they gave him but eventually I had to give him an 'open cheque book' without the double parallel lines that constitute a crossed cheque. But I still wanted him to 'cross' the cheque when he was paying for goods or services. We kept getting cheques back with a giant X across the whole check and his small X signature. That was his interpretation of a 'crossed cheque'.
For all my hard work and patience he gave me a bag of 'joeys', about 50 of them. I refused them many times as I was only doing my job but eventually the manager said I had better accept them; to keep our customer happy. I still have them and use them at Christmas time in puds, much to the delight of my grandchildren.

Boy, I have to try and update this very old article. I now have about six corrections to make. Unfortunately,I'll have to put my Joeys into a footnote. In southern Africa, they were definitely 4d, but as I'm supposed to be talking about Old ENGLISH money, I'll change the main definition. Thanks for telling your story.