After lunch... I went for a drive

The "54" on the numberplate means it was first registered September 2004

At the weekend I collected my new car – an Alfa-Romeo 147.

On Sunday, after lunch (roast lamb, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, cabbage, followed by profiterolls, followed by slices of mandarin cheesecake) I went for a drive. As usual I went deeper into the rural hinterland of the county, the part no-one knows about, even though we are (relatively speaking) close to a big city.

In a little market town I stopped to look at a series of street stalls selling mostly old junk. One of them had displays of old coins – pre-decimal pennies, commemorative “crowns”, foreign coins and suchlike. One little basket caught my interest – it was full of Roman coins, all sizes, dull green-brown in colour, some of them worn so smooth as to be featureless. “They were all dug up locally” said the scruffy man minding the stall. Presumably someone with a metal-detector had gone over Roman sites in the area digging up anything that produced a signal, irrespective of the archaeological context. I bought a coin from the reign of the Emperor Constans (337 – 350 AD) which cost £6. On one side was the head of the Emperor with an inscription. On the other side were two “Victories” holding aloft laurel leaves.