One winter, some years ago, I was walking down Broad Street, Blaenavon. I can’t remember how young I was, but as the family hadn’t yet moved down to the farm, it’s safe to say I was still in single figures.<\/p>\n
Maybe nine-years old.<\/p>\n
I can recall that it was bitterly cold, as you’d expect in a small mountain-top, mining town, in winter.<\/p>\n
The snow wasn’t thick enough to keep us from school, but it was present.<\/p>\n
And it offered sufficient coverage to disguise the chalky lumps of dog poo.<\/p>\n
I walked down the Lion Street junction, and crossed over to the right-hand side of Broad Street, as I headed away from the general store where I’d been staring, goggle-eyed at Airfix model kits.<\/p>\n
About thirty metres down the road, near the newsagents, in the fading winter light, I spotted something half-buried in the well-trampled snow.<\/p>\n
I knew what it was, even from a distance.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t crafty enough to look around, to make sure no-one was looking.<\/p>\n
I walked quicker.<\/p>\n
I reached my goal, bent down, ferreted about and pulled the 10\/s note out of the snow.<\/p>\n
It was damp.<\/p>\n
I didn’t even have the nous to be cunning.<\/p>\n
I marched straight in to the newsagent, clutching my salvaged booty.<\/p>\n
I selected a number of comics.<\/p>\n
Superman, Batman, The Green Lantern. And others.<\/p>\n
Then I walked up to the counter and ordered a lorry-load of pick’n’mix.<\/p>\n
And a couple of Mars bars.<\/p>\n
And an Amazin’ bar.<\/p>\n
And many other edible goodies.<\/p>\n
I managed to carry everything back to the house, and smuggled it upstairs to my bedroom, in stages.<\/p>\n
I gorged my mind on the comics.<\/p>\n
I gorged my stomach on the confectionary.<\/p>\n
And not once did I give a thought about the person who had lost 10\/s.<\/p>\n
I have, over the years, wondered about the person who had lost that sizeable lump of cash.<\/p>\n
But what should I have done with the money?<\/p>\n
Handed it in to a policeman?<\/p>\n
Yeah, right.<\/p>\n
However, my guilt has continued to nag away; sometimes more, sometimes less, but it has always been there.<\/p>\n
And as a result of the persistent nagging, I give money to charitable causes.<\/p>\n
Trying to make myself feel better.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t.<\/p>\n
And I know that if I had my time over, I wouldn’t change a thing.<\/p>\n
I would still have had a comic- and confectionary-fest.<\/p>\n
And felt ill all of that evening as a result of the latter.<\/p>\n
What would you have done?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One winter, some years ago, I was walking down Broad Street, Blaenavon. I can’t remember how young I was, but as the family hadn’t yet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}