A further bit of nostalgia. In the grim days of very limited choice of sweets of the early 1950’s there was another life saver besides the sherbet tube previously documented. This was the liquorice wheel which was a very long, thin and narrow strip of liquorice which was wound round and round on itself like a circular catherine wheel with a small boiled sweet pebble in the middle. You ate this by biting off the end bit to chew and then another bit as you slowly unwound the wheel and with each bite the wheel got a little bit smaller until you were left with the pebble which you sucked. The trick was to only bite off small pieces to try to make the wheel last as long as possible. I remember one genius, who always chewed everything very slowly, including the atrocious school dinner. He could make a wheel last a full hour whilst always having some liquorice in his mouth at all times. The cost of this precious commodity was 2d, which is to say 2 old pence. Since there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound there were therefore 240 pence in a pound. Which is to say that one pence of today’s currency is worth 2.4 old pence. Which in turn means that the liquorice wheel cost just less than one pence today. And that demonstrates inflation and is the end of today’s maths lesson.

On the home front today was another sunny day which called for a 3.30.p.m. glass of white wine to be consumed on the patio. Which today was a nice Australian Yarrunga Field 2019 Estate bottled from the better end of the cellar. Quite smooth but with quite a bit of body as well that lingered nicely. Definitely a tick for this one.