The Life Story of a Pound Coin

In these unusual times of virtual teaching, I decided to challenge my Year 7 class to a bit of creative writing.  We have been studying education in class, and they have already read some sections of Roald Dahl’s wonderful autobiography ‘Boy’.  In one of these sections, Dahl mentions that he was writing an essay entitled, ‘The Life Story of a Penny’. I thought this was a really interesting idea, and assigned my students the task of writing ‘The Life Story of a Pound Coin’.  Here are the best two stories I have read so far.

Ms Sarah Cox, teacher of English

Libby

I felt myself being compressed between others of my kind in a sort of wallet thing made of leather that the two legged creature had put me in. Oh how dark it was inside that wallet and oh how claustrophobic! I hated it. 

Suddenly we were thrown down and in a gap in the creature’s wallet I saw that we were in a moving creature’s body! I was terrified, I thought that the two legged creature had fed us to a four legged creature. 

After a while I began to realize that the four legged creature wasn’t hurting me and that I had a little time to explain who I am. Well my name is Pound and I live everywhere. I move houses pretty much each day sometimes every other day if I’m lucky. Most of my life has been moving houses. My best friend has the same name as me and so does my mum. Isn’t that funny! We are all called Pound; except for my dad he’s called Two Pounds and he is a lot bigger than us and is worth a lot more to me than my mum. My dad, who is fighting against the American dollar, keeps saying that pounds are losing strength to fight and the dollar is gaining strength fast. 

Anyway, a couple of years ago I did a terrible thing… I nearly choked someone!  I really truly didn’t mean to. It wasn’t my fault really! It was the screaming little creature’s fault and everyone kept saying before I almost choked the thing what a cute baby it was! (That must be the creature’s name!) It happened when we were all in a loud noisy place where the two legged people were running around serving people food while my owners were sitting lazing around and talking to each other. After the meal the creatures brought us out to pay for their food and the baby put its hand in the wallet and put me in its mouth! EWWWWW! I was totally grossed out! Then I got stuck and the baby cried out in pain. Trying to dislodge myself from the baby’s throat, I managed to get loose and felt myself coming to the opening in the mouth. I couldn’t wait to be out of this mess. Finally, when I broke the surface I was thrown onto the counter and there is where I leave you, as moving house is quite a business. 

Freya

The constant sound of machinery was unbearable:; most different to what most things witness in their welcoming to the world. The smell of polish and copper was overwhelming and the clanking and crashing of motors was the only sound filling this humongous, shadowy room. As I looked around, tens of thousands of things, which looked just like me, were being handled and polished by gloomy workers who looked like they might drown in a pool of misery. I was too occupied looking around that I hardly noticed that I was moving at all; given the sound of the, what seemed never-ending, convayabelt, I have to admit that I was rather surprised to find out that I was about to be loaded into a van and be transported to a bank. As I got nearer to the convayabelt, the sounds of the metal coins crescendoed immensely and was most certainly deafening. Before I knew it, I was falling into a pool of shiny coins and as I hit the rest of the pounds, all I could see was black nothingness.

I woke up and thought I was still dreaming; the only thing in sight was gold and silver, surrounding me in every direction. As my senses got into place, I once again realised that I was moving except one thing was different- I don’t know where it’s moving me to and I didn’t think I was going to find out any time soon either. We were moving for what seemed like hours; as the unseen but heard cars went by, so did the time until we came to a sudden halt. I could hear the engine turn off and the van door opening and slamming back shut again. Footsteps came nearer to the back of the van where I was and before I knew it, I was being lifted up and carried into a huge building- though not quite as big as the factory. 

As I was carried in, I noticed that on the front of the building was a sign with the words “ Lloyds Bank” written across it. As we entered the building, people in smart uniforms were handling money to what looked like just ordinary people. As I stared round I could see that most of the money looked like paper; to me this seemed oddly peculiar as I had only seen money like myself before. Then a sudden thought came to me- could this be my purpose? To be handed out to local residents and be traded off for goods. I suppose it was. I was loaded into a cash register behind a glass window and a flap closed over the small glimpse of light which was the only evidence that my whole life wasn’t going to be dark. What felt like around fifteen minutes later, the flap opened once more and a gloved hand reached into the place where I was and scooped me up. Next minute I was being counted and then a few seconds later, handed to a random person. 

2 days later…

After a long time of being in the dark, a blinding light came reaching towards me. Someone was once again handling me. As I came to my senses , I realised where I was going:; back into a cash register. What felt like days went by with me stuck in this enclosed space with nothing to do or look at, then, all of a sudden, I was being lifted out of this dark hole and being handed to a little girl. As I left the shop door, she was throwing me up and down and up and down until… I felt myself falling. I hoped I was going to land on the floor and she would pick me up again but I just kept falling. Down, down and down until the warm sun left me and I became cold as I went down the drain. It felt like I was never going to stop, that was until I hit the stone floor and my eyes slowly closed. It felt like the end. Like I was never going to get up again. Goodbye world, though you never did much for me.

Note: these stories have not been edited