Old Lady Rampant in Stroud

We're nearly there. On Saturday I will be donning my father's old business suit and the bowler hat from my daughter's dressing-up box. I'll be heading down to Stroud's Threadneedle Street, with its very own Old Lady (Teashop) to launch the Stroud Pound.

Let's call it rivalry rather than competition, but the brief we gave our designers was to make our notes more stylish than the Lewes pounds, which we loved and secretly envied. They have certainly met this requirement and exceeded our wildest dreams. Four denominations will be available from Saturday morning with a mixture of local celebrities (animal and human) and scenes. This post will only be able to be adorned with one once the strict embargo is past.

Laurie Lee is our star character. There has been much interest in the local press, and we are delighted that his widow, Kathy, will be unveiling the note. She and her daughter Jessy were sure Laurie would have approved. His humanity and deep commitment to equality shine through his writing and must have been drawn from the Stroud valleys, which have been described as a red hand in the middle of Tory-blue Gloucestershire. Our local paper went so far as to say that the courage of the Stroud Pound Co-operative was akin to that shown by Laurie Lee when he went to fight for the Republicans in Spain. We blushed at the excessive compliment, but are delighted by the level of support that we have been given.

Starting a local currency is a deep learning experience. Clutching our own notes for the first time last night generated a mixture of hilarity and awe. As the past year has proved, money is right at the centre of our lives. It really does make the capitalist world go around. Just try to imagine what would have happened to your life if the high-street banks had seized up and your credit card had ceased to function last September. No cashpoints, no ability to pay in shops, very soon nothing in the shops. This is the vital role that money plays in a complex modern economy, and the money we are using has inequality designed into it. It is controlled by the very forces that are wreaking havoc on our planet. Making your own money gives you a chance to really change the economic system that is so all-pervasive as to be invisible and unquestioned.

I still have a wistful longing for Tom Paine, but, although he belongs to Lewes, his belief that 'We have it in the power to make the world anew' belongs to us all. Tweet

The Richness of Life

I've just had the pleasure of reading Cider with Rosie for the first time. Like everybody else I'm amazed I never had the opportunity before - it was a school favourite everywhere except my school, it appears. The explanation must be to do with my Victorian schoolmistresses fears about the possibile influence on tender minds of the scene under the hay wagon. They clearly felt that the face-slashing reality of Brighton Rock was more suitable for pre-pubescent girls.

For whatever reason I'm glad that this gem has been saved for my middle years and now comes to me at around the same age Laurie Lee was when he wrote the book - and very nearly in the same place as well. The village of Slad is only a couple of miles up the road from where I'm writing this. And I have been spared the stifling, smelly, repressive atmosphere of school as a permanent association with the book.

Everything about Lee's writing is rich, as is the childhood he describes. People who live around here and who knew the author and still know his widow tell you that it isn't realistic. That he has rose-tinted spectacles on. The major criticism is that he doesn't portray the family as poor enough. The spendthrift single mother and her frequently bootless, snotty-nosed children as seen from the outside do not match the wealth that Laurie Lee clearly found in the Gloucestershire countryside.

I was listening to Haydn's Creation recently and for the first time - I think because it was sung rather than spoken - thought about the second sentence of the bible: 'The Earth was without form - and void'. This is how death feels to those who live close to the earth: an absence of the teeming, messy variety of life at this time of year. As we have used technology to gain mastery over nature so we have strangled and stifled this life.

The UK economy is based on financial services - 73% of our economy is now in the services sector, and most of this is financial services. What could be more alien to life than this 'industry' which lures us through life with the attraction of money, especially money via pensions (by which time we are really too old to enjoy it and life has passed us by) and persuades us (the insurance 'industry') that we can use money to prevent the accidental disasters that are an inevitable part of life. A paltry attempt to use the meaningless and worthless construct of money to keep life at bay. Tweet