Saturday, October 4, 2008

How much is a million

The other day I was on the bus going up Holloway road when a quite intimidating gang of 4 boys got on. They slouched up the stairs and limped with attitude down the aisle towards the back of the bus, where they splayed, dotting themselves in various seats that maximised the space they took up. One of them started playing music from his phone. 

'Oh shut up! I hate you' I grumbled silently.

Then one of them picked up the news paper. "500 billion bail out!" shouted one. This seemed to pick them all out of their malaise.
"How much is that...how much money would it take to fill up this bus?" asked another on of them.
"A Million!" Shouted the third one enthusiastically.
"Nah bruv, no way." he paused "In what notes?"
"Five pound notes. One million in five pound notes. It would take up this whole bus, we would drown, drown in a million pounds" He whispered the last bit, wistfully, as if this is was an ideal death.
"No way, one million pounds would be too big? It would never fit" Said the fourth one who until now had been silent."10, 000 pounds, how big is that?"
"The size of a large table...Remember? We saw it on that tv show..."

This conversation went on for ten minutes and was quite entertaining, musing as they did not just about this bus but other types of bus, single deckers, bendy buses, it ended when they got to their stop and bounded from the bus, enthused by their recent debate, alighting as a different group of men.  I have no idea what one million pounds looks like and probably never will...Unless the world economy submits to hyper inflation and we all have to take suitcases of money to the supermarket in the hope of buying a loaf of bread.