Twenty years ago, £5 was not a lot of money, but it was enough to go out; it was enough to by a few groceries; it was enough to put some petrol in the car; if you were an older person, £5 was a good chunk of your pension.

It was £5 in relation to someone’s pension that was troubling.  Going through the pockets of a jacket before it went to the dry cleaners, a £5 note came out of the breast pocket.  Someone had handed over £5 for some specific purpose and it had been put into the pocket for safe keeping; keeping so safe that it had been completely forgotten.  The only person who would have given a country clergyman a £5 note would have been an older person, probably housebound, who wanted the money to be applied to some specific purpose; who the person was and what the purpose was had long since gone from the memory.

The £5 note was handed sheepishly to the church treasurer with a word of apology; it may well have been a widow’s mite and had not been noticed by someone too busy being busy.

Since then, I have declined to take money from anyone for anything unless it is in an envelope showing their name and for what the money is to be used.  I explain about the £5 note and say that even now, I regret I may have caused someone offence.  A few have raised their eyebrows and probably wondered to themselves about the incompetence of someone who can’t even remember why he was given money.

The £5 note feeling returned this morning.  Along with Euro notes, a slip of paper came out of my wallet.  A4 width and apparently torn from the foot of a sheet, it had nothing other than a name written in blue biro.

‘Ruairi O hEithir’.

A moment of panic.  Who was it?  Was I to visit them? Phone them? Were they in hospital or going through some pastoral emergency?

Google!

Ruairi is deputy principal of the school where I had conducted the assembly on Thursday, I had never known his surname.  He is working for a year in Rwanda and is recording his experiences on his blog:

http://roheithir.blogspot.com/

I remembered, one his colleagues had written down his name so that I would find his blog; I would never have managed the Irish spelling.  His weekly diary gives a direct insight into the issues with which anyone working in Africa must grapple.

The Internet may have saved me from perhaps years of wondering of who it was that I had failed to see.

Twenty years ago, even the Internet would not have helped – I Googled “£5 note” – 1,370,000,000 hits.  I wonder if amongst them there is the story of an old lady who gave a clergyman a fiver and wonders what he did with it?