Chasing pennies

I have always thought of myself as a man with an open heart and a sober mind who can find deep joy in the chase for pennies.
From my earliest years, the glistening sight of jewellery excited my childish eyes. The crinkle of notes or the clinks of my father counting his coins was enough to send me to sleep amid the most fabulous dreams of laden riches.
Growing up, my father instructed me in the ways of book-keeping from an early age. He would pay me a meagre wage for the task of looking after the family’s accounts, which he would then check over, quite laboriously, as though it were a vital examination at school.
Of course, he was teaching me the fine art of accounting, a charming life skill to have at one’s disposal. I thank him now for the effort he put in to me, just a child. The very real effort he put in as a father.
These efforts, I hope, he would feel have been rewarding. He cannot tell me this, for he lies six feet below the ground, but any can see the rewards have been great. I’m sure he would have felt a great pride, or at least a sense of satisfaction in what he has created in me.
Not long ago, my book-keeping enterprise reached new heights. I no longer have to be the man who works through the night to balance his client’s monies. Others do that now. Trusted employees; fine men.
One cannot be seen, as the principal of a respected firm of accountants, to be doing the work of a mere book-keeper. My society, my learned friends and colleagues, the peak of Manchester’s political echelons; they would not lend me the same respect I command now.
And yet, I miss the chase.
The chase, let me explain, is something I see as eternal. Oh yes, you may find the missing monies, you may locate that lone numeral that had somehow eluded your imprecise eyes, but the chase does not end there. The chase goes on because trade never ceases, so money never sleeps. Accounts constantly writhe, thrusting capital forth or gladly accepting an injection of funds within it.
And this, all this, it fills my mind, so that I find it hard to speak of much else. When I attend my dinners and gay social dances, I find the conversation difficult to hear. The swollen words of the princes and oligarchs of this growing industrial city have no room in a mind that favours the simplicity and absolute beauty of numeric perfection.
So I tend to sneak back, back to the firm’s apartments on Moorgate Place, back to the old counting house. I’ll light the lamp, take a chair, and pore over the pages, the ledgers, the statements and receipts.
These are my children, these great books of ours, these are my pride and my joy. I’ll stay here, until first light, chasing pennies ‘til I sleep.
I’ll stay here, gladly, and hope I wake before the clerks find me, in the morning.

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If you enjoyed reading the tale, try this one: Skimming the mire.