Thame Refused A Bank, Offers To Keep Money In A Drawer

"We have been told a banking hub is not viable, so the town has moved to the next available technology, which is a tin," said a woman who keeps a stall on Upper High Street, holding up a biscuit tin with the lid taped shut and the word TOWN written on it in marker. Under the arrangement she described, anybody in Thame who needs to deposit money puts it in the tin, and anybody who needs to withdraw money takes it out and says roughly how much, and the tin is then carried by whoever has an afternoon free.

The rota is kept in pencil, because the town has learned not to commit to anything in ink. Deposits are logged on the back of a receipt, the receipt lives in the tin, and the tin lives in a drawer in a shop, except on Tuesdays, when it is walked up and down the high street by a man in a waxed jacket who says the money benefits from the air. What happens if the drawer is locked and the man with the key is at the bonfire, your correspondent wanted to know. "Then it waits," he said. "Money is very patient. It has nowhere else to be."

There is talk of a second tin.