In Edinburgh yesterday I used a cashpoint [ATM] at a bank . On arriving home in Newmarket I had to go straightway to another bank to get the cash to buy anything yet I still had the cash from yesterday. Why ?

The Scottish pound had a picture of Alex Salmond on it? And so no one would accept it, just out of spite?

Because it had been so long since a Scotsman had tried to take money out of his bank account, that the currency inside was no longer legal tender, even in Scotland?

Scots money isn't accepted at all English stores?

Three Scottish banks, The Clydesdale Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland issue their own banknotes.Each bank has its own designs for them. These are accepted all over Scotland and generally taken in the northernmost parts of England and in big London department stores. Unfortunately many English shops, pubs and small businesses will not accept them. The reason normally given is that the staff are unfamiliar with the designs and do not know how to spot a forgery or whether the note is still valid and in circulation.

So, returning with a wad of Scottish notes I had to go to a bank in a village near here to get them replaced by English notes. The local pub and corner shop would not accept them.

It is sometimes said that the notes are not legal tender under Scots law. This is strictly true but only because a banknote is a promissory note, a promise to pay the bearer, on demand, a named sum of money. It's treated as as good as coin because the general public assumes that the Bank issuing the note is good in the sum named on it.

Years, nay, decades ago, I remember a Scotsman trying to pay for something in Carlisle's largest department store with a £100 note. No one believed that such a thing existed (in England the maximum value note is £50) and as it was close on six o'clock the banks were all shuut and the staff couldn't check. Carlisle, for the uninitiated, is but a few short miles from the Scottich border,and the Scotsman was (justifiably) irate. Even the one-pound notes were disliked up there in the old days. As soon as you wee given one in your change you would pass it on a.s.a.p. Nothing new under the sun?!