I've Got Sixpence.

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Well I guess I'm not alone in this.

However I notice that the Bank of England has announced that £20 notes with the image of the beloved English composer Sir Edward Elgar will not be legal tender after June 30 this year.

Sir Edward, whose melodies have come to capture a certain type of Englishness, is to be pulped a mere 11 years after he had the honour of gracing the £20 note.

They were introduced in June 1999 along with a view of the west face of Worcester Cathedral.

Previous £20 notes have featured Michael Faraday, and before that William Shakespeare.

Michael Faraday, was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of the time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".

William Shakespeare managed 23 years in our wallets before he was discontinued from the £20 note.

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Edward Elgar was born in the small village of Lower Broadheath outside Worcester, England to William Elgar, a music dealer, and his wife Anne.

By the age of eight, he was taking piano and violin lessons, and would often listen to his father playing the organ at St. George's church, and soon also took it up. His prime interest, however, was the violin, and his first written music was for that instrument.

Surrounded by sheet music, instruments, and music textbooks in his father's shop in Worcester's High Street, the young Elgar became self-taught in music theory. On warm summer days, he would take scores into the countryside to study them

Thus there began for him a strong association between music and nature. As he was later to say, "There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require."

At the age of 15, Elgar had hoped to go to Leipzig, Germany to study music, but lacking the funds he instead left school and began working for a local solicitor. Around this time he made his first public appearances as a violinist and organist. After a few months, he left the solicitor and embarked on a musical career, giving piano and violin lessons, and working occasionally in his father's shop.

At 29, through his teaching, he met Caroline Alice Roberts who was eight years older than him. Alice became his wife three years later in May 1889, at Brompton Oratory.

Their only child, Carice Irene, was born at their home in Fulham on 14 August 1890. Carice is a contraction of her mother's names Caroline and Alice.

Now this music reflects my financial situation at the present time.

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Or should that read 'Six new pence'

It is a fitting tribute to science, music and literature that The Bank of England should choose these three outstanding gentlemen to feature on our £20 notes.

From July 1 2010, only notes with the image of Adam Smith, the Scottish economist, will be legal tender.

I wonder how many people know who this economist is, or have even heard of him?

Oh well. I suppose we have to be grateful it wasn’t Herman van Rumpy-Pumpy with “all the charisma of a damp rag“.

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