36 & 37. Convert shrapnel mountain and give 50% away

This was harder than it should have been.

Not since 1998 have I cashed in my mountain of coppers and silver which means I've dragged piles from house to house - four major moves, by my calculation.

But for anyone else wishing to trade in their loose change, my advice is to be aware of how the banking industry works before spending about six hours coppering up. Apparently it all needs to be contained in their special bags and there's a limit on how many each branch will change in a single day.

Having put all my coppers in big bags, I didn't fancy spending another day breaking them down. So off to the commercial money-guzzler at a local supermarket, which takes a modest cut for counting your cash.

If the machine is to be believed, I fed it 599 five pence pieces, 1,120 tuppences and 2081 pennies, amounting to £73.16. When you consider how much metal that is, you'll appreciate that the physical effort involved in getting it there by public transport was not inconsiderable.

After the sugar money for the machine (£5.78 - could have been worse, could have been better, but that's the price one pays for poor planning and convenience), I took home £67.38.

Thirty-five quid of this promptly went to Unicef's East African famine appeal. I had been meaning to donate to the international Niger effort last summer but that appeal appears to be winding down, so Kenya and the Horn assuage my guilt a little, and I can cross two things off the list at once.