I WAS accidentally flicking through a copy of a Durham newspaper from exactly 150 years ago this week when my eye was caught by a story that told in a guffawing tone about a couple of brothers who were so far behind the times that they didn’t recognise a valuable banknote.

It reminded me that in my wallet I had a strange banknote that I had kept for further study after receiving it at a Christmas market at Raby Castle.

Back at the start of 1867, James Brooksbank had withdrawn £50 from the Durham Savings Bank but by the time he had got home, the Bank of England notes had tumbled out of his trousers. A diligent police search found nothing; a bellman was sent round the city appealing, but to no avail, so a handbill was printed and posted in shop windows.

"A young man named Archibald Lumsden, a native of Sunderland, at present lodging in Claypath came forward and stated that he had found "some things" which he believed they call notes," said the Durham Advertiser. "He picked them up in the Market Place and being entirely ignorant of their worth, he had trampled one under his foot, two others he had put on the fire, two he had given to his brother, and the remainder he had lighted his pipe with, and all that remained was a portion of one of the £10 notes which fortunately contained the number.”

A policeman hurried to Sunderland, and found the other Lumsden had thrown the strange paper on the fire.

The Bank of England had issued its first £5 note in 1793. “It will scarcely be credited that in the present day, people could be found in this country who have no knowledge of the nature of a banknote,” said the Advertiser, but this story would “quite dissipate the notion that every adult person is well acquainted with the value of bankers’ money”.

So I pulled the strange currency from my wallet. Its bluey hue gave it away as a polymer fiver. The Bank of England’s new note has the Queen staring from one side and the equally recognisable Winston Churchill peering from the plastic of the other and saying: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

My strange fiver was, of course, from north of the border, issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Queen had been replaced by a woman I had never heard of – Nan Shepherd – and Churchill’s place had been taken by a couple of fish.

A quick google and I learned that Ms Shepherd was an Aberdeen poet who wrote about the Cairngorms until her death in 1984. Her feminine approach to the mountains – she walked into them to be at one with them unlike male writers who boasting about climbing and conquering them – has only recently become popular, and the note contains her tantalising quote: “It’s a grand thing to get leave to live.”

The fish – mackerel – also represent Scotland’s nature along with a touch of humour: a hidden squashed midge.

I wonder if the differences between the notes tell us much about the two countries: one wedded to old institutions and familiar faces, and the other is searching for a quirky, modern identity. Do you think England would ever have an unknown 20th Century female poet on her banknotes – it was a big enough battle to get Jane Austen on the forthcoming £10?