Can I afford a peppercorn?

one peppercorn, originally uploaded by benaston.

I was amused today to find out that the annual rent of our flat-to-be is the princely sum of ‘one peppercorn’.

Yowza. This must be good news – at the moment we pay £10 rent a year for our lease, I began to wonder – how expensive can peppercorns be these days? Do they have to be wrapped in gold foil to count as payment?

My search led me to Wikipedia, the home of all half-truths. It was then I discovered that a peppercorn is just a token payment called a peppercorn to be a bit more discreet. I’m not entirely convinced of this discretion. Why not just fix the rent as ‘One Red Herring’?

Education. Education. Education.