Real money
Grandad July 4th, 2011
Back when I was a lad, currency was simple.
Coinage consisted of the farthing, ha’penny, penny, thruppeny bit, sixpence [or a tanner], shilling, florin and half crown. There were notes for ten shillings, a pound, a fiver and the rest upwards were rarely seen unless you worked in a bank.
The relationship between the pennies, the shillings and the pound was very simple too. There were twelve pennies to the shilling and there were twenty shillings to the pound. It couldn’t be easier. Any child could, and did cope with it on a daily basis.
In fact it was all so simple we tried to make it a little more difficult by using English currency at the same time. They used the same denominations but slightly different shaped coinage. One thing that did piss me off was that the Irish were literate enough to use both coinage systems, but the British weren’t and would rudely refuse the Irish versions. That was enough to convince a young lad that the Irish were far more intelligent than the British, but that’s another story. Heh!
Then back in the early seventies, they fucked the whole thing up by introducing decimalisation. It was sad seeing a tradition being killed off in the name of dumbing down but there it was. We had to cope with a new range of coinage.
That changeover wasn’t too bad and within weeks we were all used to the new coins and the over-simplified conversion of a hundred pennies to the pound. Slapping down the correct price of a pint was no problem whatsoever.
Ten years ago we changed to the Euro.
I don’t know what it is about the Euro but I fucking hate it. After ten years I still can’t get the hang of those fucking coins. They are small, fiddly and a pain in the fucking hole. Every time I have to pay for something I find myself twiddling coins to see what number is stamped on the back. The coins are too small and there isn’t enough difference in size. Fucking Mickey Mouse money I call it.
The sooner that fucking Euro implodes the better.
Then we can get back to the good old pounds, shillings and pence.
Real money.
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