Someone once tried to explain the exchange rate mechanism to me. They were not, for reasons all on my part, entirely successful. But I do recall, just before I lost consciousness, apprehending the concept of all the former national currencies of the Euro zone remaining potentially in existence, albeit rigidly fixed in relation to each other. So they could live again, which would be nice since I have a painful quantity of guilders, pesetas, and francs (both Belgian and French) that I never got around to spending. I thought I'd be going back one day, and in all cases I did but by then they'd changed to the Euro.
The pound and the dollar float free of the Euro of course. They're heavily laden vessels, stuffed to the gunnels with consumer debt, which you'd think would be lighter than air, but evidently not, and they sit rather lower in the water now than they used to.
Let's take a moment to consider the plight of those young people abroad who have no locally generated income, but had until recent times been comfortably supported by the parental trust fund. Now Mummy's Money doesn't translate into nearly as many Euros as before, well, it's a shame. It would make for a moving painting: in oils, large format, big enough to occupy one wall of banqueting room, depicting a column of defeated hipsters and spoilt brats with assymetrical haircuts trudging through an airport departures hall: 'The Retreat From Fredrichshain'.
I wonder if Scotland still has pound notes. As if paper currency in such a minor key were not sufficiently disorientating, they were issued by more than one bank. Imagine if Barclays, or Fortis, or North Fork, or Caixa de Catalunya took it upon themselves to start printing their own money. It's an idea you can get used to without fully understanding the parameters, so when you get seven quid in change in a pub in Leith and all the notes are in different colours, apparently rendered in felt tip, from the Bank of Drumchapel, you don't think anything of it.
The general rule is that coins are for the small stuff and paper for the big stuff. Somewhere between is a tipping point, which is the level at which a sum is no longer terribly impressive as a tip. As inflation takes its toll, paperisation applies to higher numerical units. Sometimes, due to inertia or tradition, this is slow to take place. Another indicator can be deployed here: if you have a runny nose and no tissues, but money in your wallet, would you blow your nose, without great regret at the disposal, on the smallest unit of folding currency? As I type $1 = 51p. It would get costly during the hay fever season, but as a one-off solution to a mucus emergency, you could, couldn't you? Kleenex currency!
29 June 2008
26 June 2008
Rendering unto Caesar (4)
Cash machines are an improvement on their predecessor, which my parents were subject to. You had to go into the bank during office hours, which was practically impossible if you actually worked. Of course if you were unemployed then you got your money by fortnightly Giro, cashed at the post office whenever you liked, much easier. Once in the bank you'd write out a withdrawal slip, or something, I can't remember how ID worked. I think you needed your cheque book. God knows. Anyway, with cash machines it's just the PIN. Now I know other people are pinning all over the place with those little keypads in shops (honestly madam, you're in Smiths buying a Now magazine and a packet of low fat cheese and onion crisps, could you not possibly use coins? just this once?). But I only seem to get money out every couple of weeks and that's a long time with the state of my memory.
It's not so much that I forget my PIN, it's that sometimes I make the mistake of trying to remember it. I did this the other day, as I was on my way out of the office. Couldn't recall it at all, I was going to be stuck at the cashpoint with an empty head, and ultimately empty pockets. My only hope was that somehow in the next five minutes the number would just pop back into my mind. But then I bumped into a former colleague while passing through reception and we had a natter, and so I forgot that I had forgotten my PIN. I only remembered that I'd forgotten once I had the money in my hand, my fingers having automatically danced the keypad choreography for me. So that's how it works. Leave it to the extremities, they know what to do.
Once I was in Wrexham. Don't ask. Anyway, while I was there I made the mistake of choosing, just for fun, the Welsh language option on the screen. I just about got through the transaction, hitting keys based on the number of syllables in each word, or randomly. I had taken a course of refreshments during the afternoon, which may actually have helped. The next time I used a cashpoint, back in London, the machine assumed I had become Welsh, and gave me instructions accordingly. And there was no means of changing it back, or if there was it was in Welsh. I had to actually go into the branch and get them to change it for me - this was the Mortimer Street NatWest, which would be accustomed to wilful cosmopolitanism, but Welsh...? I haven't been in there since and I think that branch has closed now, which is a relief.
It's not so much that I forget my PIN, it's that sometimes I make the mistake of trying to remember it. I did this the other day, as I was on my way out of the office. Couldn't recall it at all, I was going to be stuck at the cashpoint with an empty head, and ultimately empty pockets. My only hope was that somehow in the next five minutes the number would just pop back into my mind. But then I bumped into a former colleague while passing through reception and we had a natter, and so I forgot that I had forgotten my PIN. I only remembered that I'd forgotten once I had the money in my hand, my fingers having automatically danced the keypad choreography for me. So that's how it works. Leave it to the extremities, they know what to do.
Once I was in Wrexham. Don't ask. Anyway, while I was there I made the mistake of choosing, just for fun, the Welsh language option on the screen. I just about got through the transaction, hitting keys based on the number of syllables in each word, or randomly. I had taken a course of refreshments during the afternoon, which may actually have helped. The next time I used a cashpoint, back in London, the machine assumed I had become Welsh, and gave me instructions accordingly. And there was no means of changing it back, or if there was it was in Welsh. I had to actually go into the branch and get them to change it for me - this was the Mortimer Street NatWest, which would be accustomed to wilful cosmopolitanism, but Welsh...? I haven't been in there since and I think that branch has closed now, which is a relief.
24 June 2008
Then she went clack-clack-clack "Lekker!" Filthy!
Digital cameras usually have a few MB of internal memory, just to tide you over, also very useful if you have to pull the SD card in a hurry because you think CRS/Guardia Civil are about grab your pointandshoot. I usually fill mine up with pictures of the telly, because the tragic lantern's surreal enough to begin with, but that goes twice if it's someone else's.
I had a landlord who was fascinated by the two dozen German channels on his Skum package who reckoned that half the stodgy discussion shows ended up with full-on HC. He must have seen one which cut away to such scenes, and had been watching them nightly for a good half-hour after his wife went to bed ever since, like an Inca waiting for another eclipse.
There certainly aren't as many interminable panel gab sessions as there used to be, but just enough to make you wonder at the strobing effect on those dreadful check jackets some of them still wear. The sheer unnatural variety of the audience: goths rousted out of their bedrooms sitting next to plump young couples from Saxony next to elderly ladies with pink streaks in their hair next to middle-aged men with daughters locked at home in their basements. Only something entirely compulsory or very popular can manage that kind of demographic spread. I'm going with the former, it must be a kind of jury service - the poor sods get a window envelope through the door that tells them they have to cancel that holiday in Antalya and do two weeks in the audience of Morgen-Dialektisch or whatever. Their only compensation being coffee made from ground roasted acorns.
The other programmes aren't much better. Scary hags doing people's horoscopes, ffs. Creepy adverts for subscriptions to GPS Handy tracking services. You can imagine the kind of sick freak who is going to sign his girlfriend's mobile up to that. Then there are the solarium bunnies doing the music video shows
I had a landlord who was fascinated by the two dozen German channels on his Skum package who reckoned that half the stodgy discussion shows ended up with full-on HC. He must have seen one which cut away to such scenes, and had been watching them nightly for a good half-hour after his wife went to bed ever since, like an Inca waiting for another eclipse.
There certainly aren't as many interminable panel gab sessions as there used to be, but just enough to make you wonder at the strobing effect on those dreadful check jackets some of them still wear. The sheer unnatural variety of the audience: goths rousted out of their bedrooms sitting next to plump young couples from Saxony next to elderly ladies with pink streaks in their hair next to middle-aged men with daughters locked at home in their basements. Only something entirely compulsory or very popular can manage that kind of demographic spread. I'm going with the former, it must be a kind of jury service - the poor sods get a window envelope through the door that tells them they have to cancel that holiday in Antalya and do two weeks in the audience of Morgen-Dialektisch or whatever. Their only compensation being coffee made from ground roasted acorns.
The other programmes aren't much better. Scary hags doing people's horoscopes, ffs. Creepy adverts for subscriptions to GPS Handy tracking services. You can imagine the kind of sick freak who is going to sign his girlfriend's mobile up to that. Then there are the solarium bunnies doing the music video shows
23 June 2008
Rendering unto Caesar (3)
Celebrities or politicians used to be asked if they knew the price of a pint of milk or a loaf of bread. I don't think they do it any more, probably because milk now comes in numerous different varieties and sizes. Even with added omega 3, which I thought came from fish - can you imagine a sardine milkshake? Perhaps this is popular in Portugal. And as for bread, I remember when there was just Homepride, which was plasticky and stuck to your teeth, also available in brown (same taste and consistency, just a different colour).
Anyway, they asked them that question to see how out of touch they were, since they wouldn't be doing their own shopping. I always do my own, of course I do, myself, on foot, and I pay in cash. Usually I buy a bit less than twenty quid's worth, because that's what I've got on me. I never Switch it. Which means I should know how much everything costs, because I'm keeping a running tally on the way to the checkout so as not to end up embarrassingly over cash in pocket. But I'm b------d if I can remember how much milk costs. Or eggs, they reckon they've gone up by a third in the last however long, can't say I noticed. I always get the extra large ones, if it didn't make the hen's eyes water on the way out then it's not worth cracking open.
So there's meant to be lots of inflation, but its passed me by. Beer's been costing silly money since a couple of years after I started going to pubs, so no change there. Cinema tickets are through the roof, but that's just a zone 1 thing. If you go to the UCI in Beckton you can get two seats for a double bill of, with popcorn and a Westler's hot dog thrown in, for about four shillings and thrupence-ha'penny. Or at least that's what I've heard. Most of my books come from second-hand places where you find the out of print stuff, so that's cheap. I don't think I buy much else, except for coffee beans. Clothes, they're all made in the sort of places Blue Peter used to tell us to send garments to not so long ago, so I'm glad that's sorted out. You can get a cotton shirt with genuine blood from a nine year old stitcher's mangled fingers in the seams, for about £1.75, world trade, eh, can't beat it.
Anyway, they asked them that question to see how out of touch they were, since they wouldn't be doing their own shopping. I always do my own, of course I do, myself, on foot, and I pay in cash. Usually I buy a bit less than twenty quid's worth, because that's what I've got on me. I never Switch it. Which means I should know how much everything costs, because I'm keeping a running tally on the way to the checkout so as not to end up embarrassingly over cash in pocket. But I'm b------d if I can remember how much milk costs. Or eggs, they reckon they've gone up by a third in the last however long, can't say I noticed. I always get the extra large ones, if it didn't make the hen's eyes water on the way out then it's not worth cracking open.
So there's meant to be lots of inflation, but its passed me by. Beer's been costing silly money since a couple of years after I started going to pubs, so no change there. Cinema tickets are through the roof, but that's just a zone 1 thing. If you go to the UCI in Beckton you can get two seats for a double bill of, with popcorn and a Westler's hot dog thrown in, for about four shillings and thrupence-ha'penny. Or at least that's what I've heard. Most of my books come from second-hand places where you find the out of print stuff, so that's cheap. I don't think I buy much else, except for coffee beans. Clothes, they're all made in the sort of places Blue Peter used to tell us to send garments to not so long ago, so I'm glad that's sorted out. You can get a cotton shirt with genuine blood from a nine year old stitcher's mangled fingers in the seams, for about £1.75, world trade, eh, can't beat it.
19 June 2008
Rendering unto Caesar (2)
Some years ago I lived near a charity shop with a collecting box outside, shaped like a curved funnel. You'd put your coins through a slot in the perspex lid, and they'd roll around the funnel in ever decreasing and accelerating circles! There was more than one slot, so you could send two coins around at once!! This provided literally minutes of fun for my then girlfriend and I. This was emblematic of the intense hedonism and senseless spending that characterised our relationship, but you burn out after a while, it's inevitable. By the end we were little more than charred husks. However it did get rid of surplus coins.
I read somewhere that penny and tupp'ny coins are now worth more as scrap metal than currency. So perhaps the rag and bone man might take away the four Pringles tubes full of them which are threatening the stability of the floor in the corner of my kitchen. Of course if it's possible to gradually collect these things through purchases, then it's possible to get rid of them in the same process, by handing over Exactly The Right Money. But that's far more mentally challenging and socially awkward than it is, in a very literal sense, worth.
First of all you have to carry the shrapnel about with you, giving your trouser pockets that end-of-the-evening feel, but without the associated pleasant alcoholic haze. Then you have to work out, in your hand, on the spot, at the time, Exactly The Right Money - I'm neither good with figures nor particularly dextrous, so this takes ages. Which is all very touching when a poverty-stricken geriatric is doing it insanesbury's but can hardly be indulged by the queue to the rear of a comparatively young adult. Then, having given them Exactly The Right Money you have to hover for a moment to check they concur with your estimate, which is a real moment of discomfort, I can tell you.
Now it's not just the coppers, I can't seem to shift the silver either. Fivepences were long since impossible, but I've been passively collecting ten and twenty pees for years now. That's more Pringles tubes, the requirement for which as storage for coins outstrips my own consumption of the original contents.
Not that I'm looking for sympathy. The real victims of excessive coinage are crack and smack dealers in the West End. Beacuse their customers raise almost all their funds through begging, and because donations generally arrive in pounds and fifty pees, that's what they end up with in their pockets. Even a fairly stout Avirex jacket can be pulled out of shape by a couple of hundred quid's worth of coinage stowed in the pockets. They have to go to the local banks several times a day to change all that metal into paper.
So in future the lunch hour Lady Bountifuls and One-Day-Travelcard philanthropists upon whom the Seven Dials and district narco economy ultimately relies should make it a fiver or a tenner. Or set up a direct debit. It's the least they can do.
I read somewhere that penny and tupp'ny coins are now worth more as scrap metal than currency. So perhaps the rag and bone man might take away the four Pringles tubes full of them which are threatening the stability of the floor in the corner of my kitchen. Of course if it's possible to gradually collect these things through purchases, then it's possible to get rid of them in the same process, by handing over Exactly The Right Money. But that's far more mentally challenging and socially awkward than it is, in a very literal sense, worth.
First of all you have to carry the shrapnel about with you, giving your trouser pockets that end-of-the-evening feel, but without the associated pleasant alcoholic haze. Then you have to work out, in your hand, on the spot, at the time, Exactly The Right Money - I'm neither good with figures nor particularly dextrous, so this takes ages. Which is all very touching when a poverty-stricken geriatric is doing it insanesbury's but can hardly be indulged by the queue to the rear of a comparatively young adult. Then, having given them Exactly The Right Money you have to hover for a moment to check they concur with your estimate, which is a real moment of discomfort, I can tell you.
Now it's not just the coppers, I can't seem to shift the silver either. Fivepences were long since impossible, but I've been passively collecting ten and twenty pees for years now. That's more Pringles tubes, the requirement for which as storage for coins outstrips my own consumption of the original contents.
Not that I'm looking for sympathy. The real victims of excessive coinage are crack and smack dealers in the West End. Beacuse their customers raise almost all their funds through begging, and because donations generally arrive in pounds and fifty pees, that's what they end up with in their pockets. Even a fairly stout Avirex jacket can be pulled out of shape by a couple of hundred quid's worth of coinage stowed in the pockets. They have to go to the local banks several times a day to change all that metal into paper.
So in future the lunch hour Lady Bountifuls and One-Day-Travelcard philanthropists upon whom the Seven Dials and district narco economy ultimately relies should make it a fiver or a tenner. Or set up a direct debit. It's the least they can do.
17 June 2008
Rendering unto Caesar (1)
Another version of this post was accompanied by pictures of unaccompanied banknotes I've encountered in public places, not exactly evidence - I could have just put the notes on the pavement myself and then photographed them in an attempt to prove to a thoroughly pointless point. You'll just have to take my word that it's naturally occuring currency. It doesn't matter anyay, and it's not mattering on the internet, so that's inconsequence squared or something.
The pointless point is that I'm intermittently assailed by money. Not stacks of it, just low denomination notes, usually singular, skittering across my path like freshly fallen leaves. Once, borne by the breeze, a crisply folded twenty came sliding up to me across Baker Street when the lights were on red, then changed direction to accompany me as I crossed the street. Abroad, when I've got my eyes open a bit wider, there's even more of it. On Vasagatan at least five ett hundra kronor notes and possibly a till receipt, all curled up, and they were still there when I passed again ten minutes later, as if only I could see them. On a Saturday morning. And as you can see above, fünf oyro all over D'land. It keeps happening, and no-one else I know seems to suffer from it.
For context:
A very good friend of mine originates from one of those countries in which it is evidently not considered indecent to enquire after another person's salary level, and resides in another nation where ditto clearly pertains. On being told, in response to close questioning, how much I earn, she cried out (I recall this verbatim, it was priceless) 'How do you live?!', sprang for her laptop and fed the figure through a currency calculator to estimate the true scale of my penury. Even allowing for the gigglesome £/$ exchange rate I was still considered a financial derelict. Since it remains the case that the part of the train or plane I travel in is dictated by whether or not I'm paying, it's fair to say I'm of modest means.
But. I can't claim to be as poor as all that. Here's a useful perspective - wouldn't it be slightly despicable for someone who does most of his food shopping at Marks or Waiters to be picking someone else's cash up off the pavement? Even if it's highly unlikely that the rightful owner will return to retrieve it, surely this stuff should waiting there for someone who actually needs it - for their next meal, or for the train fare to see a loved one, or maybe just a nice big pipe of crack? So, whoever's in charge of doling out the random dosh, pushing it all my way is inappropriate, no?
Back to the evidence above, I resolved a few years ago to take a snap of each incident of loose currency, but often conditions aren't ideal for getting the photo. For instance I couldn't get the fascinating Middle-Eastern origin banknote by the barriers at Edg Rd tube the other night because of low light. If surroundings are crowded it just leads to awkward questions, such as from the bloke who followed me up Charlotte St with a tenner I'd just captured on the memory card: "You've left this behind." "Cheers, it was there already, I just wanted a photo of it." "Yeah, but don't you want it?" "No, ta, it's not mine, just free money, anybody's eh?" [or something - I really didn't know what to say] Thing is, I can't be the only one this happens to: I reckon he didn't want it either. It probably happens to him too.
The pointless point is that I'm intermittently assailed by money. Not stacks of it, just low denomination notes, usually singular, skittering across my path like freshly fallen leaves. Once, borne by the breeze, a crisply folded twenty came sliding up to me across Baker Street when the lights were on red, then changed direction to accompany me as I crossed the street. Abroad, when I've got my eyes open a bit wider, there's even more of it. On Vasagatan at least five ett hundra kronor notes and possibly a till receipt, all curled up, and they were still there when I passed again ten minutes later, as if only I could see them. On a Saturday morning. And as you can see above, fünf oyro all over D'land. It keeps happening, and no-one else I know seems to suffer from it.
For context:
A very good friend of mine originates from one of those countries in which it is evidently not considered indecent to enquire after another person's salary level, and resides in another nation where ditto clearly pertains. On being told, in response to close questioning, how much I earn, she cried out (I recall this verbatim, it was priceless) 'How do you live?!', sprang for her laptop and fed the figure through a currency calculator to estimate the true scale of my penury. Even allowing for the gigglesome £/$ exchange rate I was still considered a financial derelict. Since it remains the case that the part of the train or plane I travel in is dictated by whether or not I'm paying, it's fair to say I'm of modest means.
But. I can't claim to be as poor as all that. Here's a useful perspective - wouldn't it be slightly despicable for someone who does most of his food shopping at Marks or Waiters to be picking someone else's cash up off the pavement? Even if it's highly unlikely that the rightful owner will return to retrieve it, surely this stuff should waiting there for someone who actually needs it - for their next meal, or for the train fare to see a loved one, or maybe just a nice big pipe of crack? So, whoever's in charge of doling out the random dosh, pushing it all my way is inappropriate, no?
Back to the evidence above, I resolved a few years ago to take a snap of each incident of loose currency, but often conditions aren't ideal for getting the photo. For instance I couldn't get the fascinating Middle-Eastern origin banknote by the barriers at Edg Rd tube the other night because of low light. If surroundings are crowded it just leads to awkward questions, such as from the bloke who followed me up Charlotte St with a tenner I'd just captured on the memory card: "You've left this behind." "Cheers, it was there already, I just wanted a photo of it." "Yeah, but don't you want it?" "No, ta, it's not mine, just free money, anybody's eh?" [or something - I really didn't know what to say] Thing is, I can't be the only one this happens to: I reckon he didn't want it either. It probably happens to him too.
13 June 2008
Portland Place ASBO Crew
Every morning at nine Eddie Mair has to run up to James Naughtie and John Humphrys and towel the sweat off their torsoes as they leave the Today studio. Then he has to wring the phlegm out of their foam microphone shields, without gloves. He's their fag and he has to wear scratchy grey shorts. For the rest of the day he fetches and carries for them while they make disparaging comments about him: "Hurry up bursary boy", "Are you really the future of radio news broadcasting? You'll never get on Today, we even let Sarah Montague co-present and she's a Girl' 'And Evan Davis and he's a Gay' 'we only let you work in News because our dads say we've got to be nice to you, otherwise you'd be with all the other oiks at Radio Five', 'Yeah, one word from us and you'd be going to Manchester with all the other white socks'. Sometimes they get together with Robert Robinson and play the Soggy Biscuit Game together - the difference being that it's boy Mair who has to eat the marinated McVitie, just before he goes on air at teatime.
It isn't only young Eddie that gets it. J and J are always beating up the You and Yours team in the corridors, they can get a lot of punches and kicks in the five minutes before the World at One. Then they sneak into Martha Kearney's empty office and sniff her cycle shorts, etc. They're pretty much out of control: just in the last week they swapped Peter White's guide dog for a dead sheep, threw Andrew Marr's briefcase on top of a bus shelter, and set fire to Melvyn Bragg's hair in seventeen different places. They bully Mark Lawson something chronic, they don't hit him, but just say: 'Mariella Frostrup, she's your mum', and he always bursts into tears. Those drawings of Sue MacGregor on the wall of the third floor gents were definitely Humphrys' doing, as he got pastels for Christmas and only he would reference Courbet's 'L'Origine du Monde' like that. And the one in pencil of Kate Adie above the urinal, you can tell from the cross-hatch shading under her left one that it's Naughtie's work. Everyone knows it was them who vandalised Nicolas Parsons that time. All the From Our Own Correspondent journalists are broadcasters who willingly took a posting in countries that smell awful just to get away from them. They wouldn't be getting away with it if Brian Redhead was still in charge...
It isn't only young Eddie that gets it. J and J are always beating up the You and Yours team in the corridors, they can get a lot of punches and kicks in the five minutes before the World at One. Then they sneak into Martha Kearney's empty office and sniff her cycle shorts, etc. They're pretty much out of control: just in the last week they swapped Peter White's guide dog for a dead sheep, threw Andrew Marr's briefcase on top of a bus shelter, and set fire to Melvyn Bragg's hair in seventeen different places. They bully Mark Lawson something chronic, they don't hit him, but just say: 'Mariella Frostrup, she's your mum', and he always bursts into tears. Those drawings of Sue MacGregor on the wall of the third floor gents were definitely Humphrys' doing, as he got pastels for Christmas and only he would reference Courbet's 'L'Origine du Monde' like that. And the one in pencil of Kate Adie above the urinal, you can tell from the cross-hatch shading under her left one that it's Naughtie's work. Everyone knows it was them who vandalised Nicolas Parsons that time. All the From Our Own Correspondent journalists are broadcasters who willingly took a posting in countries that smell awful just to get away from them. They wouldn't be getting away with it if Brian Redhead was still in charge...
11 June 2008
Radio 4 Cage Fighting
Children are vicious creatures - give them too much access to nature and inevitably they end up putting diverse insects in a glass jar to see if they'll fight.
It's in the same spirit that this occured to me today: if you put Jenni Murray and Libby Purves alone in a studio together, would it kick off? I reckon it would. It couldn't not.
They'd start off all Jenni being jolly and Libby being vivacious, but pretty soon, well within the standard twenty-four minute segment, the mask of professionalism would slip and it's titan versus titan, no rules, just total hardcore fighting. Seen from the producer's side of the glass partition it would just be a wall of red. Then the victor would stagger out into the corridor, waving a limb wrenched from the corpse of the vanquished.
It's in the same spirit that this occured to me today: if you put Jenni Murray and Libby Purves alone in a studio together, would it kick off? I reckon it would. It couldn't not.
They'd start off all Jenni being jolly and Libby being vivacious, but pretty soon, well within the standard twenty-four minute segment, the mask of professionalism would slip and it's titan versus titan, no rules, just total hardcore fighting. Seen from the producer's side of the glass partition it would just be a wall of red. Then the victor would stagger out into the corridor, waving a limb wrenched from the corpse of the vanquished.
06 June 2008
'Jules et Jim', Francois Truffaut, 1961
A film, like a book, has in some way succeeded if it gets you worked up about the fate and the actions of the characters - even (or especially) if you suspect that director and author have sympathies contrary to your own. For my money, with 'Jules et Jim' Francois Truffaut and Henri-Pierre Roché did both.
In Roché's 1953 novel Jim and Jules' friendship is a delight. A celebration of male companionship, at one point separated by war but meant always to be in some way together. We don't see many portrayals of such relationships now. Truffaut's 1961 film is true to this, their togetherness charming and real. This is a doomed idyll.
In neither version is Catherine a femme fatale or ogress. No lazy caricature or misogynist's cipher. Thoroughly human, but more difficult to reach than either of the men. Their love for her, prompted by her likeness to a certain Greek sculpture, is inexplicable and sometimes you have to take the author's word. Her indulgences and unhappiness, the acting out, the infantile revenges - yes, it's freedom, and oh how they lived, but look at the cost: Jules and Jim forever parted and two lives cut short, decades of experience and enjoyment that will never take place.
But, and I think Truffaut manages this better in his film than Roché in his book, there's no blame to be attributed and grudgingly I'd agree: the actions of the characters couldn't be reined in without constricting their vitality, and no-one can be called to account for living.
Perhaps it's a French thing, this impetuous emotion-to-action, the respect for passion. Possibly also you have to be able to relate to Catherine, and some people can. But I'd be wary of getting into a car with them.
'Jules et Jim', in a restored (if dark) print, is on at the NFT all the way through June, and given the weather there are no excuses for not seeing it.
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