Rendering unto Caesar (5)

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!