This Is This

That thing yesterday with John Cusack wouldn’t happen anyway. In the US they have dollar bills and you can throw those things around a bit and look casual.

We got rid of our pound notes and replaced them with pound coins (NB Anglophobes: it’s also one of the smallest coins we have) so now nothing below five pounds folds. In the UK we have so much change on us that you can often pay for what you want and not have to stand around talking, which suits our reserved and suspicious nature. However, we do have the right to stew when we get too much change off someone so we can bitch about it later.

I also like to tease tourists (ooooh sitting here writing this and Lisa Loeb’s Miss You just came on the radio, remember that?) when they have too much change. They pull out fivers to pay for things to make life easier for them and by the end of every day they have on average three pounds of change on them (approx. two kilos).

The dollar is at about 1.6 to the pound, so a fiver is about 8 bucks. Now I don’t know about you, but if I was throwing around multiples of eight bucks around, I wouldn’t be all that carefree. Sticking four fivers on the corner pocket of a pool table is like betting the price of a decent lunch.

Tipping is a nightmare too. If someone carries your bag from the bus to the hotel room, it’s all a part of the service, but you want to leave them something. Two or three dollars ought to do it. Have a nice day.

In the UK, you’ve got to scramble around and it goes like this.

I’m not giving him five quid for taking my bag from the cab to the desk. Hmm, let’s see. I’ve got a pound coin. I can’t give him one little pound coin, it’s an underwhelming gesture. I’ll make it two. “Couple of quid.” It even sounds right. - Oh god. I don’t have another pound coin. There’s a fifty pence piece, and a twenty, and two tens. Now I’m throwing small change around?! That looks cheaper than not tipping. He’ll have to cup his hands like a beggar when I give it to him. Why don’t I buy him a sandwich while I’m at it…

By which time I’m looking to feign some kind of attack to just get into the hotel where my bags are. Because, erm, they’ve got my medicine in. Yeah. Pills, for my… leg. I need my leg pills.

Or we could just adopt the dollar as a currency. Or bring back pound notes. I’ll start some kind of Daily Mail reader campaign with a petition.

Right after I’ve thought it through.

Who’s with me, whatever it is we decide to do?

I have the sneaking suspicion that I may not be hardcore.

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“Avez vous du Sonny Rollins?” I said, pronouncing Sonny Rollins in an English accent, because that’s how you say Sonny Rollins.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 at 9:09 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or leave a comment yourself.