People don’t want dollars anymore… They want euro… Not bad for a fledgling currency…

In my student days I took a holiday job in a building which, as my mother accurately described, ‘would have looked out of place anywhere.’ Looking like one shoe box perched on top of another this example of post war British architecture was a pub in Downend, where it singularly failed to match the splendour of that Bristol suburb’s most famous son, Dr W G Grace.

Although I have forgotten the name of the pub I remember other things quite well considering that it was thirty five years ago that I pulled my last pint. I remember, for instance, the guy who came in on the dot of six o’clock each day and stood solidly and silently at the bar while knocking back four pints of Double Diamond in quick succession. I used to wonder what it was about his evenings that required such a beery foundation.

I remember the landlord Fred Press and his charm-free wife Esme, who somehow gave rise to a joke amongst the bar staff that if they ever formed a pop group it would be called ‘Freddy Press and the Esmenites.’

I remember the dancing on a Saturday night, which took place in another large shoe box behind the pub. The regulars would put on a suit and tie, their wives would put on a six inch layer of make-up and drink snow-balls, and by eleven o’clock they would all be can-canning around the hall to musical accompaniment provided by a chinless little man who played the electric organ and drummer Johnny Johnson, a brylcreemed specimen who claimed to have come from Hawaii but clammed up pretty fast if asked about anywhere west of the Severn Bridge.

I worked there one summer, trying to earn enough money to buy a motor bike. Some of the patrons took a holiday at that time and on return talked only about what appeared to be their sole interest in life. Beer.

‘Yes, the little woman and I went down to Devon,’ one would say. ’Found a little pub that served a nice drop of Ilmington’s Best. Yourself?

‘Oh, we were in Yorkshire. Hatterthwaite’s Mild. Lovely head on it. Very creamy.’

And they would pause silently for a moment and recall those sweet flavours.

Euro in the Indian Ocean

Well I have just come back from holiday myself but not having had even a thimbleful of beer on the islands of Mahe and Praslin I am in no position to inform you of the merits of SeyBrew lager, the tipplers’ choice in the Seychelles.

I could tell you a bit about beaches and palm trees and warm seas and delicious fish dinners, but on this wet Monday in Britain you would probably rather not hear. So instead I will tell you something about international currencies.

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Before setting off to the Seychelles I asked my travel agent about currency. ‘Don’t bother to take the Seychellois Rupee,’ I was told. ‘Take euro.’ This surprised me. I don’t think I have ever been to a country before where the local currency is apparently not the currency of choice.Anyway on the first day of my holiday I met Patrick. Patrick was a big man who hung around the hotel trying to hire cars. I thought he would rip me off as soon as look at me, but he seemed like a nice guy and I needed a car. So I rented one from him and as I was filling out the form I heard him whisper, ‘You want rupees? I give you fourteen.’ I looked up. ’I give you fourteen rupees,’ he repeated. ’I give you seven hundred for fifty euro. The hotel will only give you twelve.’ That much was true, so Patrick left me with the car keys and seven hundred rupee.I felt quite pleased with my black market dealing until I came to fill the car with petrol. As the attendant filled the tank, I heard him mutter ‘You got euro? I give you seventeen.’ I blinked. ‘Seventeen,’ he insisted. ‘For fifty euro I give you eight hundred and fifty rupees.’Despite the dawning that Patrick had indeed pulled a fast one over me, I was quite pleased with this latest acquisition of rupees. Pleased, that is, until I tried to spend them. The restaurants all want euro. The tourist attractions, such as they are, all price their tickets in euro. The hotel was adamant that ‘all bills must be settled in euro.’So my wife ended up spending all the rupees in the little general store. She has bought more Seychelles tea than we will ever know what to do with, and numerous bottles of coconut oil which she is, I believe, intending to rub into her skin.

As for me, I have learned that the world wants euro. Not dollars which I am sure would have been the choice twenty years ago. But they want a currency that did not even exist until ten years ago. I find that a rather impressive vote of confidence in the euro. And I think it tells me more about the likely direction of currencies in the next few months and years than anything I am likely to hear from the economics profession.

Regards,

Tom Bulford
for The Penny Sleuth

Source: Beer, Beaches and the Euro