Can't Buy Me Love

During the Easter holidays, we took the kids bowling on base.

Bowling is not cheap anymore, is it? I found myself echoing my grandmother, "When I was young, bowling was only 50¢ per game and my shoes were free!".
I was totally making it up, I can't remember how much I used to pay to bowl, but I do remember doing random yard clean up jobs to get the 25¢ required for an afternoon swim in the city pool.

Anyway, everything is now electronic at the bowling alley.

Turkeys run across the score screen (why don't we keep score manually anymore? Kids already don't know how to read a clock, but now we're taking away the opportunity to do math in a fun setting?), music plays at high volume over tinny speakers as disco lights flash.

It was in that setting that my youngest son, (nearly 7) asked, "Mum, what was that...uh, ...that...uh...thing with the bird on it?"

"The what?" I ask while looking around at all of the possibilities.

He stutters through the question again, clearly unable to pull the word free from his mouth that best described his object, "The....uh, it had a bird on it" and points to the counter that is now empty.

I realized then that he was referring to my change that had been sitting on the counter (what little of it was left after four shoe rentals, slushies and a few games). I had slipped it into my pocket before the oldest got any bright ideas with a candy machine staring him down...

The poor little boy wanted to me to tell him the name for the coin with a bird on it...




a quarter.




How sad is that? He has no idea what this coin is, poor little American boy growing up in Great Britain.



When I was little, the Tooth Fairy would leave me a quarter for my tooth... what's this kid getting?

Pound coins.



I'm not that sad for him anymore.

Weights and Measurements or Extra Baggage

Can you humor me for a moment please?
Grab your wallet, purse, handbag, coin purse-- whatever it is you carry daily to get you through the day when you're out and about.

Open it.

You're not opening it. You never even got out of your chair... come on....
Look over the amount of money you're carrying with you today.


Exchange all of those bills into coins.



Now you're ready to come to England.

One of the things an American has to get used to here, is the need to carry cash. Very few places will accept cheques-- and that's usually only local places. So, forget driving to Nottinghamshire with that slim, hardly-takes-up-any-space cheque book, because the cashier will look at you as if you were daft for even bringing it.
I have a debit and a credit card, but they're not always accepted. The U.K. has nearly completed the switch to credit cards with chips in them (mine don't have them), so even carrying a card is sometimes pointless.
So, one must carry cold hard cash.

Correction:
Cold, heavy cash.

In a country as old as England, you'd expect that the kinks would be worked out in most matters. But for some reason, no one has seemed to notice-- in all of these years after the end of Roman rule -- that the currency here is heavy. Weigh-your-right-shoulder-down-so-you-look-like-Quasimodo heavy.

There are SIX coins (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p) before you even get to a pound-- and that's a coin as well. Then there is a TWO-pound coin. So in total, there are EIGHT coins before you ever get to a paper bill, and that's a "fiver"or a five pound note.

Next is a ten pound note, and following that is the £20, £50, and the ever-elusive £100 (never had the need to carry one of those. If I were to drop it, there goes approximately $200.00 in one clumsy move-- kind of like Las Vegas).

To really throw a monkey into the cake, most shops prefer you to pay with £20 pound notes or less (and smaller shops request smaller currency).
So if you were traveling, and knew you'd be paying for lodging, meals, train fare and or cabs-- you would be carrying a suitcase of £10 notes and a rolling cart of £1 coins.


A couple of days ago, after carrying a sleeping baby to her room with all of the grace I could muster in a coat clanging against every door jamb, I decided I needed to get the money out of the pockets.

That pile of coins at the top of this post was in my jacket pockets. Even some U.S. coins hitched a ride.

Yes, I could've exchanged most of it for notes-- save your eyes trying to calculate it.

But I prefer to carry as little paper money as possible. You see, I still haven't gotten past the "monopoly money" stage. I have a little blue bill and a bigger orange bill and I'll hand them over to any pimply-faced teenager behind a counter without any hesitation.
"£10 for 3 sandwiches? Great, and here's a cute little blue note (£5) for you to add three tiny drinks on there too please".

$30.00.

THIRTY DOLLARS for a skimpy lunch for three kids?! No way, I'd walk 20 miles home and make them a peanut butter sandwich before I paid $30.00 for six slices of white bread with a little butter slathered on it (and a few shaved slices of meat) and a drink.

Never mind. It's fun, it's exciting. It's culture. And I need some of that.

I didn't need the hunched shoulder.












Here's a close up to give you an idea of the size and thickness of the coins here.