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Saturday, 5 January 2002 |
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The new Euro coins are very unimpressive. The feeling one gets while looking at the collection in the palm of one's hand, is that they were designed and cut out of tin foil by a group of four-year olds. Size-wise, what else are you expected to think? We've been in the habit in this country (Ireland), of having coins going down in size as they go down in value. The advantage of this was that you could tell at a glance what coin was what. (An embarrassing exception was the similarity in size between the 20p and the 2p which occurred after decimalisation. There was no 2p coin before this.) With the Euro, the difference in size between the €1 and the 20c coins is microscopic, the 20c and the 5c are almost identical in diameter, while the 10c piece is actually smaller that the 5c, and microscopic differences again between the 5c and the 2c. I can imagine what happened, of course. They happily cut out a small €2, but by the time they had the €1 cut out, they began to realise that if they kept decreasing the size at this rate, the 1c would end up the size of a pinhead. Panic! Confusion! Chaos! A coinage that looks rather like the little packets of Toyland coins we used to buy for children to play with. The surplus 2c and €2 pieces are the result of having people who never use coins themselves, design coins for you. They never have a heap of metal wearing holes in their pockets. No fear! Its cheque books and plastic cards for them. Leave those crude coins to the peasants. And the notes? Spare me! This is apparently one currency that can be laundered by the ordinary joe in his wash tub. It makes one suspect that they were manufactured by Levi Strauss. And the drab architectural drawings look like early twentieth century wood engravings, eminently suitable for printing on cloth. The new Euro banknotes may be curious, but pretty they are not. However let's not be too hard on them. Better luck next time, boys. |