On a Eurocamping holiday in France in 1982 I met a fellow Euro camper, (The addition of the word Euro in front of the word Camping somehow transformed the experience from dull, boring and cheap to exciting, adventurous and sophisticated) eventually, actually quite quickly, the conversation turned to, and what do you do?
I muttered my usual holiday cover story about being a poet (who wants to meet a Vicar on holiday?) and he told me that he was 'in' shipping.
Well actually, he said, I suppose I make my money from currency speculation, I buy goods in one currency and sell in another and sometimes keep a ship at sea a few extra days until the exchange rate means that we can land the cargo with an increased profit.
Later that day we exchanged our last travellers cheques for Francs and hoped that they would last until we returned to the relatively safe harbour of the Pound Sterling.
That was my second trip abroad, the first was Germany in 1967 when the currency was the Mark but I subsisted on pfennigs, since then I have travelled more frequently.
The biggest headache was always trying to do the calculation, usually on the hoof, whilst the shopkeeper was wrapping the shopping up, to work out what we were paying in 'real' money i.e. Pounds.
Then came the Euro and the calculation became simpler, wherever you were in the Eurozone, divide by three and multiply by two.
According to my newspaper the the Euro is now under threat because the Bundesbank want to rename it the Mark and it is both overvalued and undervalued and until the economic conditions are right Britain will remain loyal to and dependent on Sterling.
Which hardly helps answer the question is the Euro safe?
As our current trip to Genova draws to a close I would argue that it is, but that it is still only worth 66 pence of Sterling.
How do I know this?
Because I went to buy a catalogue of the Van Gogh exhibition in the Palazzo Ducale only to find that it was priced at 35 Euros.
I estimated that its equivalent price in the UK would have been around £20. Divide by three and multiply by two and 35 becomes approximately 23, so I didn't buy the catalogue because it was overpriced in Euros.
Unfortunately we cannot exercise the same discipline with food, drink or other essentials so we continue to pay too much, roughly a third too much, for everything we buy.
But then, when sitting outside in glorious November sunshine enjoying a G&T, a third too much seems to be worth the extra if only for the sunshine alone, so we don't complain.
Should we be in the Eurozone?
Lord Ashdown thinks so, and thinks that eventually we have to be and on this I find myself agreeing with the Liberal Peer.
It seems crazy to me to place yourself outside the club of which you ought to be an active and influential member, even on the committee etc.
Would the over valuation have mattered so much if we had joined the Euro, I suspect not, and importing and exporting would presumably have been more straightforward?
Now it seems that, on the one hand the continued safety of the Euro is crucial to the con-dem's economic strategy and on the other the Conservative part of the coalition wants to place itself as far outside the sphere of influence as it can.
Which seems like a case of, heads you lose, tails you don't win?
But then capitalists make hay wherever the currency sun shines, because of course they are in the Euro and the Dollar and the Kronor and the Pound, wherever and whenever it suits them.
They just keep their ships at sea a bit longer or land their cargoes in more economically beneficial harbours.
I muttered my usual holiday cover story about being a poet (who wants to meet a Vicar on holiday?) and he told me that he was 'in' shipping.
Well actually, he said, I suppose I make my money from currency speculation, I buy goods in one currency and sell in another and sometimes keep a ship at sea a few extra days until the exchange rate means that we can land the cargo with an increased profit.
Later that day we exchanged our last travellers cheques for Francs and hoped that they would last until we returned to the relatively safe harbour of the Pound Sterling.
That was my second trip abroad, the first was Germany in 1967 when the currency was the Mark but I subsisted on pfennigs, since then I have travelled more frequently.
The biggest headache was always trying to do the calculation, usually on the hoof, whilst the shopkeeper was wrapping the shopping up, to work out what we were paying in 'real' money i.e. Pounds.
Then came the Euro and the calculation became simpler, wherever you were in the Eurozone, divide by three and multiply by two.
According to my newspaper the the Euro is now under threat because the Bundesbank want to rename it the Mark and it is both overvalued and undervalued and until the economic conditions are right Britain will remain loyal to and dependent on Sterling.
Which hardly helps answer the question is the Euro safe?
As our current trip to Genova draws to a close I would argue that it is, but that it is still only worth 66 pence of Sterling.
How do I know this?
Because I went to buy a catalogue of the Van Gogh exhibition in the Palazzo Ducale only to find that it was priced at 35 Euros.
I estimated that its equivalent price in the UK would have been around £20. Divide by three and multiply by two and 35 becomes approximately 23, so I didn't buy the catalogue because it was overpriced in Euros.
Unfortunately we cannot exercise the same discipline with food, drink or other essentials so we continue to pay too much, roughly a third too much, for everything we buy.
But then, when sitting outside in glorious November sunshine enjoying a G&T, a third too much seems to be worth the extra if only for the sunshine alone, so we don't complain.
Should we be in the Eurozone?
Lord Ashdown thinks so, and thinks that eventually we have to be and on this I find myself agreeing with the Liberal Peer.
It seems crazy to me to place yourself outside the club of which you ought to be an active and influential member, even on the committee etc.
Would the over valuation have mattered so much if we had joined the Euro, I suspect not, and importing and exporting would presumably have been more straightforward?
Now it seems that, on the one hand the continued safety of the Euro is crucial to the con-dem's economic strategy and on the other the Conservative part of the coalition wants to place itself as far outside the sphere of influence as it can.
Which seems like a case of, heads you lose, tails you don't win?
But then capitalists make hay wherever the currency sun shines, because of course they are in the Euro and the Dollar and the Kronor and the Pound, wherever and whenever it suits them.
They just keep their ships at sea a bit longer or land their cargoes in more economically beneficial harbours.
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