While Waiting for My Sheets to Dry

I did some laundry today. In general, I advise all of you college-goers and dormitory-livers to avoid laundry rooms on Sunday evenings: there’s always a line and your clothes get piled up on the tops of the machines or thrown on the floor and it’s uncivilized and complete mayhem. However, I’m trying something new, which primarily involves not doing any work on Sunday, which means Sundays are slow and involve a lot of walking and ruminating and walking out to look at the ruminants in the back pasture. And apparently, laundry. I’ll let you know how the whole Sunday thing is going later, because right now I want to write down my thoughts on currency. Quantum leaps, right?

I’m not talking about electrical currency, although that’s different in the UK, too – I think I may have burned out my hair dryer even though I had it on the right voltage setting…why is the current so strong here, anyway? – no, I’ve got my mind on more monetary matters. Before you shy away from what looks like the beginning of a horrible economics tirade, let’s get back to the laundry room.

I really like doing the wash, actually. It’s not strenuous work for me (or for anyone – thanks, washing machines), so I don’t feel like I’m cheating if I spend Sundays cleaning my clothes. It appeals to my obsessive-compulsive and tactile natures. There’s the whole sorting of colors and fabrics bit, and the smell of cleanliness, and warm fuzzy cloth, and the sloshing and rumbling of washers and dryers. Something I don’t get to experience during the routine back home, either in Richmond or in Pittsburgh, is paying for getting my laundry done. Probably this is another thing that you can’t imagine me actually wanting to do. However, as I was sitting on the windowsill and waiting for a washer to free up, I got a chance to pay attention to British money, and I can honestly say that it quite draws me in. Compared to American currency, the pound just has so much panache. I think the same thing can be said for the Euro – bright bills and clinking coins are much more interesting on this side of the Atlantic – but I believe the GBP did come first, chronologically. Also, Euros are harder for me to wrap my head around because every time I have to handle them, I’m in the middle of a market or a crowded shop and someone is shouting at me in a language I can’t understand because I’m having a panic attack about the possibility of not getting back the right change. Pounds are happier.

First of all, in addition to being color-coded, the paper money is sized differently, I think? I spent my last five quid earlier, so I can’t be sure, but that sounds about right. How much sense does that make? I mean, nothing says your bills all have to be green and uniformly rectangular. But let’s not dwell on bills because coins are what I have to feed into the slots if I want to wash my sheets or my favorite jeans. Also, coins are round objects, and I like round objects. So just think about this: there’s a small copper one penny coin and a large copper two pence coin; there’s a small silver five pence coin and a large silver ten pence coin; there’s a small heptagonal twenty pence coin and a large heptagonal fifty pence coin; there’s a small gold one pound coin and a large silver and gold two pound coin. Incredible! It makes so much sense (cents…hahaha) for there to be no tiny dimes and giant nickels and strange incremental gaps.

I hope I don’t sound to money-mad by now, because I’d like to add some final miscellaneous observations about British currency. First, the GPB has apparently been drinking the koolaid and has updated their money by including cultural details on the backs of some of the coins. But they’re interesting heraldic designs, like crowns and dragons and lions and…fronds…and Celtic knots and so on. Secondly, I enjoy the feel of a one-pound coin in my hand – it’s surprisingly heavy for its size – and the heptagonal twenty pence is fun to roll around on its edge. Lastly, the sound of the coins as they hit against each other in a change purse or pocket seems less flat than with American coins. I don’t know why.

Well…I’ve got to get back downstairs to make sure no one unloads my clean clothes onto the linty floor. While I wait, I think I’ll practice flipping a quid into the air and catching it in my palm like a real American gangster (which I am) to the regular thumps of the slightly unbalanced dryers.