The Sound of a Euro

Yesterday was a bear of a day. I mentioned sitting at my desk and reading on Wednesday -- well, let me add that most days are not like that, and yesterday definitely wasn't. We were processing a bunch of new books, and that involved me labeling, stamping and covering them all. I also put up a new display, worked an hour or so in the Lower School and re-shelved a ton of stuff, in addition to staffing the desk.

At home, our change bowl was filling up with coins once again and I wanted to deposit some of them -- the pounds, anyway. Here in the UK, as I've written (and complained) about before, quantities of coins are put into tiny plastic baggies rather than in rolls. Well, I put twenty pound coins into a baggie and took it to Barclay's yesterday afternoon. The teller weighed it as she usually does, and then she set it down on the desk. She picked it up and set it down again.

I thought something was wrong with the weight, so I said, "Did I miscount?"

She said, "No, you've got twenty coins. You're going to think I'm crazy, but they don't sound right."

And with that she opened the bag, thumbed through the coins and extracted a single Euro. A €1 coin is visually almost identical to a £1 coin, particularly when counting money quickly, so it was an honest mistake on my part. I told her I was shocked she could hear a single Euro in a bag of pounds!

"I've been doing this job for far too long," she said, laughing.

(I was reminded of Lucy Van Pelt in "A Charlie Brown Christmas": "Boy, what a sound! How I love to hear that old money clink! That beautiful sound of cold hard cash! That beautiful, beautiful sound! Nickels, nickels, nickels! That beautiful sound of clinking nickels!")

Anyway, fortunately I had another pound in my pocket, so we switched the coins, I made the deposit and got out of there. I wonder who passed off that stray Euro to us. I guess I'll save it for my next trip to the Continent.

I thought of my mom, who used to get annoyed when someone would slip her a Canadian coin because they weren't worth as much as American coins. Now there's someone who took her change seriously.

Here's Manny Two, producing a brand new leaf. He's got a few of them, actually. He appears to be happy in his new home.

And here's a creepy pumpkin that's sitting on the windowsill across the street from our flat. When I posted yesterday, I didn't think of the fact that it was Halloween until after I'd hit publish. So I forgot to include the Halloween photos I've stocked up.

Better late than never!

(There are more, but since it's Nov. 1 I'll only inflict those two on you. You saw the spider last year.)

As usual, we had no trick-or-treaters here. Dave and I sat in the back of the house and watched TV with the porch light off. Bah humbug!

Now I'm off to speak to a seventh grade class. As I understand it, they're interviewing me. Hopefully they're bringing the questions, because I have nothing prepared.