| Abroad in Dublin | home |
After our in-flight famine, and with only the paltry bowl of breakfast cereal to stop my stomach from thinking it had been completely neglected, I was glad to be called upon to fetch refreshment. We already had a bottle of diet coke, which I had bought in the airport and had not felt like drinking while suffering the olfactory assaults of a smoky airport lounge and Mr Fartypants during the flight. Food was the missing ingredient and Caroline suggested that I return along the face of St Stephen's Green to a sandwich shop that she had spied while I had been pulling our case along the final straight before its revolving door stunt. Equipped with a clutch of Euros, I headed out of the hotel.
Free of the suitcase, I was able to take in many more of the sights and sounds of the busy Dublin streets. The first thing I noticed was that the pedestrian crossings in Dublin are clearly a product of the same factory that makes their pinball machines. When you push the button to cross, the button units starts a rhythmic quacking. When you are 30 seconds from being allowed to cross, the display on the opposite side starts a countdown on a bright LED display. When the count reaches zero, the crossing emits a phasing screech - "Pyeeow" and starts a rapid clicking, which stops when the time to cross has passed. I'm almost positive that I've heard the same sequence of sound effects, and seen a similar countdown, when receiving a bonus ball in some sort of pinball game. What was the prize of this game? Well, given the attitude of Dublin drivers, I think that escaping a crossing with your life is the reward for completing this bonus round.
Reaching the sandwich shop, which turned out to be called Bendini & Shaw, and is a Dublin chain of shops, with four in total, I had the chance to try my hand at trading with Euros. This was, admittedly, not the first time I'd spent Euros - I had bought a book from Amazon's French website (the Carelman book I mentioned in the last part of this story). I found it quite easy to make price comparisons. For each price, the GBP equivalent is approximately found by subtracting a third. This had been fine online, with credit cards, but it is quite a different experience when you have cash in your hand. In general, the Euro notes and coins are comfortable to use - similar in many ways to the UK's own notes and coins. This is probably no coincidence, since I had a distinct feeling that there's a certain inevitability built into the Euro. Like it or not, Brits will probably be using them at home within the next few years.
The fact that each country can mint its own Euro coins adds to the built-in user friendliness of the Euro. I'm certain that the whizz kids, who designed a new currency for Europe, tried their hardest to make it as palatable as possible. I'm still slightly confused about the three coins which make their 10, 20 and 50 cents - these are similar sizes, the same colour, and only distinguishable by reading their numbers or a complex system of notches on their rim, which I hope are useful to blind people, who would otherwise have no chance at all. There's no doubt that the introduction of the Euro will have a massive impact on the UK if/when it happens, and the cost of converting just the tills in shops will be immense. Overall, though, the loss of a nation's financial autonomy is a major step - the cute Euro notes and coins will soften the impact of making the change, and give coin collectors something new to play with, but the Euro is clearly a bigger deal than just losing Her Majesty's face from a few bits of paper.
Back to the Dublin though... Under instruction to act inconspicuous, when bringing the takeout food back to our room, I had our sandwiches and sticky cakes wrapped in a brown paper bag for transporting back. So, rather than looking like I was smuggling food into the hotel, it looked like I'd just been to the off-license for some spirits which I might even be planning to drink directly out of their bottles, probably while they were still in the bag! If the hotel had rules about not eating food, which had been brought from outside, in their plush rooms (rules, the existence of which I was dubious about), they would definitely have rules about alcohol smuggling. To avoid an awkward confrontation, I held the brown paper bag at my side, keeping my body between it and the eyes of any hotel staff. This might sound paranoid, but after the rather poor entrance I'd made earlier, I was keen to keep a low profile.
The sandwiches were very pleasant indeed, but we were interrupted, while eating them, by a member of the hotel staff who claimed to have been sent to ask us if any light bulbs were broken. There were no bulbs broken, but the encounter left me wondering. Had the hotel staff sent the man to check that I hadn't just brought a couple of litres of Methylated spirits in? Was there really a light bulb problem nearby? Perhaps the man was simply psychic, since a light bulb did blow, some four nights later... spooky!
If the light bulb man had been sent to check up on us, then he must have gone away with a complete, yet totally vindicating report, since he saw everything there was to see in the room. From his inspection, he could have reported that we were eating our sandwiches and wearing our Pornstar dressing gowns. Judging by the lack of comeback on these, I can confirm that both activities are allowed under the Shelbourne rules!
16 April 2002
Ashley Frieze