Idle Thought From My Holiday Resort. Poem by john coldwell

We no longer tip the waiters,
Condescendingly, Pesetas.
And few they are, that need now know,
How to properly pronounce, Escudo.

Alpine peaks, now bleak and chilling,
No longer ring to the Austrian Schilling.
And the Fatherland’s paternal spark,
Surely died with his child the Mark.

Recall the Gilder, or Dutch Florin,
Which was, quite comfortably, foreign.
And what used to make the heart much cheerer,
Than the exchange rate of the Italian Lira?

The staff at your bank will frankly look at you blank,
In your warm reminiscence of the Belgian franc,
Serving only to make my sad point the starker,
I may as well stop at the Finnish Markka.

All conquering Bureau de Change,
Need few national flags in their range,
Now Sovereign states have put to one side,
To avoid the commissions, their national pride.

And so has risen the ‘Euro zone’,
Our drab pan- European monochrome.
Phrases coined with such thoughtless ease,
Inevitably sound like a disease.

And brought to it’s knees by this unpleasant sound,
Is my humble friend the British Pound.
It’s not the collapse of capitalism we should fear,
It’s the effect it’s all having on the price of beer.