Folding money

The great Euro currency project is 25 years old and Der Mann has decided we need a new design on the banknotes. Which is kinda quixotic given how much change kaChing! has happened in the world of currency transactions. On the shuttle bus to Bristol Airport last week, for example, I sat behind two Australian backpackers who were settling up their debts [in UK£ AU$ and €€€] with a few swipes on their smart phones. The olde tea shoppe in Bath refused to accept cash. I can use "quixotic" because Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra features on half of the proposed designs of the new €50 note.

The design brief was either famous European cultural icons: €5 Maria Callas €10 Ludwig von Beethoven €20 Marie Curie €50 Miguel de Cervantes €100 Leonardo da Vinci €200 Bertha von Suttner. Gaah! Marie Curie is such a usual suspects choice to represent European Women in Science: I have blobbed a couple of dozen more interesting names. And Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicitas von Suttner née Countess Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau ?? - never 'eard of 'er, although she clocked the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize.

The other option involves specified birds with a compulsory river feature  and Eurobatimentson the reverse

• €5 wallcreeper Tichodroma muraria || European Parliament 
• €10 kingfisher Alcedo atthis || European Commission, 
• €20 bee-eater Meropidae || European Central Bank, 
• I think they mean Merops apiaster the only bee-eater endemic to (Southern) Europe
• €50 white stork Ciconia ciconia || Court of Justice of the EU 
• €100 avocet Recurvirostra avosetta || European Council & Council of the EU
• €200 northern gannet Morus bassanus  || European Court of Auditors 

These banknotes are so freighted with 'meaning', stipulations, baggage & metaphor ["embodying cohesion through diversity" etc. etc.] that they are camel (a horse designed by a committee). That's probably okay because new banknotes, in contrast to new flags [NZ and AU], are meant to be hard-to-draw but it is a handicap preventing designers reaching for the sky. I liked series B because they cut us some slack by including some small print info including Linnaean binomers for the birbs and IDs for the EuroGebäude on the reverse. But I think my final pref is for Series I by Isabelle Daëron from which the €10 kingfisher is clipped above: a) having portrait banknotes is cool / different b) there are Easter-eggs like the radio-telescope and the dragonfly [sooo River] c) all the birds are haloed by the 'sun'. You / we are all invited to vote and give crowd feedback on all the designs. From me: please, no people on currency, they always turn out to have feet of clay.

Did I mention see a kingfisher? I did. Which gives me the opening to cite Halcyon or The Kingfisher of Gortrush Wood a poem [vimeo] embedded in an essay about loss, trust, family by Mark Roper. A few years ago, Jack, my more famous brother, was on the bill at an Arts festival in our post-town. Because family, I was invited to Sunday lunch at the home where he was billeted. There was one other couple at table and everyone were chatting away about, like, The Arts. I didn't have much to say! Until I suddenly twigged that the 'Mark' sitting opposite was Mark Roper the poet. I became a blushingly effusive fanboi stammering how much I'd been affected by Halcyon.