According to the television news, on Friday the pound sterling showed its biggest percentage increase EVER against the euro. In current terms of course this doesn't mean much, as it staggered up just a couple of points - but at least it is a hopeful sign for those of us still inexorably linked to pound/euro exchanges.
We were discussing the other day how much this means in 'real terms' since as we know, if you have an income in sterling and have to have it sent for everday living in euros, the loss seems massive. Similarly if you are sending sterling to purchase a property here in Greece, you are having to send considerably more.
Then you move on to 'silver linings'. Your money can stretch a little further here, partly because there are less overheads - no council tax, no separate TV licence - and of course there is less to buy. Here, fortunately, we are not a 'live to shop' society, we buy what we need and are not constantly bombarded with incentives to buy, buy, buy. The most we seem to get is a 'buy one get one free' washing up liquid in the supermarket,
Then of course we go back to 'quality of life' which sometimes, in torrential rain here in winter, is a little hard to glorify, but generally speaking I am reminded of the 'ex pats' I saw on TV a couple of weeks ago, who live in Spain and who were being interviewed about the financial constraints of pound/euro. After a few minutes of explaining how much worse off they were and how dreadful the situation was, they were asked if they would have to consider returning to the U.K. 'Good heavens, no' was the immediate answer - 'Why would we want to do that when we have all this?' as they were sitting on their balconies watching the sun sink down into the sea. I think many of us agree with that!
Diana
(Photo by Marcus Gondolo-Gordon of Island Magazine)
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