The adjustment to having a new king was going well, I thought - all the requisite chess-based jokes had been made, the republican sentiment had been viciously stamped out, and pen-related failures had been had in abundance. Huzzah!
But this morning I heard on the news that they're now ready to put Charles' effigy on new coins, and while that seems entirely sensible they're going to have him facing the wrong way!
Apparently this is old custom - with each change of monarch they change the direction they are facing on the coins. Which makes sense, I suppose. But ERII reigned for so long that there is now a very clear right way to be facing, and ironically, it isn't to the right. But that's how CRIII will be facing.
(Actually, it's something worth considering that decimalisation occurred during ERII's reign, which meant that all the coins had to be replaced, which means that at no time in my life were we using coins with GRIV's face on them. I might have seen a few very old sixpences that had it, but these weren't ever in actual use. So, yeah, it's pretty ingrained.)
The upshot is that we'll just have to call the whole thing off. Either that, or stop using coins as currency.
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