This is fictional sample content, created to demonstrate the layout. The places, people and figures in it are invented. It is not reporting.
The high street runs for about half a mile before the road becomes somebody else's. Roughly a third of the shops accept both currencies, and the ones that do set their own rate.
Most set it once a day and live with it. A few adjust at lunchtime. One, a hardware shop that has been there since the 1950s, prints a new card every morning and tapes it to the till.
This is not a story about volatility. The rate has been stable for two years. It is a story about the cost of holding two floats, banking twice, and reconciling both at the end of a week.
The bank that served both sides closed its branch here in 2021. The nearest counter is now twenty-two miles away, and only takes one of the two currencies.
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