I predict Britain will join the euro in 2016

Ten years ago, the euro was born, As it happened I was in Austria on a ski-ing trip. I remember a bright sunny morning, blue skies and a whiteness of snow on the mountains. The moment seemed monumental, the creation of a common currency by 11 states, the end of all those romantic names - franc, schilling, deutsche mark, peseta, escudo - that we had shuffled in our wallets as travelling students.

I don't know quite what I was expecting that 1 January - fire in the heavens perhaps, or so...