I Know It Is Pointless...

[Jackdaw33]

...to ask for things in pounds and ounces these days, but I was surprised this afternoon when an assistant had to ask her manager what a dozen was.

[Tilly2]

I always ask for my meat in monetary terms. 'A piece of pork loin, about £8 in money please'. It saves a lot of fiddling about.

[EDDIE51]

I still call a 25 Kg sack of spuds a cwt sack.
As to fireworks, the 6d bangers were the best, but nowhere near as good as the Chinese firecrackers I managed to find once!

[Jackdaw33]

My mother taught me to do that. Ask for a piece of brisket, no more than 8s.

[DaisyNonna]

I have difficulty visualising metric
Also boring and dangerous, one more or one less 0 and you have trouble

[Noe-schitt]

Conversation with a 17 year old a couple of years ago
"What on earth is that"
"A record deck"
"What's it for"
"For playing records"
"What's a record"
Time for the old folks home I think

[EDDIE51]

OK 1/2 cwt then.

[Hopkirk]

Specially for Noe-Schitt


.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoPXQ9fotZM

[zebo]

I recall doing a project on WW2 in a Primary school and I decided to teach them imperial measures, they were amazed and actually quite good when I gave them conversions, eg £ = 20s, 1 sh = 12d, we did money length and weight. They developed a new respect for their parents and grand-parents who'd had to learn all this, "Thought m'gran were thick Miss!". It also made sense of "borrowing" in subtraction, a term I never liked.

[jourdain2]

You could tell her that in a French market near me they sold eggs in 'dizains'.

My granddaughter struggled a bit with 'oz' when we took her to Eden Camp (WW2 memorial museum - absolutely fantastic day out, really recommend it)
and we got to the rationing bit.

I found problems when teaching English because books were written with Imperial references and I had to spend some lit. lessons explaining the system. Looking back, our mental agility was much better because of solving sums written in stones, pounds and ounces. We learned to to it, perhaps it should be a compulsory section of the maths curiculum.?

[jourdain2]

^^^ Should add that although I asked for (say) 500 grams of whatever in France, I now ask for a pound of whatever, or half a pound, and I've just bought cloth asking for 2 yards of 50" wide material. It needs to be kept going.

[Jackdaw33]

The French still use imperial measures, although they are not exact. Une livre = 500g and un quart = 225g

[Jackdaw33]

I meant 250g