The Bluestocking Inn, cocktails and cocoa and all

[DeanElderberry]

Opening soon in a salubrious location.

And thanks to the miraculous qualities, although we will indeed have

One-steps and two-steps and the divil knows what new steps
We know that we never would be dull again, bedad
We'll have wine, porter and lemonade.
We'll have cocktails and cocoa and all
We'll have champagnes tonight
But NO real pains next morning
Tonight when we dance at the Bluestocking Ball

slight apologies to Frank Harte

@ErrolTheDragonthat feels a little like tell
me your age without telling me your age

I'm with @FuzzyPuffling in that the discussion of numbers, bases and mathematical systems across the world and through history is out of my sphere of knowledge. I did all my schooling pre-decimal, only for everything to change when I met the real world.

Monday 15th February 1971 is seared into my memory because, at the time, I was in my first job, in a bank in rural Hampshire. In the days before we had computers on every desk, we had to record all transactions in huge ledgers, adding them up manually at close of play to "balance the books". We closed the bank on the Thursday evening, then worked 12 hour shifts all through the weekend and Monday to do a full annual reconciliation of the branch accounts, convert all the accounts to decimal currency and then re-balance the books to confirm everything aligned, before re-opening on the Tuesday morning. We actually finished early at my branch, so I was sent to a much larger one in the nearby town to help them. My abiding memory is of (mainly older) customers coming in, drawing out the full balance of their account, counting it and then re-depositing it, as if to reassure themselves that the money was still there.

Incidentally, it was during that detachment to the larger bank, that I first saw what a million pounds in cash looks like!

I left the bank soon afterwards to take up my main career and although I am not the least mathematically-minded, my mental arithmetic is still excellent, which I attribute to adding up all those ledgers!

Homely.

US - plain verging on ugly.

UK - cosy and pleasant.

Re the reindeer hearders and their base 20, I wouldn't be surprised. There are remnants of base 20 counting in Danish number words. Like the French 'four twenties ten'.

50 halvtreds [(3-½) x 20] halvtredsindstyvende

60 tres [3 x 20] tresindstyvende

70 halvfjerds [(4-½) x 20] halvfjerdsende

80 firs [4 x 20] firsende

90 halvfems [(5-½) x 20] halvfemsende

Our P7 teacher made us construct and learn the 13 times table.

That's a brilliant story.
As someone born in the 80s it feels strange that it really wasn't that long before my time that money all changed in the UK, but I've only seen the old system of coins in museums or on TV.

We didn't do the 16. Respect! [As young people maybe said ten years ago?]

Canada claimed to be a cultural melting pot who provided sanctuary for marginalised groups the reality was cultural silos

Nah, the Yanks call themselves the melting pot. Canucks called ourselves a quilt. If you were Dutch you lived in Kitchener-Waterloo, for example, but more likely to choose Hamilton if you were Italian.

My experience was the kids cross-pollinated a lot - going to the Sinter Klaas parade with Marcel and Remi, celebrating Christmas Eve with Judit and Yuri, coming to our house for Boxing Day. And knowing that Jonathan's mom made the best cookies for Purim but Beth MacDougall's family were the ones for the best Halloween goodies. (God bless Mrs MacDougall, they were amazing)

It was a very nice place to spend a childhood.

Today I have a home trial of a powered wheelchair. Wish me luck

I started school in 1973 and we were taught entirely in decimal. There were too many kids in our school so my BFF (the one I was reunited with 46 years later about 4 years ago) and I were moved up a year. We didn't actually have lessons with the second years though, we were given books to learn from. That's why they moved us because we were very fluent readers at 5.

And the only maths book they had was in imperial currency. Learned a lot about £sd. Completely useless, but gave me an appreciation of the old coins.

For years we used shillings and florins as 5p and 10p pieces.

For years we used shillings and florins as 5p and 10p pieces.
I kept a couple when they were about to go out of circulation. I probably still have them.

My DM never quite got over decimalisation. We'd buy a few random groceries c1985 and there'd be a gasp, 'Good GOD! That's NINE AND SIX in old money!' She was convinced that it was a ploy to make it harder for people to realise how badly they'd been shafted by inflation.

And good luck, @PastaAllaNorma - I hope it's successful and makes life easier.

I was just 13 when the UK went decimal, and don't recall any problems with it at all. Oh, the arrogance ( and maybe flexible brain) of youth.
DH is 8 years younger than me and occasionally asks me about old money..."How many pennies in a shilling?". He's amazed we managed!

There's a really funny sketch on an episode of Horrible Histories in the middle aged where someone tried to explain the currency in the UK at the time to a foreigner. Made me laugh so much while my kids gave me the side eye.

Edited to add that I'm not suggesting you're from the middle aged @FuzzyPuffling !

My parents were teachers and adapted to decimalisation and metrication very well. Of course SI units made everything so much easier for sciences (and applied maths A level). And mum, a primary teacher, was the one adult I knew who would voluntarily express a length in centimetres

I was born just after decimalisation, and taught to cook and sew by my mother. As a result, I use a weird hybrid system of measures - anything bigger than a centimetre gets expressed in inches, feet and yards, while I use SI units for a centimetre and down. Likewise I cook in Imperial units but do science in metric. One upside of this is that I'm very good at converting between the systems!

I mostly work metric - except I remember cake recipes in oz. 4442 or 8553 being the staples. Bread is metric. Scones are oz.

with a celebration fruit cake it will be a kg of fruit and 8oz of flour however. Which since it’s based on a recipe from 1936 in the newcastle chronicle shows that o have modified as time has gone on

the recipe is long lost

I’ve got hybrid recipes - banana muffins with ounces, millilitres and US cups.

crafts club this morning. I have felt a little lazy the last couple of years because I couldn't crochet daffodils for the annual cancer fundraiser, so this year I made some out of felt, and have attached them to woolly hats made by a more diligent friend.

One down, however many more to go (I had to make two more flowers).

In bad news, there's a sore throat going round.

In other bad news. snow is forecast.

Then there's the handful. AI will want to standardise hands.

My first DH used to classify breasts according to BSH - British Standard Handful. He really wasn’t a sexist pig and it was amusing at the time, which was fifty years ago or so.

I cook in Imperial because I use a set of balance scales from the 1920s, with physical weights from 1oz to 1lb.
My grandchildren love them.

Maybe I am from the middle ages!

jolly hat!

Finally someone mentioned hexadecimal! I used to use it many years ago.

As regards the Amish, etc I can report, based on my own experience, that Pennsylvania Amish made great ice cream in the 2000s, & that Canadian Mennonites made weird cakes in the 1980s (looked yummy but didn't seem to actually be cakes) - or maybe that was just the out-in-the-sticks market/sale I went to, somewhere outside Toronto.

I've just found the sketch I was talking about before. Tudor, not middle ages. Decimalisation came a bit late for these guys!

https://share.google/DJeMTDCgaxxjliNRH

I started secondary school in 1957, so 15 years before you, and our second child was born exactly a week after the UK currency went decimal. So I really didn't think twice about our complicated weights and measures and have gone on using them alongside the metric system ever since, particularly for recipes. In 1982 I inherited some excellent recipe books from my mother, who had been a keen cook, and still use them from time to time. At my advanced age I think of using parallel measuring systems as good exercise to keep my mind from atrophying. 😁

I often check that a fabric is 45" wide, & then ask for a metre of it. It works for me: widths are imperial & lengths are metric. Kilometres completely flummox me, though: I can never remember which is 5/8 of the other.

For me, some recipes are metric & others are imperial. I suppose it depends on what it said in the book I nicked the recipe from.

I have a nice multicoloured set of US-style cups but I don't use them. Silly system, especially when it comes to butter.

I must be the same generation as your DM, Edith, as I still catch myself doing that as I'm doing my online Tesco order and notice yet another price rise. I remember the use of the three-shilling loaf (15p) in the 1974 election campaign to highlight the terrible effect of inflation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3166507.stm