Imperial Connections

  

Just when you think those in charge couldn't get more ridiculous, today we learn that a benefit of Brexit is that we might want to return to Imperial measurements instead of those nasty European metric ones. Curiously a map of the world circulating online suggests that apart from the USA, Myanmar and Liberia every other country is fairly content with counting in tens and thousands.

I guess those of us who are retired represent pretty much the last generations to have struggled at school adding and subtracting in £sd, as well as memorising all those weird and wonderful weights and measures. Unsurprisingly there doesn't seem to be an abundance of enthusiasm for our great leadership's latest contribution to the transformation of the country into a complete and utter laughing stock. Mr Johnson may very much want to see a Crown on his glass every time he toasts a departing member of staff, but he has overlooked once again that the rest of us don't get to party quite as often as in Downing Street.

After all, whilst I understand that firkins probably could add to the ambience of the old fashioned, oak-trussed pub, I was rather hoping for further progress on the liquids front with car dashboards showing miles per litre rather than mpg, assuming we are not about to go the whole hog and finally embrace the concept of kilometres. Now I know the Prime Minister and his cronies will no doubt be prepared for petrol station forecourts to show us the price in gallons, but discovering the cost to be £8 would surely risk an increase in road rage and traffic accidents. Better to keep our ignorance and sanity.

I confess that typical of many non-scientific Brits (much to the amusement of the rest of my family) I do tend to think of my own height in feet and inches, not least because I'm convinced 5 feet and 1 inch somehow sounds taller than one and a half metres (1.54 to be precise). Of course, using that logic I suppose describing myself as 15 and a quarter hands could sound almost impressive!

My own re-education into the world of metric quantification owes grateful thanks to a well known cereal manufacturer which, back in the 1970's, came up with a variety of verses on the reverse of its packs many of which have served me well to this day. Two and a quarter pounds of jam weigh about a kilogram; a metre measures 3 foot three, it's longer than a yard you see; or what about: a litre of water's a pint and three quarters? Sadly I don't recall it providing dumbed down calculations for the conversion of furlongs, chains, pecks, bushels, carucates, roods and hundredweights but then they never were particularly useful, unless of course you were asked to measure the length of a cricket pitch which bizarrely most of us will still recall as a chain or 22 yards.

However, the one useful unit from the past which cropped up again and again in the study of land law is, of course, the peppercorn. Fortunately, we have a box or two in the pantry should the Chancellor, who is allegedly short of further ideas for managing the cost of living crisis, seek to follow the Prime Minister's lead and also look to steer us back to wallow in the nostalgia of times long past.

Personally, I'm just pleased to have got our bendy bananas back.

(Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay)