I'm with KT53, I still think in and use imperial measurements as it's just instinctive to us old uns. I measure lengths in metric but as far as I know most wood is still sold in the UK using imperial for width but metric for length - crazy!
I measure my weight in stones and ozs as metric weight means absolutely nothing to me, I leave my GP to do the conversion.
I'm rather curmudgeonly today as my new washing machine decided to think for itself yesterday and altered the timing of the wash from 1 hr 27 mins to 3hrs 15 mins! That's just plain ridiculous. Took over 4 hours just to wash and dry one load.
I didn't have the courage to override it which I think I could have done.
Everything in imperial here. A neighbour of mine who occasionally does an odd job for me offered to put a piece of wood across the bottom of the shed door for me. He came across to measure it, gave it a look and said Oh ar, thats about an arm an an ond. Thats an arm and a hand. When he came with the wood it was spot on.
I was talking to my granddaughter who is 7, B'day last month, about polar bears and I asked if she used inches or centimetres cos there was something I wanted to read out to her. Turns out they aren't teaching that yet. I had to show her a ruler. Now she is bright so maybe I overestimated the level of teaching?
@pansyface My hand spread measured from tip of thumb to tip of outretched little finger measures 23cms or 9 inches which is a handy measure for all sorts of things. My feet - in normal shoes or boots (no pointy toes of heels) measure 30cms or 11.8 inches which is near enough to a foot and handy for measuring planting distances, room widths and lengths etc.
@Mrs-B3-Southampton,-Hants that seems appalling to me but then I started primary at just under 5 years with a woman on a mission and in the first week she had us learning our times tables. She did 1 to 12 plus 13, 17 and 19 on the grounds that they were useful and 14, 16 and 18 could be fathomed as multiples of others. By the end of that school year everyone could read, write, do basic sums and use a ruler.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I inherited my grandmother's Salter kitchen scales, with imperial weights, and my mother's, mother-in-law's and grandmother's handwritten recipe books in which the weights are always imperial. Then I bought a set of metric weights for modern recipe books, so all bases are covered.
I can wholeheartedly recommend simple balance scales when cooking with young children. It's much easier for them to understand a system where one side balances the other, than those electronic gismos which work like magic, or even the old-fashioned spring balance scales (which are notoriously inaccurate for small amounts)...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
Posts
I measure my weight in stones and ozs as metric weight means absolutely nothing to me, I leave my GP to do the conversion.
I'm rather curmudgeonly today as my new washing machine decided to think for itself yesterday and altered the timing of the wash from 1 hr 27 mins to 3hrs 15 mins! That's just plain ridiculous. Took over 4 hours just to wash and dry one load.
I didn't have the courage to override it which I think I could have done.
@Mrs-B3-Southampton,-Hants that seems appalling to me but then I started primary at just under 5 years with a woman on a mission and in the first week she had us learning our times tables. She did 1 to 12 plus 13, 17 and 19 on the grounds that they were useful and 14, 16 and 18 could be fathomed as multiples of others. By the end of that school year everyone could read, write, do basic sums and use a ruler.
I can wholeheartedly recommend simple balance scales when cooking with young children. It's much easier for them to understand a system where one side balances the other, than those electronic gismos which work like magic, or even the old-fashioned spring balance scales (which are notoriously inaccurate for small amounts)...