The Today program on BBC Radio 4 had an interesting article this morning about how the UK still works in imperial (yards, pounds, inches etc) despite moves by the European Parliament to put us in line with the rest of the world using metric (centimetres, grams etc).
What I think is "Why should it matter?!"
I was taught, as with most children born in 1973, in the metric system which is fine and splendidilyumptuos as the imperial system is too weird and complex. However the following does not happen:-
Me - Hello Mr Milkman
Mr Milkman - Hello Mr Gnomepants what a lovely morning
Me - Indeed! The birds are chirping the sun is shining....
Mr Milkman - How true! And what can I do for you today?
Me - Oooh I'll have 0.568 litres of milk please
Mr Milkman - Certainly!
However what does happen is:-
Me - Oi
Mr Milkman - What?
Me - Wheres me fuckin milk?
Mr Milkman - How much do you want?
Me - 0.568 litres please
Mr Milkman - Only what you see on the back of the float mate
Me - There! look!! 0.568 litres in a glass recepticle
Mr Milkman - you mean a fuckin pint! you wanker
Me - No we are metric now and have been since 1973!
Mr Milkman - Shut it weirdo....and have a shave......and get you're hair cut....you dont even get your milk delivered!
This scenario does not happen:-
Me- 0.568 litres of Big Jugs please sexy barmaid
Barmaid - Why certainly have some of my foaming Big Jugs.
Me - Fancy a shag?
Barmaid - yeah why not!
This scenario does happen
Me - A pint of Big Jugs please
Barmaid - Sexist bastard
Me - Noooo the beer
Barmaid - Oh right Im new to this
Me - Fancy a shag?
Barmaid - No thanks I have a great auk at home, I dont think they'd get on well.
I can cook and bake. A skill I was taught by my gran, sadly no longer with us, who taught me how many ounces there are in a pound and how many fluid ounces there are in a pint. Grams are easy to use and straightforward. But what I have a problem with is two fold.
Distance - I will measure a piece of string or a line or something in metric ie. "oooh I need 2cm of stickytape to fasten this wrapping paper" but when it comes to distance I will say :- "Oooh Texas is Miles away" and not "Ooooh Texas is kilometres away" which doesnt have the same feel to it.....do you see what I mean?
Temperature - What does my tits in is when its hot people say "Oooh it must be 90 degrees today!" - cos surely if it was 90 degrees we'd be dead! But if they had said "Oooh its 32 degrees today", immeadiately I'd be like "oooh thats quite warm!". But then, when its cold people tend to immeadiately switch to Celcius "Oooh its reet cold....must be minus 5 outside" not "Oooh its reet cold.....must be 23 outside". To me 23 is still warm....cos I work in celcius......confused? Not as much as me!
So Im going to try something new. Something 3rd Gen......Instead of centimetres I'm going to use gigameters, grams in fractions of a tonne, temperature in degrees Kelvin, and I bet they lock me up for being uberwierd! The cheek of it!
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