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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Make me feel young again, or the I Feel Old thread...
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HughWillRidmee
Shipmate
# 15614
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Stercus Tauri:
Anyone remember those X-ray machines in shoe shops for shoe fitting? Must have been 1950s. Our daughters refused to believe it.
I remember those. Here is a picture of one.
Moo
We had one just like that in the shoe-shop in town in the 70s, perhaps very early 80s.
Lilley & Skinner, Putney had one - early/mid 1950s
quote:
Originally posted by Starbug:
When I first started working, the Latest Thing in high-tec was the Gestetner duplicator and a word processor with the enormous floppy disk drives.
When I was 20 I was working for a business that sold word-processors - electronic typewriter, paper tape punch(es) and reader(s), run by boards full of relays.
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
When I started work there were no calculators.
![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
We had mechanical calculators
quote:
Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
The Liverpool manager is a year older than me.
I went to primary and secondary schools (he was a year ahead) with the guy who recently sold LFC.
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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)
Posts: 894 | From: Middle England | Registered: Apr 2010
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
Who remembers those jingles on the TV that taught us about decimalisation or The New Money as it was called?
"Sixpence is two and a half new pence."
"One pound is a hundred new pennies
A hundred new pence to the pound."
"Decimal point is small and round
Decimal point is funny.
They divide the pence from the pounds
When you're writing in money."
Nen - who has only herself to blame for today's earworms. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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Metapelagius
Shipmate
# 9453
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:
Who remembers those jingles on the TV that taught us about decimalisation or The New Money as it was called?
"Sixpence is two and a half new pence."
"One pound is a hundred new pennies
A hundred new pence to the pound."
"Decimal point is small and round
Decimal point is funny.
They divide the pence from the pounds
When you're writing in money."
Nen - who has only herself to blame for today's earworms.
Hmm. I clearly recall my first three transactions in funny money. All involved a near doubling in price - from 7d to the equivalent of 1/-. Bernard Levin got it about right with his couplet
quote:
I greatly fear that Lord Orr-Ewing/ Does not know what the hell he's doing!
Lord Orr-Ewing was chairman of the Metrication Board. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
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Rec a archaw e nim naccer.
y rof a duv. dagnouet.
Am bo forth. y porth riet.
Crist ny buv e trist yth orsset.
Posts: 1032 | From: Hereabouts | Registered: May 2005
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Offeiriad
Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Latchkey Kid:
Our first telephone number was something like WOR 973.
We could only phone my grandfather via the operator when I was a child. Mind you, the outer London operators even then were a bit incredulous at being asked to connect to 'Bishops Castle Three'!
Posts: 1426 | From: La France profonde | Registered: Aug 2008
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Zacchaeus
Shipmate
# 14454
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oferyas:
quote:
Originally posted by Latchkey Kid:
Our first telephone number was something like WOR 973.
We could only phone my grandfather via the operator when I was a child. Mind you, the outer London operators even then were a bit incredulous at being asked to connect to 'Bishops Castle Three'!
Sounds like a chess move..
Posts: 1905 | From: the back of beyond | Registered: Jan 2009
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Metapelagius:
... I clearly recall my first three transactions in funny money. All involved a near doubling in price - from 7d to the equivalent of 1/-. Bernard Levin got it about right with his couplet
quote:
I greatly fear that Lord Orr-Ewing/ Does not know what the hell he's doing!
Lord Orr-Ewing was chairman of the Metrication Board.
I've heard it said that if we had decimalised on the basis of one new pound (or whatever it'd be called) = 10/- we would have avoided this. AIUI that's what Australia and NZ did: perhaps Antipodean shipmates can say whether decimalisation caused inflation there.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
My mum went to her grave (nearly thirty years after decimalisation) holding that we should have decimalised on the basis of 8s.4d. == "New Pound". That looks odd at first sight, but 8s.4d is 100d (old pennies) so the existing coins could have been used alongside the new ones, and cheating shopkeepers could have been spotted more easily.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Metapelagius
Shipmate
# 9453
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
My mum went to her grave (nearly thirty years after decimalisation) holding that we should have decimalised on the basis of 8s.4d. == "New Pound". That looks odd at first sight, but 8s.4d is 100d (old pennies) so the existing coins could have been used alongside the new ones, and cheating shopkeepers could have been spotted more easily.
An interesting idea, but coins of 1, 3, 6, 12, 24 and 30 'units' wouldn't have satisfied the decimanes who would only hold with 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 ... Another hypothetical possibility might have been a millesimal system, the 'mill' at 1/1000 of a pound being near as dammit a farthing - 960 of those to the £ (cf the wikip. article on 'Mill (currency)'.
[ 24. March 2013, 23:03: Message edited by: Metapelagius ]
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Rec a archaw e nim naccer.
y rof a duv. dagnouet.
Am bo forth. y porth riet.
Crist ny buv e trist yth orsset.
Posts: 1032 | From: Hereabouts | Registered: May 2005
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HughWillRidmee
Shipmate
# 15614
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Posted
Soon after UK decimalisation there was much talk of us switching to driving on the "wrong" side of the road.
I knew an English car salesman near Helston who convinced his locally born in-laws that the government was aware of their concerns and would therefore only implement the change in stages. Heavy Goods Vehicles were to switch sides on 1st Jan but non-HGV drivers would have an extra six months to get used to the idea before they too moved over on 1st July.
Why they were concerned I really don't know - most roads in Cornwall only had one side - we called it the road.
PS - Don't try pulling in to the side of the road in Cornwall; Cornish hedges are verdantly disguised stone walls - and then there's the unique, purpose-bred herd of Mounts Bay cattle.........
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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)
Posts: 894 | From: Middle England | Registered: Apr 2010
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Ondergard
Shipmate
# 9324
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by piglet:
It makes me feel quite old knowing that two of my grandparents were born during the reign of Queen Victoria..
All of my grandparents were born in the reign of Queen Victoria... my maternals in 1885 and 1890 respectively, and my paternals in 1882 and 1891.
Both my parents were the youngest in their families, born 1920 and 1921, and didn't marry until they were twenty nine, and I was their youngest child, born 1957.
My eldest son was born exactly one hundred years after his great grandfather.
When I started work, someone in our office bought an electronic calculator somewhere abroad and brought it home. It was the size of a housebrick, and cost £72 (this was in 1975).
The two floors of hermetically sealed, air-conditioned, and four-person operated computers in the office building I worked at in 1978 (one floor of IBM comps, one floor of ICL) had, between them, probably less than 25% of the computing power of the iMac I'm writing this on...
All of which means I don't feel middle-aged. I've hopped middle age, I think! One day I was young, and then, all of a sudden, my children were married and producing... one day I was a young minister, then the next I realised that the bloke behind me at Synod had been at my nephew's wedding as a contemporary of my nephew (and is a contributor on this Forum!!). The picture in my mind of my nephew, at the time, was still of a naked infant in a baby bath, smiling into the camera...
Posts: 276 | From: Essex | Registered: Apr 2005
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Ondergard
Shipmate
# 9324
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
The conversion came a few weeks after my fourteenth birthday
Which means we would have been in the same class at school... and you're an Anglican Bishop, aren't you? How bloody old do you think that makes me feel? ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posts: 276 | From: Essex | Registered: Apr 2005
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ondergard:
quote:
Originally posted by piglet:
It makes me feel quite old knowing that two of my grandparents were born during the reign of Queen Victoria..
All of my grandparents were born in the reign of Queen Victoria... my maternals in 1885 and 1890 respectively, and my paternals in 1882 and 1891.
Both my parents were the youngest in their families, born 1920 and 1921, and didn't marry until they were twenty nine, and I was their youngest child, born 1957.
You're a similar age to me and my father, who would be 100 if he were alive, was the second-youngest of 9 children. A couple of my uncles were killed in the First World War. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
Nen - who is off to work today, with workmates who are mostly young enough to be her children.
[ 25. March 2013, 06:59: Message edited by: Nenya ]
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:
quote:
Originally posted by Ondergard:
quote:
Originally posted by piglet:
It makes me feel quite old knowing that two of my grandparents were born during the reign of Queen Victoria..
All of my grandparents were born in the reign of Queen Victoria... my maternals in 1885 and 1890 respectively, and my paternals in 1882 and 1891.
Both my parents were the youngest in their families, born 1920 and 1921, and didn't marry until they were twenty nine, and I was their youngest child, born 1957.
You're a similar age to me and my father, who would be 100 if he were alive, was the second-youngest of 9 children. A couple of my uncles were killed in the First World War.
Nen - who is off to work today, with workmates who are mostly young enough to be her children.
Glad I'm not the only one. All my grandparents were born in the 1890s, and my father married late. My grandparents lost several brothers in WWI and their wedding photo, taken in 1917, shows a very sombre-looking young couple. It's hard to believe my father would be 91 now but my aunt is still alive at 95.
And yes, my colleagues are mostly much younger than me, too.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ondergard:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
The conversion came a few weeks after my fourteenth birthday
Which means we would have been in the same class at school... and you're an Anglican Bishop, aren't you? How bloody old do you think that makes me feel?
Don't give him ideas, Ondergard- AFAIK he's just a Reader
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
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Posted
I have a photo of my grandmother holding my mother as a baby. It was taken in 1914.
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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.
Posts: 8040 | From: Æbleskiver country | Registered: Aug 2009
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
One of my grandfathers lost his law office in San Francisco in the Quake and Fire of 1906.
While I'm still younger than some of the others posting here by a couple decades or so, my other grandfather was born in 1861 - during the American Civil War.
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
It's a few years ago now - early 80s, I think - but we remember my wife's grandmother from Montana telling about her uncle who had been in the American civil war, but refused to go back later to follow that crazy soldier, Custer. It wasn't history as far as she was concerned - just another piece of family folklore.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Yes, really makes you realise that in some ways it's actually not all that long ago, doesn't it?
My godfather (b 1928, and whose eldest daughter is my age) was researching his family history a few years ago but ran into problems with information about his grandfather, because he was was born just before registration of births came in in 1837.
[ 28. March 2013, 13:25: Message edited by: Albertus ]
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Offeiriad
Ship's Arboriculturalist
# 14031
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Posted
Someone once congratulated my father on living long enough both to see Bleriot fly the English Channel and to use his own laptop, but he thought that his father (my grandfather) had witnessed greater changes in his lifetime, having lived long enough to see both the first steam traction engine in Shropshire and the advent of manned space flight.
Our family are bad news for pension funds!
Posts: 1426 | From: La France profonde | Registered: Aug 2008
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
My paternal grandmother lived through the Spanish-American war, the assassination of McKinley and the end of the Vietnam conflict!
Granddad lived through two World Wars and fought with the US Navy in the first one, aka The Great War.
One of the most impressive people I ever met was a former Tuskegee Airman : a brave black fighter pilot who saved many white pilot's lives in The Last War and gave me a guided tour of the museum at the Santa Monica Airport, a general aviation facility near LA about eleven years ago.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Yes, really makes you realise that in some ways it's actually not all that long ago, doesn't it?
My godfather (b 1928, and whose eldest daughter is my age) was researching his family history a few years ago but ran into problems with information about his grandfather, because he was was born just before registration of births came in in 1837.
My mother was born in 1900. When she wanted to get a passport in 1950 there was a problem because she had no birth certificate. They didn't register births in Virginia in 1900.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
... born just before registration of births came in in 1837.
When I was a student, I worked in the local library in the long vac and my job sometimes involved looking up census records (on microfiche readers - it was the early 1980s), but anything before 1841 had to be got from the parish records in the district (or island) where the people had lived.
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
The funny thing is how I was born after decimalisation, and was always taught metric instead of imperial measurements at school, but a lifetime of talking to people who didn't understand that modern-fangled stuff has caused me to think in imperial for many purposes*. Now my children are having the same problem understanding me as I did with my parents.
The only good thing about this is that I can remember most of the basic metric-imperial conversions and do the mental arithmetic well enough to act as a sort of intergenerational interpreter.
* - I measure myself in feet and inches, I weigh myself in stones and pounds, my car does miles to the gallon, rough distances are always in yards, and so on.
I'm the sort of conscientious person who obediently started converting when told.
Went to a wood merchant once to see if I could buy a piece of particle board and the young man told me I could only buy a whole 4 foot by 8 foot sheet. "What's that in proper measurements?" I cheekily asked him – I assumed they quoted in Imperial for people with grey hair, but I now suspect that there are whole cultures where old style still rules. Interesting that builders measure in millimetres, while dressmakers use centimetres.
We were a bit resentful when miles per gallon was replaced by litres per 100 kilometres, but I find it easy and logical now. I just have to remember that 7 is much better than 10.
At primary school, we had to know not just our tables (up to 16 times for pounds and ounces, 14 times for pounds and stone) but parts of a pound: one third = 6/8, one 12th= 1/8 and so on. Instant answers expected.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Random example to make the point that your liquid measures are different but your dry weight measures are the same. Except you measure dry ingredients by volume, of course. [/QB]
You can mix them. One litre of juice (when I'm making jelly) equals one kilo of sugar. The same idea as 'cup-for-cup'.
Modern electronic scales do away with measuring things in separate bowls. Weigh your bowl and return the reading to 0; weigh your butter and press the button again – and so on. I do enjoy being able to measure exactly,say, 125 grams of butter.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
I could apologise for multiple posts but visions keep popping up.
Who remembers the system in department stores when your money was put in a little capsule with the salesperson's docket, and this either shot through a tube by compressed air, or was propelled on an overhead wire, to the cashier, who returned it with your change and receipt?
There was always a chair for the customer to sit on while the sale was concluded.
Come on, there must be someone out there...
(That would be the shop that had one of two escalators in the city on which you got to go up if Mum had time.)
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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HenryT
Canadian Anglican
# 3722
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
... the system in department stores when your money was put in a little capsule with the salesperson's docket, and this either shot through a tube by compressed air, ...
GG
D.M. Brown's, Dundee had this. Oddly enough, Home Depot stores still have a pneumatic tube, although used for sending cash from the till when the total is too high.
D.M. Brown's also had a kid's magazine that published stories in a secret code. One afternoon,my father and I cracked the substitution cipher. By frequency analysis, which worked nicely. Later, I joined the club to get the official version, which did have a nice mnemonic device. I still know that code key!
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"Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned" P. Henry, 1788
Posts: 7231 | From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Dec 2002
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
Modern electronic scales do away with measuring things in separate bowls. Weigh your bowl and return the reading to 0; weigh your butter and press the button again – and so on. I do enjoy being able to measure exactly,say, 125 grams of butter.
Presumably they give you decimal points of ounces, though.
I can't visualize quantities in metric the way I can in imperial. I'd have to look up 125g of butter to see whether it was a lot or about what you might expect for that particular recipe. I was taught the metric system at school when I was about 12 and living outside England, but more as a "you might need to know this one of these days if you ever go abroad" sort of thing than a "this is what we're using from now on".
"Kilometre" wasn't a word any of us had heard used before and there were three different pronunciations going around in those days: killo-metre, killommetre, and kylo-metre.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
Who remembers the system in department stores when your money was put in a little capsule with the salesperson's docket, and this either shot through a tube by compressed air, or was propelled on an overhead wire, to the cashier, who returned it with your change
GG
I remember those. In fact, I remember it was often the norm to pay a cashier at some point remote from where you actually got the goods. It wasn't the multiple modern banks of tills either. I remember about 25 years ago meeting a survival of this in a now (unsurprisingly) long gone department store. Having selected a towel, we then had to process to another floor and seek out a chain-smoking old biddie in her cubby hole whom I'm not sure didn't write out the transaction in longhand in a Big Book.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
quote:
Who remembers the system in department stores when your money was put in a little capsule with the salesperson's docket, and this either shot through a tube by compressed air, or was propelled on an overhead wire, to the cashier, who returned it with your change and receipt?
There was always a chair for the customer to sit on while the sale was concluded.
Come on, there must be someone out there...
(That would be the shop that had one of two escalators in the city on which you got to go up if Mum had time.)
Camerons in Inverness had the compressed air tubes. No escalator though; Inverness's single escalator was in Woolworths. Staff were constantly having to chase kids off it.
I have just had an advert in my e-mail for a 1990s "retro night."
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556
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Posted
We had em in Rhodesia once upon a time. Remember them well.
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
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Posted
I remember the pneumatic payment and docket receipts too.
There used to be a large millinery shop in Sydney which sold complete hats but also the bare skeleton.
Customer chose trimming and ribbons and sat at a stool on revolving floor where possibly a dozen milliners trimmed the hats with chosen fripperies. June Millinery it was called. Free trimming.
It was unheard of to go to the city, even in 60s without a hat. I went by train once and a train passing in opposite direction created a suction which pulled my hat right out the window. My first stop in town was June Millinery to replace it.
[ 29. March 2013, 08:42: Message edited by: Lothlorien ]
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Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.
Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
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Polly Plummer
Shipmate
# 13354
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Posted
I loved the compressed air tubes: they seemed quite magical.
Another thing I miss is coloured bus tickets and the dinging machine with which the conductor would punch the right one for you. My little brother had a bus conductor's set which I envied greatly.
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Nikon User
Glittering Images
# 5940
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Posted
My son's 21yr old girlfriend just described me as "sprightly".
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"There is plenty of work for love to do"
Posts: 246 | From: Cumbria, UK | Registered: May 2004
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
Modern electronic scales do away with measuring things in separate bowls. Weigh your bowl and return the reading to 0; weigh your butter and press the button again – and so on. I do enjoy being able to measure exactly,say, 125 grams of butter.
Presumably they give you decimal points of ounces, though.
I can't visualize quantities in metric the way I can in imperial. I'd have to look up 125g of butter to see whether it was a lot or about what you might expect for that particular recipe. I was taught the metric system at school when I was about 12 and living outside England, but more as a "you might need to know this one of these days if you ever go abroad" sort of thing than a "this is what we're using from now on".
"Kilometre" wasn't a word any of us had heard used before and there were three different pronunciations going around in those days: killo-metre, killommetre, and kylo-metre.
I don't do ounces, though the scales have both options.
We progressed fairly seamlessly from pounds to kilograms. 125 gm is a quarter of a 500 gm block which morphed from a pound of butter. A 'cup' is 125 gm flour or 250 gm sugar.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
My mother was born in 1900. When she wanted to get a passport in 1950 there was a problem because she had no birth certificate. They didn't register births in Virginia in 1900.
My father took the family Bible down to the Social Security office to register my grandmother and her sisters, and apparently this wasn't uncommon for people of their generation. That was where each family kept their records of births, deaths, marriages, and other events, and it was readily accepted by the office.
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
We had a bit of fun dealing with an application recently. My husband has no birth certificate, being born in Vietnam before the war. He's not even sure how old he is.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Zacchaeus
Shipmate
# 14454
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Posted
Went to a wood merchant once to see if I could buy a piece of particle board and the young man told me I could only buy a whole 4 foot by 8 foot sheet. "What's that in proper measurements?" I cheekily asked him – I assumed they quoted in Imperial for people with grey hair, but I now suspect that there are whole cultures where old style still rules. Interesting that builders measure in millimetres, while dressmakers use centimetres.
GG [/QB][/QUOTE]
We once had an extension built - the workmen all used feet and inches, even the young ones.
No metric in that firm....
Posts: 1905 | From: the back of beyond | Registered: Jan 2009
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Zacchaeus
Shipmate
# 14454
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Posted
Some years ago I worked with a woman who was born on a boat, on her family's way to the UK after the war.
She wasn’t registered at birth neither in the UK nor in the family’s point of origin.
When she came to get a passport it took her years as there was no record of her birth. It took a lot of digging and research and she finally found a baptism certificate, from the church she was baptised at, yet in another country along, the way when the ship docked en-route.
Posts: 1905 | From: the back of beyond | Registered: Jan 2009
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
... I was born after decimalisation, and was always taught metric instead of imperial measurements at school, but ... think in imperial for many purposes ...
I know what you mean. I was nine when decimal currency came in, so I was used to shillings, but at school maths and science were metric.
Having said that, like you I think for most practical purposes (cooking, height, weight, distances) in imperial.
And I'll never understand the North American habit of measuring everything, even butter, in cups.
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Very few people, other than drug dealers, have small weight scales here.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
This talk of birth records reminds me of a story that my wife told me. She was working for the county clerk/registrar, and someone came in for a marriage license. One of the lines was for place of birth, and wanted to know which state or country the person had been born in.
This person had been born in Danzig between the wars, and apparently had a great deal of trouble convincing Kristi's co-workers that the name of the city was all there was at that time.
Posts: 4358 | From: Bay Area, Calif | Registered: Mar 2003
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Inverness's single escalator was in Woolworths. Staff were constantly having to chase kids off it.
Woolworth;s had the first Huddersfield escalator.
As a child I used to go in to ride it, and for pick-and-mix.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Surfing Madness
Shipmate
# 11087
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
Who remembers the system in department stores when your money was put in a little capsule with the salesperson's docket, and this either shot through a tube by compressed air, or was propelled on an overhead wire, to the cashier, who returned it with your change and receipt?
GG
When I was a child, one of the shoe shops still had one in the children's department (it was in the basement), I remember being fascinated. I was going to say I'm not that old, but maybe that's not true anymore!
![[Tear]](graemlins/tear.gif)
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I now blog about all my crafting! http://inspiredbybroadway.blogspot.co.uk
Posts: 1542 | From: searching for the jam | Registered: Feb 2006
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by piglet:
And I'll never understand the North American habit of measuring everything, even butter, in cups.
The first "modern" American cookbook was by Fanny Farmer in the nineteenth century. This was the system used in that cookbook, and it has been copied ever since.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
My sister and I were talking yesterday about our great-great aunt (Grandpa's aunt), and how much we enjoyed listening to her stories of growing up. They'd take the horse and wagon to town once a month to stock up on supplies. That mode of transportation isn't far removed from my life at all!
We also discussed how some young people roll their eyes when we tell them stories of our growing up.
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
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Last ever sig ...
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
What...one whole day younger than me, Balaam? ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
One of our ancestors (something like a great-great-aunt?) told wonderful stories about the family adventures traveling to California by wagon train in the 1850's, including attacks by Indians, etc. These were duly recorded by a younger generation and became part of the family lore. While my mother was doing some other work in the state archives, she looked up the newspaper report of the arrival of the wagon train and the only comment was "they had an uneventful journey". Apparently it was all in the imagination of a 16-year-old girl with nothing to do for 5 months in a wagon, since her sister (who had made the trip with her) never mentioned anything about them.
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
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