Old Coins

Wednesday 14th September   

Sorting through one of my boxes of possessions I seem to have dragged around with me for years, I have come across a sheet of white cardboard with all the pre-decimalisation coins sellotaped on to it.  I must have done this way back in 1971, or possibly slightly earlier when the idea of getting rid of them was first mooted.  I think I must have been keeping my own personal record of the passing of a certain way of life, a slower, a more intricate and idiosyncratic way of life too.  The currency was the first to go, and then imperial weights and measures, and now volumes and distances are fast disappearing too.  I wonder how long it will be before we start to see kilometres on our motorway signs, just in brackets to begin with I imagine, but I am fairly certain it will happen.

I don’t really mind, after all decimals are so much easier to understand, heaven knows how we all remembered how many furlongs in a mile, how many hundred-weight in a ton, and how may farthings in a pound (nine hundred and sixty, if you are interested).  It was such a quaint system really, and difficult to fathom (don’t get me started on sea distances and speeds) for anyone under forty nowadays I suppose.  But I still know how small an inch is and how long a yard of material, or how heavy four ounces of sugar are, or how much a half pint of milk is without thinking, whereas I struggle with millimetres and centimetres, and when on packaging it states that it contains thirteen grams of salt you have no idea if that is good or bad.

I am thinking whether to throw the sheet away, with the old twelve sided thruppeny bit and the silver sixpence, the rather grand looking half-crown and my favourite, the little robin on the farthing itself, but no, I think I will keep it, even if it is only a collection of old coins.