Metric - I feel such a fool!

You also hear "Zentner" which is a hundredweight. This could be a 50kg sack of potatoes for example, or a child's weight.

With regards to the quarter of sweets: Again, here in Germany it is quite normal to ask for a quarter or half a pound of cold cuts or cheese. You get 125g or 250g of course, but everyone knows what is meant.

I had to ask the assistant in a shop to show me roughly how big a metre is, with her arms spread out.

I must admit I do ask when buying and using the metric system to asking the butcher what does 200 grams of braising steak look like.

I used to work in a sweetshop. We were forced to buy new metric scales, as the old ones were declared to be illegal. Nearly all the customers continued to ask for “a quarter of......” even though the sweet jars were labelled in ‘price per 100 grams.”
I’m not too bad with metric, but have to convert it to imperial, in my head, to visualise it. I think that the main problem with metric is that it’s so easy to mistakenly put the decimal point in the wrong place. I remember a baby dying because it had been given ten times the dose of m edication due to this error.

(I was just about to post this when I realised that it had written that I used to work in a ‘sweatshop’. Darned predictive text,

We did both at school and became familiar with both. Now I live on the continent of course metric is all I have. I can never remember my height in metres though. And I can easily visualise rods, poles, perches, chains, furlongs and fathoms.

I'm forever converting recipes (including American ones where they talk in "cups").

I still insist that the imperial measurements are more natural. So often I find that things are 2.5 cm, or an inch, and 30 cm (as in a foot, mentioned in the OP) crops up very often as a size of something.

Here in Germany I can ask the butcher or the grocer for a pound of anything (500g), and a loaf of bread is often described as an "Einpfünder" or a "Zweipfünder".

Don't understand when we went decimal with the money we didn't do the same with metric. We all managed to cope with the decimalisation okay. On the rare occasion I am following a recipe I luckily just have to press a button on the scales and it converts to gms but most recent recipes are metric anyway. I'm definitely in miles when driving!!

I remember when the TV weather forecasters moved from F to C for temperature, they had a
contest for a mnemonic to help people to adjust. The winning rhyme was:
"5 and 10 and 21
Winter, Spring and Summer sun"
And this has served me very well ever since. Apologies to whoever composed this - I'm afraid that your name hasn't stuck in my mind in the same way..!!

Sorry only do inches and feet but weights in metric and miles in km.

My doctor's scales are in kilos not pounds and stones. I ask what my weight is in stones and she has to look it up on her computer. I said wouldn't it be better if you had scales with dual markings on as surely many people still understand their weight in stones not kilos. She said yes it would be better but this is what she is supplied with???? Ludicrous.

Surely it is illegal to price - and sell - things in lbs alone Bijou? Traders were prosecuted years ago for refusing to change over.
Supermarkets tend to show both prices.

Another here who doesn’t like metric.
I wasn’t brought up learning it and even now I often struggle to convert back and forth.

missdeke DH found that hilarious when he went to buy some 2" x 2" - he asked for 6ft and was told it was only sold in metres!

I went into a butchers last week and asked for 500 grams of mince. The girl looked at me strangely and I realised they were still pricing everything in pounds. A lot of market traders still do likewise.
Some years ago before we went metric it me some time after living in Europe for twelve years it took me some time to realise that a pound of something was less than half a kilo.

I was just musing that I tend to think in metric then I read quizqueen's post about height - and also weight!

We always expect to hear the weight of new babies in lbs and ounces although I was told how heavy DGS was in grams.

I just cannot get the hang of metric measurements at all, much to my family's irritation. I can't seem to "picture" what 10cm looks like, whereas 4 inches is crystal clear and I know exactly what size hole to dig.
As for millilitres and millimetres.... I'm doomed.

What i don't understand is why if you want to buy some wood it's in metric for the length but in imperial for the width. e.g. 2 metres of 2x2 (inches)...

I always use Google to convert.0
My mind seems unable or unwilling to take metric on board.

I see no reason why the UK had to change from the imperial system to the decimal one other than that, of course, someone else told them to! What amuses me is when I talk to younger people in imperial measures and they say they no idea what I am talking about but when I ask them how tall they are, they reply, '5ft 6" or similar!'.

I have really enjoyed this post as I still have to double check conversions, so imagine my surprise to find that the allotment I’ve just taken over is 5 rods!
It’s huge

For me imperial weights and measures belonged to living in Scotland as a child, where traffic drove on the left, and you only shook hands with someone when you met them for the very first time.

Metric measurements belonged in Denmark where the traffic moves on the right and where in my childhood you shook hands every time you met someone, and curtsied as well if you were a little girl, (boys bowed) and adult men bowed as often as not, when being introduced to women. Now curtseying has gone out of fashion, and we don't shake hands very much either.

I've just returned from church where there was a new baby with his proud parents. I asked the weight when he was born and they immediately said 7lb 6oz. They did not say his weight in kilos.

I use both oz/lbs & g/kg for recipes (my scales have a setting I can change easily) as suits my fancy/recipe.

I buy my petrol buy using 4.5L is 1 gallon, makes it easy to decide how much I'm going to need for the next 1/2/3/4 weeks. I only fill my car up when going to visit DM as it's an almost 300 mile journey & I refuse to fill up at a Motorway Service Station.

I still work in Imperial where possible & can't get my head around temp in Centigrade, my mobile shows it in Farenheit

Living in Europe means living with metric all the time. Luckily I have an English set of scales to weigh myself because all scales sold here are in kilos only. Just as cars only show kilometres unlike cars in the UK which show both miles and km. When driving I still mentally convert distances to miles by dividing by 8 and multiplying by 5 to see how far we have to go.

Megan 123.Me too. When we Brexit, no more bow and scrape,YAY, and not forgetting we stood our ground over £/ euro, wonder if we will go back to our old system of weights and measures.?