Fifty Years Ago

We were living in Belgium then and using francs and cents, so by the time we came home to decimal currency we had no problems. I remember my mother and father being unable to get their heads round it though! I’m afraid I still use pounds and ounces though.

Apart from decimal currency I still think of old weights as stones pounds and ounces. A five pound bag of potatoes and a two pound bag of sugar. All my recipes are in old measures, and if I stand on the scales I want to see my weight in stones and pounds as kilos are meaningless. Its not just me, is it?

Things were 99¹/²p.
I remember my mum being cross at that because it was more than it had been.

I worked in a library. We were invaded by a mob of angry, elderly shoppers - demanding to know, instantly, what this or that was in real money!

I had to draw up a poster, pretty quickly, to display comparisons/conversions

They'd all noticed that local shops had all increased their prices, rounding everything up, not down.

We were still in the uk but about to emigrate to Australia. I can’t really remember the discussions about the metric system, I thought you still had pounds shillings and pence ? We have metric here and I find one of the confusing things is heights of people in cm rather than feet and inches. I have got used to metres in material but the weight of babies has me foxed. Many still think in terms of pounds and ounces, younger ones too.

I still miss pounds shillings and pence, it was money with character. I remember my brother and myself emptying out our red tin money boxes using a knife and how excited we would get, half a crown, thruppenny bit a sixpence a penny, A shilling and two shillings..... That was in the days when you had to save for things and we could only get money out of those money boxes twice a year once for the fair and once for Christmas... and yes they were happy days....

I about 7, and it was very confusing when we played in our pretend 'shop' at school.
I never really understood pounds shilling and pence properly at that stage anyway.

I was 14 still at school the local sweet shop ripped us off when the decimal coinage came in. I had a Saturday job in a hairdressers. What I earned paid for return bus fare to go there ridiculous!

I can’t work out how big or small a new born baby is in kgs! I need to know in lbs. and ounces.

We still drive at miles per hour. Some people still like to know the weather in Fahrenheit. I can visualise someone who measures 5’ 10” but not if it were in metres and centimetres.

We’re a bit mix & match really aren’t we? Neither one thing nor the other.

It was my first year of teaching, a Junior class, and I remember having to teach the new currency. They all found it quite easy.

I was still at school, and remember old ladies (who were probably not really old at all!) asking me to convert prices to 'real money' in the shop opposite the school .

I can still convert to and from LSD now.

I remember going into a small supermarket on the first day with my daughter in her pushchair and fumbling about in my purse to get organised.
I agree Grandma70 the old names were more interesting.

I had a Saturday job in WH Smiths working on the tills. No automatic tills then, I had to work everything out in my head but they didn't sack me so I must have been doing ok.

I was working as a Window Dresser in London and volunteered to go and buy biscuits for our break so I could shop with the "funny money" I felt like I was in a foreign country and remember being very excited by it!

So much easier than £.s.d.

My Saturday job was working in the cash office of the Co-Op department store. That was a steep learning curve, when we changed and people were trying to make their Club Card. payments.

At the time I spent most of my days at work juggling with short tons, long tons and metric tonnes, converting one into the other. So the currency change was childs play in comparison.

I knew all the conversion rates so well that when later that year I gave birth to my first child, I spent all the time they spent taking me from delivery room to ward, worrying because I had been given his weight in kilos and then lbs and oz and I knew they had got the conversion wrong and wishing I had my slide rule with me so I could sort it out!

In the end I did the maths in my head - and I was right. They had got it wrong.

My mother was very insulted because the media kept questioning how pensioners, poor old things, would cope. She was a pensioner and had no problems at all. Neither did I, but I do regret the loss of the lovely characterful names like half-crown, shilling and florin. Pees aren’t as interesting!p

I had been dating DH for about 5 months and we used to help out at the coffee bar at the YMCA in Watford where we met. We were on duty that evening found the swap over quite easy but many customers were confused.

I was working as a Management Trainee at John Lewis. We didn’t open on Sundays or Mondays back then,so we all went in and changed all the prices! We were paid and given free lunches.

I was a Saturday girl in the village shop and remember it took twice as long to serve everyone because they checked all the prices on the conversion tables that were pinned up around the shop.
I was sad to see the demise of the half crown , my favourite coin .

I went to the Ideal Home show with my mum and there was a stall selling little pieces of cheese on toast for 20p which we thought was OK. Then we realized they were not two bob each but four shillings! We were shocked! But ended up laughing about it. Happy days...

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I remember going to the Dental Hospital on the bus, fumbling in my purse for the right coins for my fare and feeling as though I was using foreign currency.

I should add that I then had to contend with the change from Deutsche Mark to Euros in 2002, and I still have to check the number on the coins in the "new money" here to make sure I've got the right change!

I was a Saturday girl at the time so I missed the training the rest of the staff got, which was on quieter days during the week. I was doing A level maths and the conversion was hardly rocket science, so I didn't have any problems.

However, after school and Tech, I left the UK for good in 1973, and even now when I go back, I still think of it as "new money".