What were you doing?

It was half term and my eldest sister took me shopping just so we could use the new currency - it was very exciting.

I think I was working for the Gas board in the Gas Conversion centre dealing with Customerservice.

I was working as a bank cashier. The records were entirely clerical. At the end of each tax year we had to carry out the annual balance and calculate each customers interest. Then write it in customers’ passbooks. Learning the decimal system wasn’t difficult and we had practice role plays. But the changeover was a huge effort. On Feb 15th we had to balance all the accounts in LSD, then covert every customers individual balance to decimal, then do another balance. The totals had to agree within a certain margin. We worked a lot of overtime.

I was a stay at home mum of 5 children, and I remember being a bit peeved that whereas a shilling had 12 pence to it, the new 5 pence piece only had 5, so the kids penny sweets were then halfpence ones, and we only got 10 instead of 12 for that 5p.

I had just done my state final examination in my general nursing training and was probably awaiting the results.
Must say I can't remember any problems dealing with the new currency, wasn't getting much of a salary back then!

My eldest son would have been 7.5 months old so my days would have been filled with looking after him and our house. Very happy days.

I remember that prams and babies were always left outside the shops then. I was once so preoccupied with checking my change after going into the bakers [before I was used to the new money], that I started to walk home without him. I soon dashed back to him though, feeling very embarrassed.

Last year of primary school. The week before I got sixpence pocket money. That week I got 2.5p - it just wasn’t the same.

I was looking forward to my second birthday the following month I imagine!

I was working in a family run grocery store. Mondays were always busy as we sold bacon bones for soup etc., we often had a queue out of the door!
Monday 15 Feb 1971 was no exception, but the money was different.
I don't know how often I had to explain to older ladies that the bacon at 12p per pound was not 1s 2d but actually 2s 6d. Poor ladies thought they were getting a bargain.

12 yrs old at school looking forward to not doing those horrid £.s.d calculations, with ounces, pounds and stones, with long division.
Never did quite happen did it.

In my last year of nursery nursing training and planning my engagement for the Easter of the same year. Don’t remember any problems with managing the new money

I was at teacher training college. A cup of coffee cost about 3p in the common room and we saved all the twoops (2p coins ) for the table football machine !

My children were six and three years old at the time. As we had lived in Holland I was familiar with decimal currency so the change over didn't bother me at all.

Junior clerk in a bank, sometimes a cashier.
I remember all crowding round for a first glimpse of the 50p coins being tipped out of their bag.
We soon got fed up of counting them (by hand), tho.

In the Lower Sixth with a Saturday and holiday job at Woollies. I can’t remember having any training on the new money, but I do recall people just presenting a handful of coins and telling me to take what they owed.

And how pleased we’d been the previous year when it was confirmed that our Maths O Level would still be based around the Imperial system. We’d been so worried that we’d have to struggle with the complicated new one!

I was newly married and volunteering with WRVS as a secretary to the Area Manager. At that time WRVS sold baby milk which cost 1/6d but giving change was beyond the older ladies so I was regularly called from my typewriter to sort out the money.

I was very pregnant. My son was born in March. With a young daughter I didn’t have much time to worry about counting in 10s

I had our first baby a couple of months previously. An elderly man we knew gave us a set of decimal coins and an unused 10 shilling note. The idea was that when she grew up we’d show it to her and explain how she’d been born at a pivotal time in history. A lovely idea but sadly when we moved a couple years later it never made it to to new house! I’ve always felt a bit sad about that. Of all my children she’s the one who’d have appreciated it and kept it.

Franbern that is funny. I'm thinking how I would feel if my daughter offered to help. I'm late sixties.

Married expecting first child. Working part time in a Littlewoods Pools shop which sold beer making equipment. Not a long term job! Only for a few months. I'd actually forgotten. I found a rolled up mattress under the counter one Monday morning. I did not ask questions.

I had two small children. Public information adverts. were advising us to be there to help our elderly relatives, so I was cóncerned about my parents (who were only in the late sixties at the time. Offered to go shopping with them that first week, which they declined. Feel a little embarrassed about that now.

I was working in Barclays Bank & it was a extremely confusing time indeed! Also price of mostly everything increased . Retailers rounded up prices generally as it was easier I suppose

I was at secondary school. I hated Mondays that school year. Double maths followed by double latin. Then lunch and a single lesson of music. Sir would just play an LP record of some classical music. At the time I was into T Rex. Then to round off the day double french.

I can only remember adults saying the new money was all an excuse to put prices up.

I was at primary school. I think learning how to convert half crowns, shillings, sixpences and old pennies into the new decimal currency was our maths curriculum for the whole academic year!

At college, we had the new money in our change at the refectory, we were all exited