Changing Down !
by Fritz SpieglWhen did you last hear anyone say, 'I must go
and spend a penny'? The _expression_ is barely understood by the young,
the victims of inflation and decimalization. One is tempted to believe
that the abolition of pounds, shillings and pence was a carefully
considered, cynical confidence trick. It would have been perfectly
possible, simpler and cheaper, to decimalize by dividing the shilling
into ten pence and abolishing the half-crown; and many eminent and
clever people advocated it. But it would have been harder to hoodwink us
into paying 8s for a sliced loaf, 3s.6d. to post a letter and five bob
for The Times.
The weather men are trying hard to decimalize us, but they are not
winning. Fight them. Do your bit and discuss the temperature with your
child every day in Fahrenheit. For one thing they are themselves
confused, having recently started to say 'Celsius' in place of
centigrade. For all I care they can change next week to Reaumur (as on
the Continent) but my body knows when it has a temperature of 90� and
needs a couple of aspirins, while 37�C means nothing. In summer I can
tell the difference between 78�F and 80�F, but centigrade, with its
larger units, doesn't give any such idea. Which is why the headlines
will never scream at us "41�4�! PHEW WHAT A SCORCHER'. People simply
refuse to think decimally, just as they will continue to buy cars with a
good mpg, a quarter of sweets, half a pound of cheese, and walk 100
yards, not metres, to the pub for a couple of pints, not
half-litres.
Police will go on asking for (and getting) the heights of suspects in
feet and inches - 'five-foot-eleven', not 180�34 centimetres - but some
manufacturers have half-heartedly mock-decimalized: I recently ordered
some bookshelves described as 1,829mm x 457mm which, when translated,
came out as 6ft x lft 6ins. Why not say so in the first place? Others
have kept feet and inches but express fractions of inches in decimals.
One small decimal consolation: a 'unit of brightness in the
metre-kilogramme-seconds system is called a 'nit'.
Telephone numbers have been more difficult to remember since they
went all numerical; and besides, they give you no indication of where
people live, unlike FLEet Street, PADdington, BAYswater or VICtoria. In
America, alphabetic dialling is coming back, and it will also come back
here, just as the county names will assuredly return before the century
is out, mark my words. The SDP is already committed to this cause, but
I'll vote for anyone who promises to do so. You would hardly credit that
it was a Conservative government, on the advice of an Oxford historian,
which sanctioned this monstrous idiocy. At a stroke they abolished the
1,000 year old Ridings in favour of non-places you can't even pronounce
("Weshorksha" and "Sowshorksha") and created crazy anomalies - places
situated on the banks of the River Dee on the Wirral peninsula (Deeside,
Cheshire) having to be described as 'Merseyside' in the address; and
endless confusions, as between Tameside and Thameside, unrelated to the
Rivers Tame and Thames, respectively. Let them follow the GLC as soon as
possible.
Why didn't we assert British rule and make the Euros change to
furlongs and chains, bushels and pecks, or hogsheads, pipes, butts and
tuns of wine; or, better still, force upon them the Scottish liquid
measures (4 mutchkins = 1 pint, 2 pints = 1 chopin)? A couple of acres
of garden is meaningless in hectares; and Shakespeare would hardly have
written 'Full 82�9 centimetres five thy father lies...' and they would
never have bothered to fight the Wars of the Roses if all that was at
stake had been Greater Manchester and South Humberside.
The above is an extract from the article published in Dozenal Journal
no 5 (Spring 1987), where it was was reprinted from 'The Joy of Words'
by Fritz Spiegl (Elm Tree Books �5.95) by kind permission of the
author.
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