Units of Measurement

One of the things many visitors to Britain are confused by is the working system of weights and measures. Although these islands officially went metric some decades ago, much is still sold in the old imperial measures.

I grew up in Australia, and when we went metric, we went metric.

End of story.

But then, Oz has a strange thing about its time zones. In winter, there is Eastern standard, then 1/2 hour behind is central, then 1 1/2 hours behind that is the far far away land of Western Australia, with western standard time. But  in the summer, Queensland, part of the eastern zone, refuses to do daylight time, so it slips behind central, so the country has 4 timezones in the summer.

Back to Britain, newspapers love describing the news in terms of things we – the idiots who pay for the papers – can readily understand. Items are weighed in multiples of bags of sugar – this is especially  good for  babies who are about the right size and most homes have one at some time.

Areas are the size of football pitches, which is a bit limiting as not everyone goes to football, and most who do are men, who are allegedly better at such things than women, so perhaps a better measure would be … well, I can’t really think of an equivalent that is a standard, which maybe explains why the football pitch is what we have to live with.

Another measure of size is that of double decker buses – we all know what they look like although they are almost all in London – though they are being phased out I think, so maybe this is a unit of measurement about to follow the dodo.

But I have just heard of a new unit for we the peasants to measure things – in record sales. It is the Susan Boyle. Apparently Adele’s latest sales amount to 5 Susan Boyles. This is a metaphor I really struggle with, as these women do not correlate with sales, which re, after all, virtual anyway.

After my last post on the mind mashing story of Tessla, this is really  getting too much for a sunny day.

I think I need a nice cup of tea and a lie down.

Please do not ask me how  much tea or what weight of sugar I will be consuming. Probably 3 babies and half a football pitch of oversize granny smith red buses.