According to popular rumours I was just learning the art of climbing trees and thus refining my skills in the running-away-from-Kindergarten game, in which I was to become an expert. Happily ignorant of the fact of currency, not to mention foreign ones.
Just found an old coin, typically I may have paid my bus fare to school several times a week with one of this age, this one dated 1897. 240 to the pound would weigh in at around 2.25kg, worth around 8GBP in metal today. Yes I had to pay to get to school as I lived about 13 feet 6 3/4 inches inside the distance which would allow a free pass. At least my folks did not clog up the roads with a gas guzzler. OK who put these on the rail tracks for the heavy steam trains to flatten?
That's not actually a 'bun' penny, is it Geoff ? We used to save those for charity. They didn't want them with the widow's veil as I recall. Pennies on railway lines ? Yep !
That's not actually a 'bun' penny, is it Geoff ? We used to save those for charity. They didn't want them with the widow's veil as I recall. No think not. The most common date seemed to be 1901. Perhaps they minted loads that year. Reckon there cannot be much coinage that lasts 60+ years these days.
I was working in Chester, and would occasionally buy sandwiches from the baker's shop across the road. These would, typically, cost 1/- Following decimalisation they cost 10p and the staff tried to convince me the price had gone down !!
Half way through primary school already being screwed up by the "progressive" educational theories that were always tested on Leeds first. Not only did we have Decimalisation, we had "New Math" and phonetic spelling. Ten years later we had the 16+ Exam... How many of you have ever heard of that !?! /Sings jingle of the time/ "sixpence is two and a ha- alf new pence." /End singing/ By the way.. a "pint" is not only an imperial measure in the UK, Canada and the US, it is also used to mean "half a litre" in the bars of the Bordeaux region (not sure about the rest of France)... p.s. Been ofline for a couple of months and come back to 16,949 posts... lummy, thats some reading to do! p.p.s. I still have a little credit card sized thing that has one of those fresnel type plastic lenses that has old money and new money on it and depending on the angle you hold it you can see the relative grid of prices in one or the other.
At work closing out pound shilling and pence accounts and setting up the new fangled decimal accounts it was mayhem and complete confusion at the time.
I remember decimalisation very well, even though I was only five years old. My mum used to give me 1p every day (actually 1d to be precise) and I used to got to the corner shop to spend it. You could get a lot for a penny. I was on my way there one day and met a school mate, who showed my his shiny new penny and told me (wrongly as it turned out) that the shop wouldn't take my grubby big one anymore. Not believing him, I uttered something to the effect that he was talking cobblers and he must be wrong because mine was bigger than his! My other clear memory (although I'm not sure how reliable it is) is that my penny (and my new penny in the following days) didn't go as far. Overnight, you could only get two sweets for a penny instead of four. And people moan about inflation now!
February 1971 I was 13, in Gr 7 and no doubt a right little bastard in the throes of puberty. I do recall that girls and music began to be much more interesting that year. Maggie May was released in 71. One of my first favourites. Metric conversion started in Canada in 71 and was phased in while I was in school. In Grade 1, busy learning both systems. So now I can do feet and inches, liters and kilometers, ounces and grams. In other words, a complete mess !
I was 13, so at school. Never very good at maths, decimalisation was, in many ways a saving grace to me. Imagine this; from May '67-May '68 I was at school in the US, whilst my Dad was on a work exchange programme. For a year I worked in, and with, decimal money. We then returned home to £sd! Consequently, maths lessons involving money were a nightmare! Steve W.
On that day I went to White Hart Lane to get a ticket for the League Cup Final - Spurs v Aston Villa. It cost 60p to get into Wembley in those days. Jim
Retailing petrol at 34p per gallon (selling 3galls for £1.00) (I Started retailing petrol in 1965 @ 5gall for £1.00) Today @ 130p/ltr = £5.90 per gall approx. Ken
I was 13 and a half. Time does fly these days. 2 and half years later, started working as a cashier in a bank. No calculators and you had to add up in your head and put the totals in a ledger. Had my first cigarette at 14. Gave up smoking at the ripe old age of 18.
In Germany (Hemer) with 2 Field Regt RA with my wife & son. Already used to the decimal system with Deutschmarks.
