Jack just makes it in time – –

One of my early memories is of being given a new jotter (exercise book) at the beginning of each school year when I was attending primary (elementary) school. Some pages were plain, some were lined and some were graph paper. The cover was blue but it’s the back I particularly remember!

On the back cover were various lists of measurements – all incomprehensible imperial ones!

Pounds, shillings and pence – 20 shillings in a pound, 12 pennies in a shilling, 4 farthings in a penny – –

Just to confuse further there were guineas! 21 shillings!!

I won’t get into the slang terms – a bob, half a bob, half a crown, a tanner – –

Then there was linear measurement –

Furlongs, chains, miles, yards, feet and inches – –

I was so used to feet and inches that, when I eventually started teaching apprentice painters (who had grown up with decimals) I had real difficulty converting.

Also, there was capacity –

Gallons, quarts, pints, half pints – –

Paint cans went from gallons to 5 litres, but when I moved to the US I found that an American gallon is smaller than an imperial one – –

Finally –

There were weights as well – tons, hundredweights, stones, pounds and ounces.

We were required to recite all this stuff regularly and be tested on our knowledge!

Eventually decimalization and the metric system arrived and everything became much simpler. But for some reason wallpaper continued to be 21 inches wide and 7 yards long – – –

I wondered why ‘jotter’ also crops up when you are ‘given your jotters’ – in other words fired/sacked/laid off. So I asked my friends on Facebook – that will be a different post – – –