Mundane facts about your day...

[Gramaisc]

I used to like the thrupenny bit. Always reminds me of the Milk Way Bar vending machine outside 'Dukes's ' paper shop on Bodmin Ave.

And, of course, for a long time, there were the two completely different 3d coins in circulation together , the old small, round, 'silver' one and the larger, twelve-sided, new brass one.

 

[Noah]

View attachment 10385

Late 1950s? Possibly early 1960s if prices round here were lower that in East Anglia

 

[littleme]

I'm surrounded by people who are sad at the moment (genuinely upset & sad) and don't know how to help them, words aren't really helping.

I hate adulting.

 

[BobClay]

The hapenny (half an old penny) and the decimal whackjob the half new penny. I have a box full of old coins and foreign coins gathered over the years.

 

[Gramaisc]

The hapenny (half an old penny) and the decimal whackjob the half new penny. I have a box full of old coins and foreign coins gathered over the years.

View attachment 10392

The old ha'penny was a handy thing - an inch in diameter.

And three (relatively new) pennies was a good shot at an ounce.

 

[BobClay]

Some of the coins in the box. Bottom up (for the kids ... ): A bob. Two tanners. A thruppeny bit. A pretty old, old penny. Two 2 bobs, also known as florins. Strangely I don't have a 'half a crown' as back then I was a spendthrift. )

 

[Gramaisc]

Ah, the 'florin'. Introduced in 1849 as a start in the process of decimalisation, being a tenth of a pound.

It only took 122 years to finish it off...

 

[rudie111]

Right then, now I get it.

When I owned a little white Citroen with a pink roof, all the other drivers were lovely to me.

Husband buys me a BMW convertible for my 60th birthday and now hardly anyone lets me out of a junction. And the beeping and peeping of horns is horrendous.
Not to mention the one finger salutes.

It's got so bad that I've resorted to going out in a blond wig, bright red lipstick and designer sunglasses. Nifty head scarf as an added accessory.
Roof of the car off whatever the weather.

I thought that if the male drivers of this world were still judging people on stereotypes (or, as I think it's called nowadays "unconscious bias"), then what the heck, let's roll with it.

Did yours come with indicators or were they optional extras?

 

[BobClay]

The more I look at that Banana emoticon the more I think it's doing something vaguely disgusting which you shouldn't be doing in public ...

 

[staffordjas]

Had to walk the last part of my walk sniffing. Used my only tissue I had on me , picking up a discarded glass bottle glinting on dry grass. Don't like touching stuff ,especially these covid times, but would never have forgiven myself if the woods had have gone up in flames.

 

[BobClay]

That's a concern of mine too. I've got a box of surgical style rubber gloves for various DIY jobs, I might take the habit of carry a pair when I'm out walking. Way back when I was a kid, my Old Man took me up my first mountain, Scafell Pike. When we got to the top we ate our scran and then packed the rubbish away in the rucksack, I can still hear my Old Man saying: "What you take up the mountain, you bring down the mountain."
It's always stuck with me with regard to litter in general.

 

[rudie111]

That's a concern of mine too. I've got a box of surgical style rubber gloves for various DIY jobs, I might take the habit of carry a pair when I'm out walking. Way back when I was a kid, my Old Man took me up my first mountain, Scafell Pike. When we got to the top we ate our scran and then packed the rubbish away in the rucksack, I can still hear my Old Man saying: "What you take up the mountain, you bring down the mountain."
It's always stuck with me with regard to litter in general.

If only everyone else had the same principals.

 

[tek-monkey]

The top of Snowdon was terrible last time I went

 

[Mudgie]

The half crown was a remarkable coin, to outsiders, if you see it from their point of view.

It didn't actually indicate on it what it was worth, apart from being half of something that didn't even exist in normally circulation. Even if you, as a visitor, had come to grips with the whole pounds, shillings and pence thing, you still had to 'know' that a crown was five shillings, even though you would never seen a crown coin, and thus work out what this 'half crown' actually was.

I lived in a tourist spot in the 60s and remember often seeing American tourists (particularly) holding out handfuls of coins in shops, hoping that the assistant would remove the correct amount. We thought this was really odd, but they just didn't have the time to learn the system - and then there was also the fact that people used different word for things - pound/quid, shilling/bob, even sixpence/tanner, and you would still hear joey for threepence.

"Gee, pal, how much money is this 'half crown'?"

"It's two and a tanner, mate."

"even though you would never seen a crown coin" except in 1965 when special ones were minted in commemoration of Winston Churchill. ,

 

[Mudgie]

That’s the reason why imperial, whether monetary or measurements, should never be re-introduced. Imperial makes no sense at all.

But with the proper money before 1971 if you bought a dozen or half a dozen eggs you immediately knew how many pence each one had cost.

 

[Mudgie]

They even screwed up when they introduced metric currency. Out of some dark mind came the 'half P.' So you could end up with a price something like £15.25½ ... (which would technically be £15.255)

The banks immediately zapped it saying as far as they were concerned there was no such coin. Computer programmers ignored it and eventually it was kicked into touch.

Yes, cheques were only accepted in whole New Pence.

 

[Mudgie]

I went to Cyprus in August '68, where the pound was already metricated. Still being in the Sterling Area then, the pound was the same, but it was divided into a thousands mils. The smallest value coin you normally saw was the 5 mil piece, normally called a piastre, for historical reasons, and equivalent to the UK half new penny. There was, however a 1 mil coin, which you generally only ever got in change for an electricity bill paid in cash. If you got ever one, it was impossible to spend it - you might wait until you got four more and found somebody prepared to take them as a 'piastre' equivalent.

Having a thousand tiny coins to a pound always seemed to appear bizarre to people arriving out there, until you pointed out to them that, only a decade before, they had had 960 farthings in a pound.


'They' were slightly lumbered with the half new penny, as they decided to leave the old sixpence in circulation, as a two and a half pence coin. Without the half penny, these would only have been usable in pairs...

I went to Cyprus in August '68, where the pound was already metricated. Still being in the Sterling Area then, the pound was the same, but it was divided into a thousands mils. The smallest value coin you normally saw was the 5 mil piece, normally called a piastre, for historical reasons, and equivalent to the UK half new penny. There was, however a 1 mil coin, which you generally only ever got in change for an electricity bill paid in cash. If you got ever one, it was impossible to spend it - you might wait until you got four more and found somebody prepared to take them as a 'piastre' equivalent.

Having a thousand tiny coins to a pound always seemed to appear bizarre to people arriving out there, until you pointed out to them that, only a decade before, they had had 960 farthings in a pound.


'They' were slightly lumbered with the half new penny, as they decided to leave the old sixpence in circulation, as a two and a half pence coin. Without the half penny, these would only have been usable in pairs...

Cyprus having a pound divided into a thousands mils is similar to plans Britain had for decimalisation in the 1840s.
The Florin for Two Shillings was introduced as "One Tenth of a Pound" in 1849, the intention being that beneath it would be 100 not 96 farthings,
The Florin continued alongside the Half Crown for about 120 years - and is now 10p, later reduced in size - but a Double Florin, four shillings, was short lived.

 

[Mudgie]

I used to like the thrupenny bit. Always reminds me of the Milk Way Bar vending machine outside 'Dukes's ' paper shop on Bodmin Ave.

The dodecagonal £1 coin of the last five years is the new threepenny bit.
3d bought a (purple) stamp for an inland letter, a bag of crisps or a small Kit Kat.
I don't think you get much change out of £1 for those things nowadays.

 

[Mudgie]

The top of Snowdon was terrible last time I went

It was crowded when i was there six years ago.

 

[Thehooperman]

But with the proper money before 1971 if you bought a dozen or half a dozen eggs you immediately knew how many pence each one had cost.

Why would you want to know the cost of a single egg when you buy them in boxes of 6s or 12s?