The Idler, Friday, February 25, 2011

Let's do it in dozens

I THOUGHT I was the only one who still thinks in pounds, shillings and pence. But it seems I have a fellow-duodecimalist (person who works in twelves) in Charles Moore, columnist in the Spectator magazine and a former editor of that publication.

Moore laments that 40 years ago Britain went over to decimal coinage, almost by stealth.

"There was never any widespread popular demand for change, and the argument that people would find a decimal system easier was true in practice only of those who rarely used it, ie foreigners.

"From an educational point of view, our duodecimal system was preferable because it taught children how to count in different bases. People brought up before decimalisation are almost invariably better at mental arithmetic than those born since."

Quite so. Tell a youngster today: "If I pay a penny three-farthings for an apple, how much do I pay for a dozen?" – and he won't quick as a flash reply: "One and ninepence", as we did, he'll look at you as if you've just stepped off a spaceship.

Moore continues: "When we lost our shillings and pence, as when, more gradually, our weights and measures were subverted, we lost the full meaning of our nursery rhymes, jokes and proverbs."

He says he vowed never to utter the new values. The first pint of beer he bought on leaving school cost, he insisted, "two and six", not 12.5p. He would have stuck to this vow, except that his future wife threatened to have nothing more to do with him.

Yes, women grind you down. But I could not agree more wholeheartedly with Moor, the whole thing was unnecessary. As he says: "As with so many things touted at the time as modern, the switch now seems grotesquely out of date, all genuine problems of conversion having been solved by the microchip."

 

Economic truth

I WONDER if Charles Moore appreciates quite what an economic truth he has hit upon with his two and sixpenny pint of beer when he left school. When I left school in South Africa a pint of beer cost 1s 6d (15 cents). I recall quaffing an imperial pint of beer in London for 3s 6d and thinking it not bad value because the imperial pint was about double our South African one.

But where are we today? A pint of beer in London will cost you between £4 and £6. In Durban it will cost something like R18.

Decimalisation has brought ruin upon us all!

Evocative names

AS IN BRITAIN, decimalisation has played havoc with our nursery rhymes, jokes and proverbs. Here it has also made redundant the wonderfully evocative Zulu names for the coinage: Ufatingi (farthing); Istebele (halfpenny – from stable, it cost a halfpenny to stable your horse); dibilishi (penny – the "d" in £sd); Uthiki (tickey, threepenny bit); Uzukwa (sixpence); Usheleni (shilling); Uskoshimeni (two shillings/florin – "Scotchman". A Scottish contractor once tricked his workers by passing off florins as halfcrowns); Ufakulweni (half-a-crown). Alternatively Ingogo (idiomatic – "the price of a woman"); Ishume (ten shillings); Impondwe (a pound).

I say we've lost a lot.

Guerilla tactics

WHAT does one do about it? John Vigor, a predecessor in the Idler's chair, fought a guerrilla campaign for years. The Metrication Police came down from Pretoria regularly to see him, trying in vain to explain that there's no such thing as a metric mile; that he was being irresponsible and was in breach of the law.

But it's a wearisome thing with limited returns. We can pepper our speech with expressions like: "It's a pound to a pinch of nanny-goat manure that ..." Or: We're in the pounds seats ..." (the pound having also disappeared from our coinage, unlike in Britain). We can try to repopularise wartime songs like "I've got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence ..."

But I fear it's a losing battle. The youth aren't with us. They know nothing of pears at a penny-halfpenny costing one and six a dozen. All Charles Moore and I can do is think pounds, shillings and pence. When they charge R18 for a beer – bloody hell, that's nine quid!

Tailpiece

THE CAPTAIN of the Titanic calls a meeting of his officers. "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"The good news."

"We'll get 11 Oscars."

 

Last word

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Oscar Wilde

GRAHAM LINSCOTT