Imperial measurements

I think I can do most of it without a problem but then I go to the meat counter to order a joint and have to say I'd like one about half that size or whatever because I am not sure what the weight is,

My joyful moment was when a hairdresser asked me how much was to be taken off my GD's hair. 'Just a couple of inches' say I. Her look of consternation and confusion will never leave me. Wonderful. However, it did take a moment for the penny to drop with me. I'm slow like that! We resorted to the international language of signage and gesticulation and a happy outcome was achieved for all. We all laugh about that regularly now.

My husband used to talk in mm., even in room sizes.

As an Engineer, mine does that too Dj

DD and I laugh when he measures everything in "millies" even the size of a babies cot !

Yes - both! America still uses miles, pounds (weight), inches etc. I'm ok on metres but cannot think in kilos, and still have to do my weight in stones etc. However decimal money was a blessing when it came in! Can you remember long division in pounds, shillings and pence at school?

I use both but my children are metric only and laugh at we old people talking about feet and inches. We are always saying to them, 'in old money' which has become a ubiquitous term for 'in the old days.'

Yes cc I was going to make that comment about miles on road signs. I'm used to weather temperatures now, and balls of wool in 50g , but I still say my son is 6ft, and I still weigh myself in stones and pounds. Maybe our grandchildren will be the generation that are completely decimal.

Yes I do, although I do vaguely have a rough idea of the equivalent at the back of my mind
But mostly it’s a cup of sugar, flour etc,quarter or half of a block of marg, butter, or even lard yuk!
Worked well back in the day, but some dishes definitely turn out better with precision weighing?

Always imperial can't do metric at all especially in cooking. Actually with baking I never weigh anyway. Count tablespoons for ounces and cut butter in halves quarters etc for fat to flour ratio. Still seems to work even though the butter is slightly more than half a pound now.

Imperial. But I’m happiest with the weather temperatures in Celsius now. We live here & in Spain so over time I’ve converted I suppose. As an aside I’m glad the U.K. never embraced the euro.... but that’s for another day!

A complete mixture for me. Fabric is 100% metric in my head when I buy it, but I cut it in feet and inches.
In my kitchen I have traditional brass scales with weights - it came with imperial weights years ago, but I now have a set of metric weights as well.
Temperature is always Celsius for me, but my DH always converts to Fahrenheit.
My height and weight are imperial, but I make my GC's clothes according to their metric measurements.
Still tend to think of cheese, meat, veg etc in imperial, but I wonder if this is more because in general we haven't always had to actually ask for 150g, or 2.5k of something - we just pick it up off the shelves in the supermarket.

Definitely Imperial for me.

Thank goodness for dual displayed scales or I would be sunk.

I use metric for cooking and sewing. After travelling round the continent a bit I've got used to metres and kilometres. Can't do human measurements at all, height in metres is just weird and weight in kilos makes you sound so much heavier than stones.

I'm totally lost with metric. If someone tells me something was about so many metres away, I have no idea in my mind how far it was.

I`m still lost with metric. I love it when on the market, although the prices are marked so much per kilo, I can ask for a pound of something and still get it without question.

A metre measures three foot three. It's longer than a yard, you see.
A litre of water's a pint and three quarters.
Two and a quarters pounds of jam, weigh about a kilogram.
One pound is a hundred new pennies, a hundred new pence to the pound.

These were jingles in the 70s, to help us get used to decimalisation.

I can use both for cooking because my electronic scales which can be switched between them. Yards/metres of fabric are not really that different in small amounts and if you use a metric measuring tape its easy enough to sort out sizes. Like many people I simply divide a metric length by 30cm to see roughly how many feet it is.

Heights as shown on passports are metric which mean nothing to me. Its interesting that my children (now in aged 32-42) still give their height and weight in imperial units, though presumably all their maths at school were in metric. I weigh myself in kg as then I don't really have to think of the awful truth in stones!

The thing that I find most difficult is to remember whether there are 2.2 lbs in a kg or 2.2 pints in a litre.

There doesn't seem to be any point struggling with kilometres as long as our road signs are in miles. Does anybody else find it really odd that these have never been changed?

Both, but only because I have to work in metric. I thought I was equally capable of visualising in both until a friend described her new granddaughter’s head circumference in cm. I had this sudden vision of an enormous head.

MamaC - you're right about the 2x4. It is cut to that and then planed smooth, so is less.

I'm still using feet and inches, stones and pounds etc.

Imperial all the way I’m afraid, and I’ve a conversion table on the fridge for newer recipes, and American/Australian ones that tend to weigh in (different size) cups. I was surprised the other day when I made the effort to remember my weight in kilos and DD2 asked what that was in stones!

I remember how pleased we were to find we’d be the last year to do our O-level Maths exam using imperial weights and measures and £ s d. Because of course the calculations were so much easier.

Btw - if i remember rightly, when you buy 2 × 4 timber, it doesn't actually have those dimensions, does it?

Same as harrigran, though I would add that I want height in feet and inches (even though I was buying my children's clothing based on height in centimetres back in the 80s).

I prefer adult weights in stones and pounds - Americans seem to give weight in pounds only but that means less to me than weights in kilos!

Use both but can not think of babies in anything but pounds and ounces.

I seem to have both running at the same time in my head so find it fairly easy but I much prefer imperial. My scares are electric and measure in both at the push of a button.

Babies? My daughter was weighed in Kilograms and measured in centimetres – and she was born in 1982. It isn't that hard to change and the UK's mishmash of sometimes imperial and sometimes metric is very confusing.