"Rusty Hinge" wrote in message
...
The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:
In article ,
Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from "Jim Paterson" contains these words:
"Kay Easton" wrote in message
...

little grey armour plated things, about 1cm long and 1/8 inch wide?

Please Kay, Metric or Imperial!! Call me old fashioned but I prefer
imperial
and I don't mean the sweets! Jim

Eh? I was admiring Kay's brilliant bilingualism :~}.

Quite. Everyone needs to be able to go to a builder's merchant and
ask for 3 metres of two by one :-)

And half a kilo of 2" nails...

This is as true as I am sitting he
Very shortly after the metrication of wood and the like, I went to a wood
yard and asked for two pieces of 6' by 2 by 1. The reply: "Sorry, mate,
but we've gone metric. So, after a quick bit of mental arithmetic, I
rephrased my request to "Two pieces of 2 m by 5 cm by 2.5 cm". The
assistant looked up a crib sheet and said "Oh, you mean 2 yards by 2 by 1"
and promptly served me with the required wood.

[Franz Heymann]