The past is a different country. They do things differently there.

[Ecneps]

                        HOW OLD IS GRANDPA ??

70   
No, the big clue is before tv, now when did that start?

[Pels.]

Well the advance of penicillin saved a lot of lives in World War 2 ..  and I remember having a sugar lump filled with the polio vaccine when I was quite young! 

[Gadget]

We didn't have sugar lumps - we real oldies  had shots in the arm. I remember we had one at 12 and then a booster later on  16 or 17 I think.

Barbara - I took 5 1/2 then but am now 6 1/2    My Mum was always fussy about shoes. I remember that some of my friends used to get theirs from Stead and Simpsons. Mum though that they were not good enough so it was the Clarks  shop for me most of the time 


Gadget

[JAP]

Jean,
But your 1p and 2p coins remain more valuable than our 1c and 2c ditto     Ours are on a scale of 100c to a $A: yours on a scale of 100p to a Sterling (GB) Pound (note that a Pound is worth more than twice an Aussie dollar)

Lynn H,
Your puzzle about Grandpa seems to be something of a trick and depends on interpretation of the words and of locations     But whatever answer you give is surely not to do with TV - introduced in Australia in 1956, and very very much earlier in England (first transmission 1936 by John Logie Baird??).  Man walked on the Moon in 1969.  Both TV here, and the Man on the Moon, were long after my Grandpa (1855-1949) passed on ...  I suspect that my Grandpa would have watched in utter interest and fascination and would greatly have enjoyed all the modern developments; but also that he would have shaken his head about them ...

And you don't need to go as far back as Grandpa - one of my own sons (a computer boffin) expresses amazement about the world his children (daughter 18 and son 10) have grown up in vis-a-vis his childhood!  What will my other grandsons - 6, 3, and 1 - see!!

As Grandpa surely would have thought, I doubt that we really need any of the great improvements that are mentioned in the Grandpa puzzle 

I know I could happily live without any of them ...

Cheers,

JAP
PS: Hang on - could I really cope without my computer and RootsChat 

[Jean McGurn]

Thanks Canuc & Lynn. Solved the problem for me.

I knew that the U.S. Gallon and Imperial Gallon were different but I wasn't too sure about the weights. 

Jean

[Lydart]

I can't remember exactly when decimalisation of money started in UK (I was overseas) but my mother insisted until almost the day she died that the new fangaled 'new pence' "wouldn't catch on" and still mentally worked in £ s d !    I've got some of her 'Dairy Diary's' where she has noted the cost of the weeks milk, and put so much, with it recalculated into £sd !!  That was in the 1990's !

[JenB]

I can't remember exactly when decimalisation of money started in UK

15th February 1971

[/i] and still mentally worked in £ s d !

I still do that occasionally - this decimal stuff isn't 'real' money

Jennifer

[Gadget]

I still do that occasionally - this decimal stuff isn't 'real' money

And the sums were harder in those days - do you remember dividing £249.12s. 4 1/4d by 13 (or whatever) 

Gadget

[meles]

No, the big clue is before tv, now when did that start?

2 November 1936 was the launch of the BBC's regular broadcasting here in the UK.

In South Africa TV did not start until - amazingly - 1975!

meles