Monday May 5th 2025 "Nostalgia - not what it used to be, admittedly, and yet it keeps coming back to haunt us!!!!"

Nostalgia - they say it "aint what it used to be", don't they. And yet, even today, nothing quite beats the nostalgia of the new parent re-living some of those early excitements of his own childhood, that's for sure! Like local dad Steve McKinley and his little son - awwwwww!!!! [Source: Onion News]:

Yes, awwwwwwww!!! Some things, at least, never change, especially in the animal world! And McKinley's experience takes you back, doesn't it - but only if you've had kids, needless to say. Otherwise it won't do much for you, admittedly!

For me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois, however, nothing gets us as teary-eyed as "pre-decimal money" - the money we both grew up with, when you could depend on there being 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a pound. It was a lovely feeling wasn't it, and I still remember the day when my dear parents agreed to raise my weekly pocket money to QUOTE "1/6" UNQUOTE (pronounced 'one and six'), or. more formally, 'one shilling and sixpence' as we used to call it in our quaint old-fashioned way!!).

I showcase our "nostalgia" clock, with its display of all the "real money"

coins that used to make holes in our pockets: from 12 o' clock clockwise,

the half-crown, the threepenny bit, the halfpenny (Victorian!), the farthing, the penny,

the sixpence, the florin or two-shilling-bit, and the shilling

- awwwww!!! Happy days !!!!!

flashback to the 1950s: me in the London suburbs, and Lois in Oxford

growing up in a world of pounds, shillings and pence

And that's why Lois and I both revelled in this weekend's "decimalisation" TV programmes on Channel 5, part of their current "1970s nostalgia" series, which was nice.

Awww!!! And remember the fun we used to have confusing foreign tourists! But did it keep them away, in the long run, and if so, maybe it wasn't as funny as we thought? Just saying! And it was nice anyway to see this old clip from a US citizen information 'short', preparing American tourists for the experience.

See? Simples, really, wasn't it!

And who can forget those 'decimal dollies' that shops employed to help customers check their new decimal change back in February 1971, when decimalisation day finally dawned? 

Awwwww (again) !!!!!

Even the posher shops, like Harrods in London, got in on the act, but called their women the Decimal Pennies, which was a bit more genteel, perhaps. 

Awwww!!! It really takes you back, doesn't it, but this Channel 5 programme doesn't shrink from asking the perhaps difficult questions for us to ponder, which is nice!

So, dear reader, here's Colin's unspoken "elephant in the room" for today.... if we ever decided, collectively, to go back to a 12-based system, not just in shillings and pence, but in feet and inches etc too - would a campaign featuring "duodecimal dollies" to help out older men of a certain age even be acceptable in 2025? Well, maybe yes, maybe no - but your views welcome (postcards only!) !!!!

I wonder.....!!!!

All in all, however, the programme provides a welcome look-back, although more for Lois than for me, because I missed out on the whole malarkey. Yes, the big change-over happened during my study-year in Japan. And so the new money was a total eye-opener for me when I landed, bleary-eyed after a 20-hour journey from Tokyo, at London's Heathrow airport in the late summer of 1971, to be greeted by my then-fiancée Lois, and my sister Jill.

flashback to 1971: I arrive at London's Heathrow Airport bleary-eyed 

after a 20-hour journey from Tokyo, to be greeted by my then fiancée Lois

 and my younger sister Jill (, having just discovered, courtesy of HM Customs, 

the decidedly dubious delights of going decimal (!!!!!!)

Poor me!!!! 

I even had a bunch of old-style British coins in my pocket when I landed. And, famously in our family, when HM Customs decided to charge me £10 for bringing into the country a cheap Japanese cassette recorder, I wrote the cheque out, old-style, as "£10-0-0", i.e. 10 pounds, zero shillings and zero pence, and the customs guy made me tear my cheque up and make him out another one, this time writing the amount as "£10.00" - i.e. so-called 'modern style' !!!!

What madness !!!!!

Later Lois and I were lucky enough to be blessed by the birth of two lovely daughters, and we managed it the old-fashioned way, which remained 'legal tender' even in the decimal era (!). 

The only downside was that our 2 little girls never got to experience the joys of the old money in their childhoods! In fact, our younger daughter Sarah actually learnt about "dollars and cents" before she learnt about "pounds and pence" - because in 1982, Lois and I whisked them off for 3 years in the States.

flashback to 1984: our old driveway next to our house in Columbia, Maryland USA,

our (then 7-year-old) daughter Sarah manning her little neighbourhood drinks stall, 

eager to make a few extra cents for her "nest-egg" courtesy of passing neighbours

- and behind her in the car-port stands Lois's blue Hornet - happy times !!!!!

Yes, our Sarah was fascinated by 'dollars and cents' from an early age - no surprise that she became a chartered accountant, to put it mildly, now in Perth, Western Australia, but still practising her "black arts" both in Australia and also in the UK at the same time!!!!!

Our little "Two Jobs" Sarah, (left) celebrating, in 2015, the 80th 'birthday' of the 

accountancy firm she works for in Evesham UK, and (right) Lois and me picking Sarah up

from her Perth office during our visit to Australia back in 2016

And finally, here's mine and Lois's arguably more famous "coin display", this time reflecting, in part, our Anglo-American experience. 

Our other main coin display, partly reflecting our Anglo-American experience,

including (4th row) a set of silver dollar, half-dollar and quarter-dollar coins,

plus (bottom row) an 1863 British penny we dug up in our back garden, 

plus 'birth-year-farthings' for my dear late mother (1919) and for us (1946)

And Sarah's 1984 drinks stall still remains the nearest anybody in our family has ever got to holding a car-boot sale, would you believe. Lois and I think of this when Steve, our American brother-in-law emails us today with his pick of the week's three most amusing Venn diagrams, which he monitors on our behalf on the world wide web:

Haha, some good ones again this week! And, by the way, Lois and I are still waiting to be invited to take part in one of Pete Hegseth's chats, they sound absolutely fascinating from what we've read - just saying, Pete - our diary is pretty free this week at the moment, but it could start filling up pretty soon, when today's Bank Holiday is over haha !!!! 

Will this do?

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 Zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!