A Sign Of The Times?

Needing a new cutlery tray, we ventured into the Edinburgh branch of a chain of stores that specialises in things like cutlery trays. Realising that much of the UK has gone metric, we'd cleverly written down our measurement requirements in centimetres. We eventually located a cutlery tray but there was nothing to tell us its dimensions. A young assistant appeared and we asked if she would measure the tray for us. No problem! She took the thing away - and looked up the store's computer to get the information. (We'd naively imagined a tape measure might have been produced.) Back she came, having consulted the computer, with the tray's dimensions - in inches. As the three of us stood there, attempting to convert the imperial to metric, I thought again of that simple non-electronic device, the tape measure; how easy it would have been to convert, say, 13 inches to 33 centimetres. Unsure of whether or not the tray would fit our drawer, we left empty-handed. But ever-so-slightly amazed.

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