OT Can people not do mental arithmetic or use a calculator any more?

[John Armstrong]

Scottish shops (including supermarkets) can sell alcohol only between

10 am and 10 pm. Which is a PITA when you want to do your shopping early.

[ARW]

Or arrive back from work at 11pm and want a bottle of Whisky.

Anyone remember these days

and a Sunday afternoon lock in at the local pub

[soup]

Ooops seems England and Scotland have very different rules regarding the sale of alcohol. In Scotland the supermarkets still have the roped of aisles and the tills have some sort of time limitation on the sale of alcohol, till 10am.

Never said they wouldn't. Never meant to insinuate it either .

It was more if 'he' was saying you could buy drink easily at 9 am then all further statements were suspect too. I didn't realise at the time that in England you could buy alcohol at 9am.

Besides who of the great unwashed would be awake early enough to eat breakfast. ;O)

[soup]

We used to drink in an hotel Sunday lunch times (only place open Without a lock-in[now there is an Oxymoron]). But to be in the bar you had to be a bona-fide traveller and sign-in (lots of D Ducks and M Mouses and as it was Scotland quite a few Jimmy Jinkishitters. etc etc, don't think anyone ever singed their real name).

[Robin]

Of course - it's usually short term memory that goes first with age.

I say that as I think we've established that most of are 20+ years older than you. And (as I think John Humphrys once said of Today programme listeners) I suspect our average age is about dead.

[Joe]

In my early drinking days it was alleged you could get a drink in London at any time of the day, if you knew where, though I never knew anyone who tried it. There was a pub about three miles from me that opened at 04:00 for the workers at the nearby railway yard coming off shift.

[ARW]

[SteveW]

Back in the mid-80s, as I started as a student, the student union booked a theatre to give a presentation to all the new students. This was long before licensing laws were reformed, but they told us how, by a combination of pubs, clubs, student union bar, casinos and so on, it was possible to legally drink for 23 hours a day!

Now my son is at uni and if they go for a night out, the clubs don't even close until 04:00.

[soup]

On 23/06/2022 09:10, John J wrote: How many can still use a slide rule or even logarithmic tables even if they are old enough to have been taught such stuff in school?

Who would want to use such? When even quite sophisticated calculators are less than a fiver . I CAN use a slip stick and tables ("remember your mantisa 'soup'" still rings in my head), but why would I want too ?

Being as approximate as they are. I still remember all the reverse Polish notation stuff (wouldn't know how to deal with it now) on calculators but thankfully all that crap is behind us.

Besides for adding up would an abacus not be better?

[SteveW]

Yes, as a child, receiving birthday presents and finding that we only had the wrong size batteries for something and could not buy any.

My father's watch battery failing on Saturday night and him flying to a business meeting early on Monday morning, but again could not buy a battery - even though it was identical to those used in hearing-aids at the time and so people could be left unable to use them without a replacement battery.

DIY that had to be done starting very early on a Saturday, so that if we found that we were short of something, we would find out early enough to get it and not be stuck on Sunday with no water or part of the electrical system isolated.

[soup]

Erm, never heard of solar panel calculators they work well under office/supermarket conditions.

And the accuracy of the slip stick is very dependent on ones eyesight.

All technology is cutting edge at one point, doesn't mean it stays that way.

>

[Robin]

London still has some "early houses" around the markets where you could enjoy a pint of stout with your full English long before the reform of the licensing laws.

[soup]

Guess who lives in Edinburgh (well its outskirts : Balerno) .Just a couple of miles from Napier university at Merchiston.

[Robin]

Yep - though not everywhere as we lived in a smoke control area for a while in the 1950s so had to be coke or other "smokeless" fuel.

I also remember getting up to go to school in houses where there were no fires lit and no heaters on. While I wouldn't want to impose those conditions on children today, I do wonder just what research lead to the recommended temperatures of 18°C – 21°C.

[NY]

I would imagine it is a *comfortable* temperature - one which is not so cold that you need to wear many layers of clothing, gloves, scarves (or many layers of bedding at night) to be comfortable while sitting or sleeping. If heating was available and was not prohibitively expensive, would anyone actually *choose* to be much colder? The problem with cold bedrooms is that you need lots of blankets etc, and some way (nightcap!) of keeping your head warm, though even that leaves your face cold.

We used to have our thermostats set to about 20-21 deg C. We have an Aga in the kitchen and a wood-burning stove in the lounge (burning our old tree-prunings from a couple of years ago, plus peat blocks and Hotmax sawdust blocks). When fuel prices rocketed, we turned down the thermostats for the two zones (wings of an L-shaped house) to about 18, and shut the kitchen door between the two zones. Given the fairly warm weather, the Aga and (in the evenings) the stove keeps the kitchen/lounge/dining room/my study wing warm with no heating for the past few months. The bedroom wing (including my wife's working-from-home office) has needed a bit of heating - maybe occasional 1/2 hour bursts from the central heating, though recently she bought an electric heated "poncho" which keeps her warm without even needing the central heating.

When the weather gets colder, we may need CH on more, but containing the Aga/wood-burner heat to one wing, and using electric blankets at night and the poncho during the way in the other wing will probably still allow lower thermostat settings than before the energy price hike.

We have two separate CH zones, with separate valves from the shared boiler, and with Hive control. That allows us to heat the two halves of the house separately, and also to see exactly when and for how long the thermostats have turned the boiler on.

We've recently turned the Aga down a bit so the hottest oven is now about

190 instead of the normal 230 deg C, and we'll use the hottest oven (normally for roasting) as the baking/cooking casseroles oven. We'll only turn the Aga up to normal if we need the hottest oven for a Sunday roast. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on gas usage. While we were away on holiday for a week, we turned the Aga down to minimum temp (rather than off completely, in case re-lighting is difficult) and the CH was off. During that time, gas usage fell from a normal 1.5 cu ft/day to 0.2. Before we turned the CH thermostats down (comparing the same months last year) our average daily gas usage was about 4.5 cu ft (Mar-May) rather than 2.5. Mind you, spring 2021 was very cold, so it's not quite like-for-like.

[Andrew]

The Bishops Finger was a classic market pub between St Bartholomews Hospital and Smithfield meat market, complete with sawdust on the floor.

[Andrew]

IS that the 'ladies' loo ?

[Andrew]

No Best-before or Use-by dates ?? (But with a high meat and fat content they are usually OK long after those dates, assuming they pass the nose test)

[Andrew]

And don't bother peeling spuds or carrots. The skin is where the vitamins are. I just scrub them under a hot tap, and inspect carefully and remove any iffy bits that might have created a brown mark under the skin.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Assuming the booze is beer, that doubles as a food.

But that £25 covers all your food and drink for a week? No coffees when out, etc?