I wanted to buy a tablecloth yesterday so I wandered along to Sainsbury's to see what they had. Finding a tablecloth was the easy bit, but figuring out how big it was turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. Needless to say the packaging only had the measurements in centimetres, which are just unfathomable numbers to me. I asked the girl at customer service what 180cm x 125cm came to and she looked at me blankly. Then she tried to find someone who might know, and when that fialed she scampered off to find a free computer so that she could Google it. Returning with a hapless look on her face she mumbled something about seeing if her desk diary had the information, which was when I told her to forget it and walked out without my tablecloth.
My next port of call was a discount warehouse that also sold tablecloths in the metric style that nobody understands. I found one that was 210cm x 150cm and I held it up to see if that action would inspire God to give me the size in feet and inches. Needless to say the bugger ignored me so I turned to a bloke who was stood next to me.
"Any idea how big 210cm x 150cm is, mate?
"Dunno, sounds big though, dunnit?"
"Yeah, but how big?"
"I think that 180cm is about six foot," he said, dubiously.
"I seem to remember that the wife told me that she was 1 metre 50 tall, and I think that's 150cm, isn't it?
"I suppose so," said the bloke.
"Well, I'm a midge's dick over six foot so this is taller than me," I said.
"And it's as wide as your missus is long," the bloke chipped in, happily.
"Should fit the table," I said, before thanking the bloke for his help.
So I got myself a tablecloth, but really, do we think that it is a good idea to use a system of measurement that very few British people even pretend to understand, on the principle that deep down inside we are all good European federasts?
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