England Letter 2

We have now spent one whole week in Grange over Sands.  It has been 
filled with some new but mostly familiar experiences, tea with the 
Aunties, a car ride through the Lake District, walking to the shops for 
food, ringing around about letting flats (renting apartments), taking the 
train into Lancaster to hear John's sister, Frances and her husband, 
Andrew sing at the John O'Gaunt pub, and evening walks with John.

The most striking feature this last week, one which I would have never 
considered beforehand, was my constant need to do maths (math).  
Sure, I knew that I would need to convert dollars to pounds but I was 
familiar with that from earlier visits.  What I hadn't thought about was 
all the other conversions necessary to make sense of things.  When I 
want to know how far it is from my house to the Aunties, I find that the 
key is in kilometres.  Petrol (gasoline) is in litres (approximately 4 to 
the gallon, which amounts to about $2.45 American dollars a gallon).  
Then there is temperature which of course is given in celsius (double 
the degrees celsius and add about 30 to find farhenheit.)  When people 
weigh themselves they talk about stones (14 pounds - that's American 
pounds not English money - to a stone).  I was wondering about the 
calorie content of  something the other day and found "energy" on the 
label, only to find that it was given in grams (I don't even want to 
know).  Then there is cooking instructions - I was just trying to cook 
some simple rice, which I was told needed four ounces of rice to 1 pint 
of water.  Now in my pretty well equipped Holiday Cottage, there is 
not a scale, so I had to estimate the ounces and no one bothered to tell 
me that there is a special English pint so the rice was more than a little 
waterlogged.  When I was just getting used to the conversions, we 
decided to do some fell walking which really means go steeply up a 
hill.  Elevations are in - that's right - metres.  This one is easy - just 
multiply the metres by 3.28 and you are all set to go.  Our first 
Lakeland peak was Heron Pike at 2003 feet which is about 612 metres.  
I must admit that 2003 sounds much more impressive to me than 612.

John just reminded me that there are 24 hour clocks which works fine 
during the AM but gets somewhat confusing after noon.  I just have to 
remember to add 12 to the current time when I look at the train 
schedule.

Ironically enough, when I read the above to John, he pointed out that I 
had failed to convert the cost of petrol from pounds to dollars.  I know 
you must have been aghast to see that gasoline cost $2.45 a gallon, but 
actually it is closer to $3.80..