With regard to the many references in the press on the subject of metrication versus imperial measurement.
I really think that if we had all been brought into a world of metrication, we would have benefited, but to change to a 'foreign' system after - for many of us - a lifetime of imperial, it comes a little difficult.
With my building and carpentry background, measurements have played a vital role in my life; seeing at an instant the width of a door, the length of a floorboard and so on. Dividing mentally a sheet of plywood; working out the rise and going of a staircase about to be constructed - hardly a walking hour devoid of calculations.
Although for some years quite familiar with metrication - the two systems running together since 1972 - my brain still thinks in imperial, does a mental conversion and the mouth speaks in metric. I can readily understand why Americans had trouble recently with their wrongly measured space programme.
All the carpentry tools (and other trades too) now no longer suitable and have to be changed. Nobody in the government has suggested financial help should be offered to the vast numbers of craftsmen to replace their much loved, expensive tool-kits.
Perhaps the young apprentice when asked to find the length of a piece of wood replied: 'The length of this rule and this piece of string and (holding his hands a few inches, sorry, I of course mean several millimetres, apart) about this much, had the right idea after all!.
ROY WILLIAMS,
21, Amble Road,
Callington