Poetic licence

While I slept last night he stumbled home ... and fell over. It seems he's hurt himself and his jeans. By tonight the grace has become a half-inch deep chunk gone from some that bit just beneath the knee where I have pretty much no flesh.

Hm. I'm such a shocking cynic and such an unfeeling wife. I can't help but suspect that the hole might be a little tiny bit less than half an inch deep. Perhaps I should be kinder and blame it all on the move towards metrication which has been underway in this stupid country for something like thirty years.

If only this process hadn't been begun I'd be grappling with pounds, shillings and pence, throwing out all the recipes I grew up with as unworkable while learning to think think in terms of miles per hour, pounds sterling per gallon, Fahrenheit, stones, pints and other arcana. Instead absolutely no body knows if they're coming or going.

For example the weather forecast which is a particular bug-bear of mine is delivered in two languages; the audience hears both, they jostle in the ear and the upshot is that no body receives a clear and unambiguous message. I'm so irritated by the meaningless 77 degrees I don't hear the version of the forecast I might understand intuitively. Of course the boot is on the other foot for the antediluvialists who bitterly resent the intrusion of grams and litres and centigrade and other such newfangled and suspiciously european nonsense into their lives.

That's it. The poor lamb's befuddled by all these tinny Euro-measurement thingies. That's why he has a half-inch deep hole in his leg.