Matthew Parris had an amusing piece in The Times about modern size comparisons – an area the size of Wales, enough to fill a London double-decker bus, a population the size of Coventry …
I have one which I am trying to popularise
Back in the days when shopping was women’s work & involved a walk to the shop or the market, carrying home your purchases in what would have earned you funny looks if you had called it a Bag for Life, a common expression for a real chore was: It’s like carrying a 5 lb bag of potatoes
I had been hoping that lap top computers would, like everything else electronic, get smaller or at least lighter. A couple of years ago when I was looking for a new one I paid particular attention to weight, since my old one was completely impossible to carry around, which it was not worth doing anyway because the batteries lasted only a couple of hours max & not many places allowed you to plug them in until recently
The lightest one I found was 2.3 kg (and I am not sure if that included the weight of the battery & transformer). That’s a 5lb bag of potatoes I thought - & point out to as many people as possible. That’a not mobile computing. (Do not tell me about Apple – I am a statistician)
The price of Coke comes into this because of my recent need to buy the stuff for medicinal reasons
£1 (or nearly that) for 500ml seems a lot to me. I have not seen 1 litre bottles anywhere. Some larger stores stock 1.5 litre bottles for less than £1.50, but mostly the only option is a 2 litre bottle (I have to remember to do some market research to find out the price, but I do not think it is much more than £1.60)
I know about economies of scale but I suspect that these prices really represent a plot to make people just drink a lot more sweet fizzy stuff than is good for them
But anyway, from my point of view a 2 litre bottle is nearly a 5 lb bag of potatoes, & impossible to carry with my bad back
