United Kingdom

The people of Sheffield have gone snooker mad, if you believe the posters plastered around town. Not snooker mad as in angry, like the folks of River City upon learning about trouble (that starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool), but rather mad as in excited and enthused, like the people of River City when envisioning 76 trombones and a big parade.

Every year in late April and early May, Sheffield plays host to the World Championship of Snooker. The best snooker players in the world come to this South Yorkshire town to determine who, at least for this year, is the best person in the world at striking little balls with another ball that had, in turned, been struck by the end of a long stick.

When I was a teen, we used to play snooker at the local pool hall. Growing up in the suburbs where I did, as an underage teenager who couldn’t go to bars, you really had three choices for entertainment – movies, bowling and the pool hall. So my friends and I could often be found at Formac Billiards on Plains Road in Burlington knocking around billiards balls.

We had a choice of two different games, pool (eight-ball) and snooker. Eight-ball, the most widely played “cue sport” in the world, is a game where there are 15 balls – 7 solid, 7 stripes and a black eight ball. In eight-ball, you are assigned (usually through sinking a ball within the first few frames) either solids or stripes. You have to sink your 7 balls, and then the eight ball before the other guy to win. This game is very popular in bars as a pay per game activity, as games go very quickly. Thus, after I got old enough to drink and go to bars, most of my billiards activities ended up being eight-ball.

Back in high school though, when we were looking to fill a whole evening, snooker was the game. It is slower paced, and you have a lot more balls to sink on a larger table. You need to sink the 15 red balls, and then the 6 other coloured balls in order. Once the last ball (the black one) is potted, you add up the points and the person with the most points wins.

Unlike eight-ball, a lot of the strategy in a well-played snooker match is to leave your opponent with a poor shot. If you manage to leave your opponent with no direct shot at the ball he next needs to hit, that is called “a snooker.” The game of snooker is much more cerebral and slow-paced than eight-ball.

In high school, we would occasionally try and play the chess-match-like intellectual game of leaving our opponent snookered, but rarely had the ball control and skill necessary to pull it off. Instead, we were more likely to go for “maximum kinetic energy release,” i.e. hit the balls as hard as possible to get as many balls rolling around the table and hoping for something to happen. If a ball by chance happened to drop into a pocket, we would look up and give a slight nod, indicating that of course that is exactly what you expected to happen.

Back in the here (Sheffield) and now (actual the recent past of Tuesday night), I figured that I couldn’t pass up a chance to see the world’s greatest players play the game that figured so heavily in my high school life. It was a chance to see snooker the way it is meant to be played. It would also have been incredibly lazy of me not to go, seeing as the matches were being held a block and a half from my hotel.

The games had been sold out for weeks, but luckily due to some last minute returns, I was able to pick up a ticket at the box office on the day for the evening session. I gave the woman at the Crucible Theatre box office my £17, and in return she gave me one ticket for seat K44 to see the match on table one – 23rd ranked Nigel Bond versus world number nine Peter Ebdon. The full matches are 19 frames, which are split into two separate fixtures, usually of 9 or 10 frames. Ebdon and Bond had already played 8 frames, and Bond was up 5 to 3 over Ebdon.

The 980 seat Crucible Theatre in the city centre of Sheffield is usually used for putting on plays, but every year since 1977 it has held the World Snooker Championships as well. With only 980 seats, there isn’t exactly a bad seat in the house, so as I grabbed my seats I was impressed of the view I had of the tables. The theatre is set up with two tables, and my seat near the centre of the theatre had decent views of both.

I entered just as the player introductions were finishing, and they were introducing the “Thunder from Down Under,” Australian player Neil Robertson. Neil ran out, his highly-structured blond hair bouncing up and down, and waved to the crowd. There was loud applause for Neil, and then the announcer heralded the arrival of Steve Davis. The crowd grew much louder.

Steve Davis is the most successful snooker player in the world, having won more titles than any other, including 6 World Championships in the 1980s that he took here in the Crucible. Though now 51, he still plays snooker at a competitive level, as well as being a well known TV commentator. He was honoured with an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) in 2001.

The applause for Steve Davis, OBE died down, and a screen partitioning the two tables from each other lowered from the ceiling. Despite the screen, sitting up in Row K near the centre of the theatre, I actually had a pretty decent view of both tables. As such, I could watch both the action on Table 1 (Bond versus Ebdon) as well as being able to see 85% of Table 2 for the Davis – Robertson match.

As play was about to begin, the theatre hushed to a silence. The TV cameras took up their positions, focusing on the players’ sombre faces of concentration. Had I not chosen to come down to the Crucible this evening, I could have stayed home and watched the action on the BBC. Snooker is a prime time sport here in England. When Davis was winning his 6 World Championships in the 1980s, it was figured that he was on TV more often than the Prime Minister.

Play started with the traditional break. This involves knocking a few of the reds a few centimetres, leaving the other player with nothing to shoot at. The other guy then steps up, and ticks a red ball with the white, leaving his opponent with no opportunities to sink a ball. The first guy steps up, and then spends a good four minutes walking around the table, considering his options. During this time, the crowd is silent except for the occasionally cough.

Finally, he sees a good shot, bends down and lines it up. The crowd holds its breath, waiting to see if this is the point when the first point is scored. The player lets the cue slide back and forth through the crock between his thumb and forefinger a few times, eyes down at table level to ensure that he has the shot properly lined up. The crowd sits perfectly still, awaiting to release their breath and any nervous energy until after the shot. The player pulls back the cue, eyes the shot one more time, and…

…stands up and reconsiders the whole table.

It is not a very fast paced game. The players could probably grow moss if they didn't make the occasional walk around the table.

All this time between shots allowed me to take a good look around. The crowd was pretty mixed, from young kids to senior citizens. There were folks that looked like they had just knocked off dry walling sitting next to guys in collared shirts who’d removed their ties to relax after a long day in the office. There were women in the crowd, some with boyfriends and some in small groups of other girls.

Cameras and cell phones were not allowed (thus no pictures, though I have a few from the big-screen in Tudor Square outside the theatre for the overflow crowds), and the crowds adhered to the rules. Most of the 980 seats were filled, and everyone behaved impeccably, being silent when appropriate, offering polite applause at the first point, any difficult shot succeeded and any time a player snookered his opponent. Occasionally a voice would call out, “Come on, Steve,” offering a vocal cheer for Davis, but there were no other vocalisations during the matches, other than the referee announcing the scores.

The action down on the floor was pretty leisurely paced. The most emotion seemed to come from the white-gloved, tuxedoed referee, whose job it was to replace the coloured balls on the table after they had been sunk and occasionally give the white cue ball a nice rub down (perhaps the cue ball gets tense and needs a massage). He would scowl at the crowd anytime there was a noise from the darkness, and if people were speaking at anything above a whisper, he would growl, “quiet, please.” He reminded me of Lurch from the Addams Family, but with a slightly better vocabulary.

The players themselves were all wiry thin. I would have expected a few more fat guys, after all it isn’t exactly a highly active sport, but I guess all the fat guys go into darts. All the snooker players are skinny. They are all dressed similarly, in black pants, white shirts, black bowtie and a vest, making them appear like banquet hall waiters on the lam. Ebdon wore a blue vest instead of black, making him stand out. Everyone’s vest had a BetFred patch on it (sponsor of the tournament), but Ebdon’s vest included a patch advertising Emirates Airlines. Ebdon, the Arsenal of the snooker world. The blue vest, extra sponsorship and similarity of the name Ebdon to Udon, the tasty Japanese noodle were all factors in my decision to support Ebdon during the match.

Of course, as there was no cheering allowed, supporting was more of an internal activity, involving nodding silent to myself and smiling when Ebdon made a decent shot, and frowning when things didn’t go his way.

During one of the matches, someone’s digital watch beeped the hour. The ushers craned their necks to identify the offender, and once the offender was identified, they came over to have a quick word with the poor gent who forgot to silence his watch. The man must have been humiliated. For the next five minutes, I made sure to sit extra still, lest the ushers single me out. The crowds at snooker matches make the crowds at golf tournaments look like riotous mobs on a rampage.

For some reason, the theatre had a faint chlorine smell, reminding me of sitting in the bleachers of public swimming pool waiting for swimming lessons to begin. I finally came to the conclusion that watching snooker was like a mix between being in church and being at the swimming pool, but with less organ music, no splashing and less anticipation of having a nice dip in cool water.

Ebdon managed to win 2 frames, pulling even with Bond at 5 frames each. Bond then won the next frame, pulling himself up 6-5 over Ebdon. Over on Table 2, Robertson was pulling away from Davis, up 3 to 1. At this point there was a short break to allow the fans and the players to hit the toilets and grab a pint.

I stood at the bar drinking a £3.10 pint of Carling, and contemplated the action I had seen. Each frame was taking close to 30 minutes to finish on average, with one of the frames stretching to almost 45 minutes. At one point, over on table 2, Robertson and Davis struck one lone red ball around the table (and between the coloured balls) for 15 minutes without anyone scoring a point. It was strategically excellent snooker and I appreciated that, however it was about as dull a spectator sport as I could imagine.

During the matches, I had found myself yawning more than a few times. I caught a few others in the crowd mouths agape in a yawn as well. It was almost 9:45, and the match was probably not even halfway through. I imagined the horror of falling asleep in my seat and, god forbid, starting to snore. If the ushers nearly had coronaries over a digital watch beep, imagine the revulsion they would display towards me if I started to snort-grunt-sputter as I do when I snore.

BetFred, the online and telephone betting service that sponsors the World Snooker Championships, had a booth set up in the lobby. One of the TVs was showing the Liverpool – Arsenal match, which Liverpool was leading 2 to 1 with 58 minutes gone. One of the ushers announced that play was about to restart. I debated staying out in the lobby and watching the football match, or heading back into the theatre. I decided to give the snooker one last try.

Of the next 30 minutes, I yawned about 60 times. Occasionally I would hear cheers from out in the lobby from those who had made the opposite choice and stayed in the lobby to watch the football. Watching paint dry in a humid environment would have been more exciting and probably quicker than watching the snooker match. I was stuck in my seat until the frame ended though, but I quickly decided that at the end of the frame, I would flee.

The frame ended and I got out into the lobby just in time to see the Liverpool and Arsenal players leaving the pitch, having wound up playing to a 4-4 tie, including 1 goal from each side in injury time. It was a match that was described as a “thrilling act of theatre” by Kevin Garside in the Telegraph, and a “classic” on the BBC.

I sighed and headed home, letting the snooker matches unfold themselves without my observation. Ebdon, the Japanese noodle man, ended up losing to Bond in an upset. Robertson, meanwhile, took a commanding lead over Davis, ending the day up 7 to 2.

If the people of (the fictional) River City, Iowa in the Music Man were really concerned about not letting their teenagers get in trouble, they shouldn’t of started a marching band (after all, we all know what happened that one time… at band camp…). They should have changed that pool hall into a snooker room, all that standing quietly and contemplating strategy, that’s got to be good for the discipline of young minds.

A fantastic spectator sport, though, it does not make.

Some physicists, those with a more philosophical bent most likely, worry about how free will is possible in the universe governed by the rules of physics. If we can understand and describe the future motion of items down to the atomic level, does that not mean that we can predict the course of neurons firing in our brains? In an entirely predictable world, all that has been, all that is and all that will be would be predictable if we just knew all the right variables and had the computing power to run the calculations. But if the entire world - right down to the electrons firing around in brain controlling our actions - is predictable, than that means our actions would be predictable too. We wouldn't have free will, it is all an illusion.

Personally, that's why I like the concept of quantum mechanics, quantum indeterminacy and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If we don't actually know where atoms are and where they will be, but can just assign probabilities to these concerns, then free will lives. We don't live in a deterministic world, but rather in a nondetermined, probabilistic world that allows us to make choices. I'm no physicist, but I believe this is called the "Copenhagen Interpretation" of quantum mechanics.

Albert Einstein, though the father of quantum mechanics, didn't like the nondeterministic nature of the theory, and worked for most of his life to come up with a theory of quantum mechanics that didn't include uncertainty. He couldn't ever believe that the universe was not explainable if we had absolute knowledge of the current state of it. In a letter to Max Born, he famously said the oft-misquoted line, "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice." The "He" in the sentence is the reference to God. Niels Bohr had an excellent come-back, in my mind, which was to say, "Einstein, don't tell God what to do."

An alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics is to instead look at the probability of wave of an electron not as possible outcomes, but actual outcomes. Of all the possible places an electron could be, it actually is. Each of these possibilities then becomes its own "history." In effect, all possibilities occur, they just do so in parallel universes spun off from every point in time. This is called many-worlds interpretation. For us laymen, what that means is that if you imagine every choice you have ever made, there exists somewhere a world where you made the opposite choice.

I can't imagine the many-worlds interpretation actually being reality. It's too comic-booky. Too much like all those DC titles I remember popping up in the mid-1980s about multiple worlds and the Crisis on Infinite Earths where different versions of The Flash and Bat-dog all existed.

Thinking about the possibility that all those parallel worlds are out there, though, does present a tantalising thought that you could, if you could see through the barriers between worlds, find out what happened to other versions of you. I was thinking about this today as I wandered the streets of London down towards Chinatown, where I was heading to quench a craving for noodles.

I passed an estate agent that specialises in finding student housing in central London for all the students of the many University, colleges and other learning institutions in the city. I suddenly felt a little melancholy that I hadn't taken the opportunity as a student to go some place far away and exotic to study. Instead, I stayed close to home, and only really took up travelling in my 30s.

"What kind of person would I have been if I had started travelling sooner?" I wondered. I thought about all the lost opportunities and extra years I could have had feeding my travel urge. If there were multiple worlds out there, perhaps there was a Gregwtravels out there who had been at it since the age of 18, having criss-crossed the world many times, perhaps now lazing on a beach in Central America or eating noodles in a train station in Osaka.

Of course, that Greg probably doesn't exist even if multiple worlds do. After all, when I was 18 I had no real desire to go far away to school. The university I went to - University of Western Ontario - was really the only one I wanted to go to. I flirted very briefly and not too seriously with a couple other options, specifically McMaster University which was even closer to my hometown, and McGill.

McGill would have been an interesting choice. It was far from home, being a full 6 hours by train from my parent's house, and it was in Montreal, a bilingual and very diverse city. That is a Greg I could imagine that might have taken up travel sooner. Maybe he learnt French and did a semester in Paris. Maybe he went into something more bohemian than IT consulting, perhaps publishing. That Greg would be an interesting Greg to meet. I think I'd like him.

I continued to walk towards Chinatown, feeling the sting of lost opportunities. "I wish I'd starting travelling sooner. I wish I'd been braver in my 20s." I kept telling myself, becoming increasingly glum.

Perhaps Einstein was right, and perhaps God doesn't play dice with the universe, because just then something happened the removed all the glumness from me and cured my melancholy. It was so perfect a cure, so fitting to my affliction of temporary despondency that it had to be more than just mere coincidence.

I came upon this sign.

"Oh, a travel show, that'll brighten me up," I thought, so I went in. And brighten me up it did, but not in the way I imagined. For the show was focused on the young traveller, and was full of exhibitors plugging bus tours of Eastern Europe and trips that focused on nightlife, drinking and hooking up, including a company offered Trans-Siberian train journeys on the "Vodka Train," with big banners replete with photos of young, good-looking folk downing shots of the white liquor.

The place was jammed with people, mostly in the teens and twenties, and many seemingly interested in the tours that offered the best chances of hooking up and getting drunk. I could only stand it for a few minutes before I fled.

I realized, as I exited the hotel that it was probably best that I didn't travel much when I was younger, for knowing me it would have been EXACTLY that kind of travel - drunk all night, blurry eyed and hung-over during the day, missing most everything and really only wondering where the next bar was. I do know there are those out there in their teens and twenties who travel in a more measured, reflective way, but I don't think I would have done that. I would have been a drunken yob.

Some of you, especially those that have travelled with me, might be wondering how the above actually differs from my current method of travelling. I will admit that how I travel now does involve a few drunken nights and hung over mornings, but probably earlier nights, less buses and hopefully a little more appreciation of the local culture and sights than a 22-year-old me would have travelled.

"Guess I really didn't miss much," I told myself, and continued on my way to Chinatown, where I found a restaurant and fulfilled my noodle craving. I'm not as young as I once was, but I've still got a many good years of travel adventure ahead of me. I'll leave the other Gregs in other parallel worlds who made other choices to their own lives, and concentrate on mine. I may have started a little late, but I have to say that right now, it is pretty damn good.

This week is half-term up in Sheffield, which is a late winter school break for the children. It is like the March Break I used to have back in Canada, but with less March and more February.

To entertain the little kiddies (thus keeping the parents sane) and keep the older ones occupied so they don't turn into ASBO hoodies, Sheffield has put up a bunch of carnival rides in the city centre, with rides in Orchard Square, the Peace Garden, Barker's Pool and outside town hall.

I work right by the city centre, and the building we work in seems to be heated by the power of 1,000 fusion reactors, so we all keep the windows open. As such, I have spent the week at work listening to the sound of rock music blasting from speakers and kids screaming with delight at the rides. I can't complain, though. After all, my own six-month long half-term break just ended a month ago.

Here's some photos from the carnival, as well as some shots of Sheffield's city centre at night.

The Sheffield Town Hall clock tower with some of the rides underneath

Tickets! Get your Tickets! Tickets!

Busy shoppers rush by the rides. Come on, folks, stop and have some fun!

Spinning! Lots of screaming from this one.

Burgers, hot dogs, fish and chips. Just don't go on the rides right after eating.

The youngest even get a fun airplane ride right by town hall.

The fountains in the Peace Garden, with the town hall in the background.

Green space in the Peace Garden, taken last week, when there was still some snow on the ground. Luckily for the kids on half-term, the weather this week is much nicer, with temperatures almost up to 10 C late in the week.

Town hall with wrought-iron fence.

Stainless steel balls, covered with running water and lit up from underneath by neon lights. Millennium Square.

Millennium Square again, with more of the balls visible. You can see the Winter Garden greenhouse in the background. I'll write more on that in a future entry.

Spinning round and round on the Sizzler.

Working on loading up the Sizzler.

The most British sounding thing yet said to me since arriving in the United Kingdom was said over breakfast. It was this.

"You are lazy with the knife."

The comment was made back in November, just a couple weeks before I headed over to Arizona for my 2 month long project in Phoenix. I was invited out to breakfast by one of my flatmates, Pete. He had a girl visiting him from San Diego, California, and the three of us, along with another flatmate Chris, went out to eat.

I ordered the full English breakfast, which is oft known here as a "fry-up." The full English breakfast includes eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, toast and tomatoes. At least, the one that I ordered had those things. Technically, a full English breakfast should include blood sausage, however many places seem not to include the blood sausage any more. Apparently the thought of oatmeal and pig's blood isn't even appetising to the Brits anymore.

As an aside, or rather a second aside seeing as the whole blood-sausage-thing wasn't really pertinent to the story, Bacon here is different than in North America. Bacon, as we know it in North America, known here as "streaky bacon." Streaky bacon comes from the belly of a pig, comes in thin strips and is heavily veined with fat. British bacon, on the other hand, is back bacon, coming from the loin of the pig. It is claimed that this is the same as "Canadian bacon," though I've had both Canadian bacon and bacon here in the UK, and Canadian bacon always tastes more like ham to me. I think it is because Canadian bacon is usually trimmed into a circle with no fat, whereas British bacon is left as an oblong piece of meat and fat. The long and short of the bacon discussion is this - I miss streaky bacon.

Back to that breakfast in early November, I was eating my eggs, sausage and bacon when Chris said to Pete's visitor that she was, "quite lazy with the knife. Is that an American thing? I notice that Greg is quite lazy with the knife as well."

I looked up from a bite of sausage and said, "wha?", probably spewing bits of sausage from my mouth.

"You are lazy with your knife," Chris repeated.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"You tend not to use your knife, smashing food into bits with your fork instead of cutting it with into proper pieces with your knife," Chris explained.

I looked down at my plate. He was right. Other than the sausage, I wasn't using my knife for anything. The eggs and bacon I was using the side of my fork to tear apart. Even the sausage, which required the knife, I had cut into little bits right at the start of the meal, and was now just picking up the pre-cut pieces.

It wasn't always like this for me. After all, I came from a good British background and so I learned as a child how to eat like a proper British person. Over the years, though, living as a bachelor and spending a lot of time in the USA, I've adopted American eating habits.

Since that breakfast and getting called to task for it, I have tried, when possible, to eat more like a Brit, and be less lazy with my knife.

So, how do you eat like a Brit?

First, you need to ensure that your elbows don't touch the table. After years of working in the United States, I tend now to eat with my elbows planted firmly on the table. My fork and knife stab downwards from there, kind of like Jason from Friday the 13th stabbing at young campers in the forest.

In Britain, you need to hold your elbows off the table, almost like you are about to break into the chicken dance. Elbows out, arms parallel to the table.

The knife goes into your right hand, the fork in the left. You cut your food by holding it down with your fork while slicing with the knife. Once you have sliced off a bite sized portion, you put the knife down, switch your fork over to your right hand before bringing the food to the mouth.

Once you finish chewing, you put down your fork to take a sip of your drink. Then you can pick up back the fork and the knife and move on to your next bite.

That is how you eat like a Brit.

...or, more correctly, that is how I was taught as a child to eat like a proper British person. Looking around, though, I am not sure that is how British folks really eat any more. In my examining how others eat, I have made some observations.

Brits do eat slower and more deliberately than North Americans. They aren't lazy with their knifes, they do properly cut their food, rather than tearing it apart with the fork. No more, though, is the restriction against elbows on the table hold. I'm fine with that, because it's always nice to lean against something. If the British are going to make me be less lazy with my knife, than at least I can be a little lazy with my elbows.

No more, either do folks switch their forks from their left to their right hands. As a kid, it always struck me as being as waste of energy. After all, my left hand is as good as my right to bring food up to my mouth. So the fact that the Brits have caught on to this, and now no longer switch forks between hands makes sense. It shows they are able to learn and make improvements. It is the same spirit of innovation that brought about the industrial revolution, the Spitfire, the flush toilet and curry as a late night snack food. Okay, that last one was more a transfer of an existing food to a drunken, late night snack, but still, it is impressive.

There is, though, one problem with not switching the fork over to my right hand. My right hand is more coordinated than my left, and thus there are times when my clumsy left hand winds up dropping food on my shirt. In those cases, using my stronger hand probably would have made more sense. Ah well, I am a North American, after all. Occasionally I need to eat like a slob, otherwise I'll shatter the finely-crafted feeling of superiority that the Brits have developed over us North Americans and our lazy knifes.

I knew before arriving in England that there are differences between Canadian English and British English. They ride up and down in lifts, wear trousers over their pants instead of pants over their underwear, keep their luggage under the boot of their car and deliver goods in lorries.

I know all these things because I’ve watched British TV shows and movies, and read British books.

Something has bothered me since getting here, though. I’d encountered most of the words I’ve learnt from TV since getting here, and even learned a few new words. One of those words I knew hasn’t appeared – Shilling.

Pounds and pence, quids and pennies - I’ve heard lots of words for the money, but I’ve never seen or heard a reference for a shilling. That is because the shilling no longer exists.

The British Pound dates back to the Sixth century, when King Offa of Mercia introduced the silver penny. 240 pennies weighed one pound, and thus £1 was worth 240 pennies. To split up the difference, the Shilling was introduced, equal to 12 pennies, meaning that one pound was worth 20 shillings.

The coins adopted abbreviations based on Roman names, with the penny being abbreviated as d for denarii and the Shilling abbreviated as s for solidi. The pound took on the Latin librae, thus the L shape of the £ sign. Thus, prices were originally written as 3s 4d (3 Shillings and 4 Pennies). Over time, as with most things, instead of writing out the s, a short-hand of a slash was used, so that 3/4 became 3 Shillings and 4 pence. This was back in the days when “s” was written to look more like an “f,” and thus the slash looked somewhat like the first letter of Shilling.

3/4 would be spoken as “3 and 4.” By the 1960s the lowest bill was the 10 Shilling note, called the “Ten Bob,” and therefore a common budget price was 9/11, one penny short of the paper money.

Calls to move away from this fractional system based on 12s and 20s and to a decimal system date back to the early 1800s, after France introduced the decimal Franc in 1795. Various schemes were proposed, from splitting the pound into 1000 Mills to replacing the Pound with the Royal (4.8 of which would be worth a pound).

Finally in the late 1960s, it was decided that the pound would remain given its role as a key reserve currency, and that it would be split into 100 “new pence,” to be represented by the abbreviation “p.” Prices are now written as £5.40, pronounced as “5 pound forty,” or sometimes “5 pound forty p.”

On the 15 of February, 1971, Decimal Day arrived. Shilling and “old” Pence disappeared, replaced by the “new pence.”

So that is what happened to the Shilling. Previously worth 1/20th of a pound, it was replaced by a coin worth 1/20th of a pound, the 5 p piece. For a while folks would continue to call the 5 p piece a “bob,” the nickname that the Shilling had, but over time that disappeared as well.

Today, the word Shilling is relegated to the past, but at least now I know when I am handling my change that those 5 p pieces would have, almost 40 years ago, been a Shilling.