Interesting story (well, interesting to me; might be dull as dishwater to everyone else)
My mother was a dirty foreigner, and grew up with decimal currency in her native land. In 1970 she came to the U.K. and had to learn how to cope with £.s.d. Less than a year later (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/newsid_2543000/2543665.stm) the process of decimalisation started, and completely flummoxed my mother. In such a short time she had become accustomed to what we now call "old money", such is its inherent superiority to decimal currency. £.s.d. is intrinsically better-suited than decimal to mental arithmetic due to the larger number of factors; it's easier to spot patterns while totting up sums in one's head.

In short: a dirty foreigner instinctively recognised the superiority of "old money" over "new money", so much so that the change to new money was just as traumatic after a few months as it was for the locals who'd grown up with old money.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 3 Apr 2011, 13:43, 1 reply)

It's ditch water
(dolbster, Sun 3 Apr 2011, 15:10, closed)

Fair enough.
I'd always heard it as dishwater when growing up. Sounds like I need to clean out my ears.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 3 Apr 2011, 15:27, closed)