Thirty years ago this week Britain faced D-day when it moved from pounds, shillings and pence to decimalisation.

There was a huge outcry from traditionalists who liked old pennies rather than new pence.

I went to see one old woman shopkeeper in the back streets of Portslade who, at 89, closed her business rather than adapt to the new currency. "At my age, what is the point?" she asked, which wasn't a bad gag for someone of her advanced years.

There was also a shopkeeper down the road in Shoreham who insisted on keeping £sd rather than the new prices and eventually ran into trouble with the law. This decimal desperado was the forerunner of today's metric martyrs.

Many people simply don't like change but on logical grounds it was hard to defend a system which had 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. The coins were often huge and cumbersome. Your pockets could be weighed down by pennies and halfpennies and you would only have enough money to buy a bag of sweets.

But the money did have an enviable solidity and antiquity. It was possible to have in circulation pennies more than 100 years old and florins even more ancient than that.

The threepenny bits with their thrift symbols were beautiful and many children loved farthings with their robins.

For much of its life, the old coins coincided with periods of low inflation so that for years you knew that it cost one penny to weigh yourself in Woolworths or that a quarter of sherbet lemons cost 6d.

There were even shops named after prices such as the Fifty Shilling Tailors in most high streets while Woollies itself was known as the threepenny and sixpenny store.

Unfortunately decimalisation arrived in a period of wild inflation and by the mid-Seventies inflation was running at more than 20 per cent a year. Prices were changing weekly in the supermarkets and money suddenly seemed worthless or flimsy.

Much-loved old coins which had survived the changeover such as 5p and 10p pieces gradually altered so that they became smaller while the pound itself was relegated from the status of a note to that of a coin.

Now we are facing further changes with the possibility of Britain holding a referendum on whether to join the single currency within the next couple of years.

Although other countries enthusiastically embraced the Euro, it has had a shaky start and has not performed well against the pound.

Meanwhile Britain itself has once again embarked on a period of low inflation and economic boom which is giving people confidence in their currency.

There is enough stability for shops to be named after prices again such as the popular Poundland store in Brighton while Brighton and Hove Buses has introduced a £1 flat fare system on most of its routes.

The pound is just the right amount to be proffered as a tip to a taxi driver or a barber. It can be pressed into the hand of a Big Issue salesman or used to buy a pot of tea in a cafe.

We will probably enter Euroland despite a campaign fuelled by xenophobia and antipathy to change, but by that time even low inflation will have made all our coins feel worthless and most transactions will be conducted by debit and credit card.

I'll keep a few coins, as I did last time, just to show youngsters what they were like long ago.