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Time for the return of the Rag & Bone man?


Gastines
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From memory,now fading, in the 50's it seemed that very little was thrown away and the need for recycling didn't arise. Younger members of the family usually ended up with big brothers or sisters pullovers/coats/toys etc. The rag & bone man called with his horse and cart and collected old furniture/iron/ and usually paid a few bob for anything he could sell on. We had 2 large scrap merchants in our area where we could take old papers/rags/bottles and get a few pennies for pocket money. Kilner jars and flip top Corona bottles being a bonus, even aluminium saucepans. It seems that these days we are to be charged for sorting out the packaging and junk that many retailers thrust upon us. I go to the local Decheterie about once a fortnight with 3-4 bins of garden rubbish which the commune recycle into FREE garden mulch but I'm amazed at what even here in Brittany gets thrown in the skips. I haven't delved in yet but have been sorely tempted!!

With children today it seems that they must have the latest model of this & that and have to keep up with the rest at school, and not only the youngsters.  As soon as a newer version or a bigger one is for sale the old one is ditched. Where is the Rag & Bone man of today, I'm sure he wouldn't have a horse and cart but some super wagon. What CAP papers would I need? I expect there is one.

Regards.

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Remember the grinding poverty of those days too. Most kids who collected had no choice if they wanted pocket money or whatever. Granted some kids today have too much, I know some who will spend hours sorting and selling second hand stuff for the benefit of their club, association or whatever.

I can't speak for UK but find that Europe by and large is making a pretty good fist of recycling so far, though there is a way to go. Any problems essentially come out of Brussels' inability to control such as the motor industry which can only survive at present on redundancy and waste.

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My father in law always talks about what little waste there was years ago. Food was bought in paper which was burned on the fire.  What little food there was left was given as scraps to the dog.  Nothing was sold in plastic and bottles were taken back to the shop.  Now there is a thought..... could anyone tell me what a bottle of bleach looked like in the 1950s? 

My dad had a job with the rag and bone man in the East End when he was a youngster.  When children ran into the street with the rags, the R&B man gave them a live chick..........[blink]??  One little boy return his chick complaining he had a 'funny' leg and the R&B man told him to s o d off and make him a crutch. 

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At least,Woolybanana, you remember the Rag & Bone man but I don't remember it as a time of Poverty. I suppose at the time we didn't know any different . I did come home from school to bread and syrup or bread and dripping but I don't think I was ever consciously hungry. School dinners were obviously a lifesaver and on a Saturday a visit to the local butcher for a piece of lamb or pork," Not over 8 bob please", for 5 of us was the norm,plus of course a marrow bone for the stew. My younger brother, who was always hungry, used to open tins from the larder at the bottom and eat the contents and put them back empty,the right way up. Not that there were that many tins. That was the time when a clip around the ear was a good deterrent. Maybe not, as I now rely on a hearing aid.!!

I think as most had the same sort of struggle you appreciated what you had a bit more. My 10 year old granddaughter didn't know what wages were and when out shopping one day remarked that some game for her playstation .[ I'd like to throw it ] was ONLY £30. Times change and values with them. I don't begrudge them anything but I wonder how things are going.

.If it didn't rain I wouldn't sit and think so much.The price of age.

Regards.

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I really do love the older generation who have these experiences.  It does the person no harm.  I experienced terrible money worries in the last recession when my husbands business collapsed due to clients being unable to pay him.  We fought off bankruptcy but had to sell our house.  I had two babies and we ended up living in really bad conditions but managed to pay our debts.  I remember being scared stiff of the postman and the bad news he would bring.  Some days I sat in a park with the babies in a pram whilst hiding from bailiffs.  I hated the rain because it made my feet wet as it got into the holes in my shoes.  However, they were very happy days.  When you are on your knees financially there is a reassuring feeling that things cannot get that worse.  My husband used to come home from work and laugh at the meals I would create from the cheapest and most simple ingredients.  Friday nights were great, we would put the babies to bed open a bottle of wine (on offer at the corner shop) and dream about when things got better and what we would spend our money on.

I have pm'd you Gastines.

 

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You might find this site interesting -

www.freecycle.org/

On this site you can give away all those unwanted things that are too good to go to the tip. It's especially good for children's clothes and outgrown bikes, and perfectly good household effects for people who've changed their decor. There may be one near you.

Everyone wins - you get rid of stuff that you'd have to take to the tip

OR

you receive stuff for free that you would have had to pay for

AND

less stuff goes into landfill.

I think it's a brilliant idea.

Hoddy

 

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Judging by the stuff you see for sale on there, I reckon car-boot sales and ebay have had a lot to do with killing off the rag-and-bone man as a going concern.

Stuff he would have taken thrirty years ago is now SOLD to others. Some of it I'd be ashamed to bin........[:$]

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Yes I remember the rag and bone men - there were one or two round us in a very poor coalmining town in the NE of England. They sang out "any old ragabo..." and they took rags as well. That's to say, old clothes. I was never sure what the bones were and this was slightly scarey. My mum didn't throw out clothes until they were falling to bits - it was all makedo and mend. When I went up to the grammar school my first school uniform dress was made of an old  checked mattress cover, and I had blouses handed down from an auntie. When my dad was demobbed from the navy my mum had his heavy coat cut down to make a coat for me. We used to get clothes parcels from "rich" relatives in the States which were unbelievably stylish. The waste that upsets me most nowadays is food - there are still people who don't have nourishing food and I think it's terrible just chucking leftovers in the bin. I do think that France is doing well in the recycling stakes - much better than uk. Having to dispose of your own rubbish does motivate to keep it to a minimum. Pat.
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So Gastines ..........you remember getting a trolly bus from the square to Pokesdown Station then ?   Did you also go to the Saturday morning pictures in Boscombe and singing " We are the boys and girls well known as .....miners of the ABC " ...... I was in Boscombe yesturday ! 
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Frederick. Yes, I was one of the ABC Minors. 6d to get in from memory.Good old Roy Rogers etc. I used to be at Boscombe ST.Johns and lived in St.Clements Rd. Handy for Newells and Powells scrap yards. Wouldn't want to live there now though,the centre for drugs and prostitutes. To add on to the pocket money earning and give the old trolley buses a mention.... I used to do deliveries for a greengrocers in Palmerston Rd on a trade bike with a metal carrier on the front. Very difficult to ride when you are about10 years old. I had to take a box of cooked beetroot to the Green Park Hotel. On arrival told is was no longer wanted, so sped off down the hill to Manor rd traffic lights which promptly turned red. I couldn't put the hand brakes  on hard enough and carried on to Christchurch Rd to meet a trolley bus smack in the side. The beetroot went straight up the side of the bus and caused  quite a few screams and ooh- errs as passengers thought it was me splattered everywhere. The boss wasn't very happy about the square dent in the side of the bus.

As usual I transgress but I couldn't resist it.

Regards.

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Golly, that takes me back, Gastines.  I remember the rag and bone man clearly and the coal man with his horse and cart, probably because my grandmother used to send me out with a bucket and shovel to get the horse droppings for her garden!

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When I was a kid I lived on a council estate and every 9 months to a year we would get a large plastic bag hung on the doorknocker it contained small gifts for example pencils, games, colouring books and crayons ect. We could have the contents of these bags in return for filling the bag with wollies, old clothes, anything textile.

We used to plead with my mother to let us fill it up, but as we were quite poor we didn't have that many clothes and things to throw away, so many a time the bag was left untouched when the 'man' came to colect it the next day.

We might have been poor but at lease my mother taught us to be honest[:)]

Chipie

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

[quote user="Just Katie "]Nobody has answered my bottle of bleach question yet.  Or didn't you use bleach in the olden days?[/quote]

You're a cheeky happeth JK - I'm too young to know about 'olden days' though I feel like Methuselah now.......[:)][:)][:)]

[/quote]

[:$]

No seriously, before plastic was invented what was bleach and fairy liquid sold in?

Does anyone remember cigarette machines in the street?  I never remember seeing them broken into and vandalised.

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Katie, I'm serious. I really don't think my mother used bleach. I think the first washing up liquid was called Sqezy and that was in a plastic bottle. My mother didn't have a washing machine until 1958.

Who said the past is a foreign country ? I can't remember.

We're getting dangerously close to 'shoe box in middle o' road' territory here.

Hoddy

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My wife does remind me whwn I point out a top/jumper [or whatever they are called today ] that she did get her aunties old cardigan to wear to school, complete with about 20 glass buttons that had to be done up.Buttons are out!!  One day she heard a man+old van shouting out in the road so sent the 2 young daughters out with a bin-liner of old clothes. They returned with the full bin-liner, not vey pleased, he was calling out," Weymouth Mackerel".

Regards.

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Katie

Polythene - ICI's trade name for low density polyethylene - was invented/discovered in 1933.  It is still used today for making containers for washing up liquids and bleaches - even though ICI no longer make the stuff.  So the answer to you question is that probably no one can remember.  I'm not sure whne the first liquid washing up detergents came on the market but it could well have been after Polythene

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