Rag And Bone

[poliphilo]

"What we're missing is rag and bone men, " said my father-in-law, apropos of nothing.

Well he's right, isn't he? Rag and bone men were so entirely green- what with the horses and the carts and the recycling.

We used to have one come down our suburban street of Poirot-era houses when I was a kid. You'd hear him a long way off- a long, whooping cry- a little like a wood-pigeon but bitten off at the end. Then you'd bustle about- as the cries got louder and the slow clip-clop of horseshoe on tar-macadam kicked in- gathering together all your nasty, old but not entirely useless junk. 

Raaaganbohn.......

Raaaganbohn.......

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Those were the days...

That's what people who try to knock recycling don't realise. Recycling isn't a new fad, it's the way things have always been. What's new is the idea that you just chuck something out when you don't want it anymore.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not generally nostalgic for the "good old days" but I reckon there are one or two tricks we could learn from our former selves.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

My parents always talk about the rag man from when they were kids. It always makes me laugh when people talk about recycling as some kind of new invention. The only thing that's new is recycling out of social consciousness alone, rather than out of pure necessity.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There was a 1960s BBC sitcom about rag and bone men called Steptoe and Son. It's still remembered with great fondness.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

Heh. They remade this in the U.S. as "Sanford and Son." Although I think here they worked in a junkyard.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The two actors in Steptoe hated one another with a passion. They wouldn't converse or have anything to do with one another except on set. The younger of them- Harry H. Corbett- wanted to be Marlon Brando and here he was typecast and trapped in this stupid sitcom. Very sad.