Shouted through a hand held tannoy as a tipper based Transit motored slowly past this PM.
When did you last hear that? Up here in the North, it was around 50 years ago and it was a bloke with a horse and waggon. Yep, exactly as seen on `Steptoe`.
Must be the scrap values..
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Sign of the times - guess that the Transit is he new Hercules as well, Oil Drum Lane has some irony in these times !
Edited by Pugugly on 23/07/2008 at 15:37
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round our way we have started to get leaflets asking for any scrap metal. I guess with the prices being high its worth collecting again.
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When I was a child in Bath in the early to middle forties a horse and cart used to trudge past once a week or so with its rough old driver gloomily shouting what sounded to my inexperienced ear something like 'HAP... HO!'. I asked my mother what he meant. 'Rag and bone', she explained. After that I listened more carefully, but the shout of 'hap... ho!' didn't change.
Ragpicking and bone and glass collecting and processing, combined with totting, was quite a numerous profession in the 19th century in big cities. It offered independence and a more interesting life than the workhouse for those on the fringes of society. Perhaps it will make a comeback when our societies stop playing at recycling and do it properly.
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Alive and well in the states, I noticed a well dressed couple scouring the bins in a "mall" for used aluminium drinks cans. Probably mortgaged with Fanny Mae !
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We have a guy with a handcart collecting round here but then we are "oop north" I suppose.
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Of course in big third world cities there are whole communities of rubbish-sifters who live in the vast rubbish dumps to be found in some of them. There's one by the lagoon on Lagos Island in Nigeria, or there used to be. The lagoon itself smells strongly of sewage, and when the wind is in the wrong direction the pong permeates the terraces of the posh hotels in Ikoyi, but the rubbish dump itself doesn't smell bad, everything perishable having been removed at an early stage and probably fed to animals or burned. The people who live in it have a distinctive style and appearance, as if they were members of some special human sub-species.
It is seldom noted that large third world cities in many ways are socially similar to European cities in the 19th century. They are in another time as well as another place.
Edited by Lud on 23/07/2008 at 16:23
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Lud, I applaud your exquisitely correct use of a troublesome word: "a numerous profession".
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On the matter of street traders and their incomprehensible cries, I only understand about half of the random shouts the fruit-and-veg stallholders give in Portobello Road round the corner. Heaven knows what the French, Italian and other foreign shoppers make of them. But I treasure the memory of a stallholder I heard once bawling, and muttering, at the variegated passing throng: '...anyone want a NICE APPLE, you've got a LOVELY PEAR!' I didn't spot who he meant, but the choice is often agreeably wide in the summer months.
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round our way we have started to get leaflets asking for any scrap metal.
Same here.
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I work as a youth worker, and one of the lads that I work with has an encyclopedic knowledge of what every part of a car is worth, and which ones are worth the most for scrap.
Anything with a Cat is worth about £25 more for the metals in that
Anything with an iron block is worth a touch more as well due to the weight of the block
Alloy wheels are worth a bit more as well
Land Rover bodies are worth as much as the chassis
Volvo/Merc/Saab are worth a bit more due to the weight of them
He'll go out scrapping and knock on peoples doors if there's a car in the garden with an expired tax disc, offer them some money and then drag it off on the Transit
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The last one I saw, as a youth, was equipped with horse and cart. This was around the time when a phone call from a box cost 4d, and the 'pop' wagon came round once week.
The old custom giving low value novelties in return for old clothes and furniture accounts for the expression still used by the local motor dealers referring to unattractive part exchanges, "...it's worth about two balloons and a goldfish".
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"...it's worth about two balloons and a goldfish".
Sounds like my car !
;-)
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In about 1955 I was taken to visit my great-aunt in Plymouth. While I was there the rag-and-bone man came round with a horse and cart and stopped outside the block of flats where she lived. I can remember women rushing out with bits and pieces of clothes that they exchanged for clay (tobacco) pipes. Am I really that old?
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And I've just remembered a rag and bone man with a motor van used sometimes to wait at the primary school gate so we would pester our mothers to give him something in exchange for a goldfish. That must have been about the same time, certainly no later than about 1958.
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I lived in a southern village and can remember the rag & bone men with their horse and cart. Knife Sharpeners also - are they back yet ?
There are a few cars (in gardens/driveways) round my way with notes on saying
"Not For Sale - This car is NOT Scrap" (or similar).
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Or maybe a 'donkey stone' for whitening the edge of your doorstep....
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There are loads of them going around here,they have already pinched an old set of alloys from behind my shed.When I first came to Leeds an old guy said to me 'they'll have t'milk out of your tea round here',which is why I only drink black coffee.
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Well, thanks to this thread, I've remembered something I'd completely forgotten about ... I used to go "totting" with my m8 Phil with his dad's orsen cart around S. E London in the early 60's when I should ave been at skool (but had better things 2 do)
What a way to travel - clipperty clop, clipperty clop, clipperty clop.
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I remember these guys doing the rounds once a fortnight or so when I was a kid (late 70's to mid 80's). Dad had a shed clearout and had a load of old car bits, batteries and so on, plus a 2.0 Transit engine with a dropped valve. He said I could keep whatever I could get for them. Haggled eight quid off the bloke for the lot. Not bad when you're seven. :-)
Cheers
DP
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........ when I should ave been at skool ........
Why does that not surprise me? ;-D
Edited by L'escargot on 24/07/2008 at 17:35
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>> ........ when I should ave been at skool ........ Why does that not surprise me? ;-D
"ave" is too posh. "of" is the colloquial useage.
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>>when I should ave been at skool >>>>
But I attended the School of Life big thyme ; )
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 25/07/2008 at 13:26
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