Have you ever been down in the dumps? ( Archived) (25)

Lovely thread Len we used to have the rag and bone men come round on a horse and cart collecting stuff people didnt want any more - they would make their money by selling it to their various contacts - just found this bit in wiki;

Rag-and-bone man is a British phrase for a junk dealer. Historically the phrase referred to an individual who would travel the streets of a city with a horsedrawn cart, and would collect old rags, (for converting into fabric and paper), bones for making glue, scrap iron and other items, often trading them for other items of limited value.

They would use a distinctive call to alert householders to their presence. The call was something similar to "rag-and-bone", delivered in a sing-song fashion. Long usage tended to simplify the words, for instance down to "raa-boh", even to the point of incomprehensibility, although the locals clearly could identify who could make the call. This was satirised by the comedian Marty Feldman in his "Ay-oh frye" sketch, where he played a rag-and-bone man who, when asked, had no idea what his call meant.


The link below is for a brilliant organisation with branches all over the world - you just do an email of what you dont need and somebody arranges to pick it up from you and vice versa too

Where I live we have something called Freecycle that posts things so they don't end up in the dump,(Landfill). Some emebers even post Spotted, telling other members where something has been set out.

My Husband and I had also gone up and down thestreets finding furniture, tools, etc when we were first married as poor college students to furnish our apartment, and later our house. I still this day get offers of hand me downs.