In days of Old, when Knights were bold...Almost...

I heard a sound today that propelled me straight back to 1965.  A sound I thought lost in the movement of time.  From out in the street, the regular jangling chime of someone ringing a handbell to alert us indoors to their presence - and there he was: the Rag and Bone man of my childhood. Well, not the EXACT one, of course, because he was a Methusela to my 5 year old self, but a Rag and Bone Man, nevertheless.  I didn't think any still existed, but they obviously do. Upgraded to a slow-moving flatbed, rather than the horse-drawn cart of yesteryear, but out there, ringing the bell and collecting scrap metal. He had a load stowed, the modern-day Totter; I could see a fridge up there and some other bits and bobs of scrap.  Do they still collect bones as well and pay cash in hand for a newspaper-wrapped parcel? Who knows. If mine weren't already spoken for by my fanatical compost-making husband, I'd have been out there with a bagful finding out.

I remember being sent out by my Grandmother to exchange bones or other small items for warm copper pennies from the leather pouch slung across the Rag and Bone Man's shoulder.  His cart seemed so high up in the air, and his horse so big; we'd take carrots and feed them to the horse whilst the Man loaded up, or stopped for a chat if we had nothing to give him.  Grandad (or someone else, if Grandad was slow off the mark) would go out later and pick up the droppings from the roadway - lovely for the garden - and FREE!

Then I got to thinking, there are so many things like this that have disappeared into the past; the Corona Man, who delivered dimpled bottles of  Dandelion and Burdock and Cream Soda to the door in wooden crates, the Wilkins' Man, who brought sticky and mostly forbidden shop-cakes in great big shallow wooden trays; the Coal Man, in his dark green truck and his sooty clothes, cap and head strap, coming to deliver hessian sacks of coal and coke to Nan's house; the Milkie, in his long white coat and smart peaked hat, bringing daily fresh milk in glass bottles; Mr Brander the butcher.  He always wore a fine straw boater and a navy and white striped apron and he had a moustache of such overwhelming magnitude that 'Big John' Brander, his very large and darkly handsome son, paled into weedy insignificance when in the same room.  Then there was weaselly Mr Moolie the Rent Man, with his little pile of brown rent books, his stubby pencil and a satchel for the money; the Pools Man, from whose company you might win a tidy fortune for predicting the results of football matches and the overly-obsequious Man from The Pru, who walked the streets on a weekly basis collecting tiny insurance premiums against the cost of your eventual burial - he had a satchel, too; they all did, the weekly collectors.  Sixpence here, thruppence there, a penny for this one and a shilling for him, all descendants of the tallymen, Uncles and mountebanks of yore and a Godsend for the weekly-paid...