Rags, bones, onions and ice-cream
I heard it the other day, for the first time for a while.
"Raaa - - Bo!"
When I was a child the cry of the rag and bone man was a weekly occurrence as he went by with his horse and cart. Now people tend to take things to the tip in their cars, or hire a skip. But in Leeds we still have a few rag and bone men.
One of my friends was astonished by this recently. In every other city in Great Britain, she insisted, rag and bone men were extinct, gone for ever like child chimney-sweeps.
But no: the rag and bone man still exists, though sadly the onion man seems to be no more.
The onion man came from Roscoff in Brittany, France. He came once a year throughout my childhood with his son, and when his father got too old his son came on his own until just a few years ago. They cycled round the streets with great strings of onions dangling from their bicycles. They always had a chat with my mother because she spoke French and when I was at secondary school I used to hide in case I was made to speak French too.
"Say hello to the onion man, Daphne." - - - - NOOOOOOOOO!
When I was little I used to think that they somehow cycled from France to our house with a bikeload of onions, just for us. Then one year I found out the truth when their lorry broke down and they asked to store their onions in our garage. Onion skins are like Christmas tree needles - they go everywhere. The garage leaked onion skins for years afterwards.
When I was twenty-one I lived in a Victorian terraced house in that part of Cardiff with the great name of Splott, down towards Tiger Bay. One night it snowed. I woke the next morning and looked out of the window - everything was white and because it was early there had been no traffic and there were no footprints.
Walking down the road with his brushes over his shoulder was a chimney sweep. It looked like a scene written by Dickens.
Look, honestly, I'm not that old. But so many things that were common when I was a child have gone completely.
What will be next? One of the signs of summer is hearing Greensleeves or the magnificent classical piece Just One Cornetto played on that glorious instrument, the ice-cream van. But some parts of the country have decreed that their tinkling chimes pollute the air and their evil wares add to the epidemic of child obesity.
All right, it's difficult in these days of exercise-free children to argue that ice-cream vans waiting outside schools are a good idea. But going to the park, or to the beach, and getting an ice-cream as a treat - that's summer. That's fun. Save the ice-cream vans!
"Raaa - - Bo!"
When I was a child the cry of the rag and bone man was a weekly occurrence as he went by with his horse and cart. Now people tend to take things to the tip in their cars, or hire a skip. But in Leeds we still have a few rag and bone men.
One of my friends was astonished by this recently. In every other city in Great Britain, she insisted, rag and bone men were extinct, gone for ever like child chimney-sweeps.
But no: the rag and bone man still exists, though sadly the onion man seems to be no more.
The onion man came from Roscoff in Brittany, France. He came once a year throughout my childhood with his son, and when his father got too old his son came on his own until just a few years ago. They cycled round the streets with great strings of onions dangling from their bicycles. They always had a chat with my mother because she spoke French and when I was at secondary school I used to hide in case I was made to speak French too.
"Say hello to the onion man, Daphne." - - - - NOOOOOOOOO!
When I was little I used to think that they somehow cycled from France to our house with a bikeload of onions, just for us. Then one year I found out the truth when their lorry broke down and they asked to store their onions in our garage. Onion skins are like Christmas tree needles - they go everywhere. The garage leaked onion skins for years afterwards.
When I was twenty-one I lived in a Victorian terraced house in that part of Cardiff with the great name of Splott, down towards Tiger Bay. One night it snowed. I woke the next morning and looked out of the window - everything was white and because it was early there had been no traffic and there were no footprints.
Walking down the road with his brushes over his shoulder was a chimney sweep. It looked like a scene written by Dickens.
Look, honestly, I'm not that old. But so many things that were common when I was a child have gone completely.
What will be next? One of the signs of summer is hearing Greensleeves or the magnificent classical piece Just One Cornetto played on that glorious instrument, the ice-cream van. But some parts of the country have decreed that their tinkling chimes pollute the air and their evil wares add to the epidemic of child obesity.
All right, it's difficult in these days of exercise-free children to argue that ice-cream vans waiting outside schools are a good idea. But going to the park, or to the beach, and getting an ice-cream as a treat - that's summer. That's fun. Save the ice-cream vans!
posted by Daphne at 8:05 pm
2 Comments:
The Rag and Bone Men in Holmfirth, when I were no' but a lad, were called Hey Wot and Right Shinks. One was the father of the other but I forget which, they both looked ancient and quite frightening.
The last time we were in Leeds we discovered the ice cream van by the playground in the park has an espresso and cappuccino machine (“What’s a latty?” “Lots of milk, love”). It’s not great coffee, but to me this is true progress. What next? Cocktails would be nice. Or maybe even nice ice cream.
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