revenance of weird old england

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i just heard horses' iron-shod hooves in the street and went to the window: four policemen in riot gear on huge dark steeds ~~galloping~~ ambling by

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:10 (twenty-one years ago)

what was the last time you were reminded that the UK is a VERY OLD AND STRANGE place, and that nothing really quite goes away

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:11 (twenty-one years ago)

chances are it was TODAY!

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I still see the odd rag and bone man, with a horse drawn cart.

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:13 (twenty-one years ago)

haha i had a dream last night that my mum was buying giblets for our cat from matthew the cat's meat man in doctor dolittle!! he had serious five-o-clock shadow and a big rubettes cap!

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:16 (twenty-one years ago)

however i have never seen a real live cat's meat man OR a rag-and-bone cart (jel are you joking or serious?)

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:17 (twenty-one years ago)

i often regret that america doesnt have this : (

― trife (simon_tr), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:18 (twenty-one years ago)

yes but trife you have tract housing built on to of old indian burial grounds!!

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:20 (twenty-one years ago)

and bubba sparxxx!

"gentleman's relish and other medieval sauces s/d" threads to thread

― jones (actual), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:28 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, I'm serious, it can only be a year since I last saw a Rag'n'Bone man! And those suspicious gentlemen who knock on the door asking if you have any knives that need sharpening. Oh! And occasionally, a fish monger has been down our road selling fish door to door.

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Bring back the stocks!!! :)

― jel -- (jel), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:37 (twenty-one years ago)

i have concluded that jel does in fact live not in Hanwell but in Middle Urf

― stevem (blueski), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

"London's relationship to gomi [it's trash/past] was more oblique... The English valued their gomi in its own right...they inhabited it."

kinda lame & ot Gibson quote but it popped into my head.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:56 (twenty-one years ago)

A rag and bone man used to go down my street when we lived in Peckham. This was at least ten years ago, though.

Rye Lane also had the second to last ever counter service Sainsbury's. That disappeared some time in the early 80s.

― N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 4 October 2003 16:59 (twenty-one years ago)

In some places in south shields where I work (no doubt in loads of other places as well) you get this thing where the tarmac wears through, and you can see the cobblestones beneath. I really like that.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 4 October 2003 17:59 (twenty-one years ago)

beneath that it is the beach < / soixante huitard >

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 18:04 (twenty-one years ago)

haha "debord sometimes u r totally huitarded"

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 4 October 2003 18:05 (twenty-one years ago)

three weeks pass...

This is the best thread ever! It ended too soon!

When I worked at the Advertising Agency, they used to do the Horse Thing on a regular basis! They'd have an entire cavalry go galloping by, dragging antique looking cannons and things, like they were convinced that Napoleon was about to attack Paddington at any minute.

The thing I like at the moment is weird, blocked-up old wells. There is one in Queens Square which I always seem to wait for HSA by. Apparently, the flooding in recent times in London has been worse because In The Old Days, people were constantly using wells for taking water out of the pourous clay and the underground rivers, and now they don't use the wells, so the water builds up and has nowhere to go but to flood basements and things.

― kate (kate), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Mark's pun certainly deserves mad props.

Reminder today: the Tory leadership all-in

― Enrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:04 (twenty-one years ago)

every tuesday loads of (~30) horses trail past the front of our flat pulling cannons. This is off scrubs lane. WHERE ARE THEY GOING? There are also lots of police horses around shepherd's bush lane. I see them "pulling in" to the cop shop there - they (the riders, not the horses) have to push a button to raise the gate. I find this funny to watch.

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:07 (twenty-one years ago)

the cannon horses thing is also amusing cos it really holds up the traffic that bottlenecks around there at 9 in the morning as everyone tries to funnel into the tiny scrubs lane

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:08 (twenty-one years ago)

trudat: plus also the water table in london was risen since the end of the industrial era bcz there are so many less factories in the city slurching it up = it enters all the basements built DURING the industrial era

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I think a rag and bone man still goes down my parents street.

The ice cream van tune (mentioned here before) is a weird old England thing, shurely? I don't think they've had any new tunes in my lifetime.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Apparently when they redug the basements of that building in the block just south of us... (Oh what is it called? I want to say the Victoria Building, but that might not be right) ...they found an entire underground river flowing beneath it! THE OLD BOURNE RIVER!!! Proving for once and for all, that the Old Bourne (or Holburn) River is NOT THE SAME as the River Fleet, but a tributary thereof. So ha!

― kate (kate), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:12 (twenty-one years ago)

ha!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha ha!

― kate (kate), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:14 (twenty-one years ago)

things indelibly written on (old) buildings is a good source

also statues of generals you have never heard of

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:15 (twenty-one years ago)

...the ones that killed the peace loving pygmies and stole all their fruit.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:22 (twenty-one years ago)

And the Duke Of Bedford has left his garden locked this time. :-(

I think it's time for the Gordon Riots, Part II!!!

― kate (kate), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:24 (twenty-one years ago)

WHERE ARE MY HORSES GOING?

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I saw a man on the bus on Saturday who looked *exactly* like old man Steptoe.

― Madchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 11:53 (twenty-one years ago)

It wasn't me was it. Apparently the resemblance can be uncanny.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 12:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait... don't all cities have horseridin' cops? I think they think it helps with crowd control. Tell that to the guy at the fireworks a few years ago who almost got decapitated by a police horse that got spooked when it started to thunder.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 16:51 (twenty-one years ago)

mark s- w/r/t orginal post:

they were chasing borribles.

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Speaking of which (er, fireworks)... 5 November brings out the weirdest of weird old England. I sometimes worry that bonfire night in Lewes is like hunting - it seems like a good old-fashioned way of life to people who've growen up with it, but barbaric mentalism to the rest of the world.

Earlier I heard my colleague assuring one of our visiting Italian tutors that, yes, her boss would just LOVE his hotel in Lewes, which will look over the procession of burning crosses, tar barrels, torches and effigies of the Pope...

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:16 (twenty-one years ago)

i saw those s tatues of dead colonists at the end of every street in london and i thot it was didnt learn the history in grade school, are you saying that no one knows who they are.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:17 (twenty-one years ago)

"Wait... don't all cities have horseridin' cops?"

we've only had them here in dublin for about a year,i think
i certainly never saw them before that...

― robin (robin), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:21 (twenty-one years ago)

There's a roaming knife-sharpener in Brooklyn. He has a green van with pictures painted on the sides, of scissors and lawnmowers and knifes an ting, and he has a bell inside that he rings as his big slow van trundles by. We also have ice-cream trucks in New York. They play "Do Your Ears Hang Low" and "The Entertainer."

Some old man I was interviewing about the Tube and bus improvements and trams and stuff explained to his wife that I was asking him questions about "transfer"

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:24 (twenty-one years ago)

ok this kind of is the opposite to what the thread is about but the new editor's PA at work, i wz explaining to her what some bit of picture-research documenting required, and i said "it's a good idea to xerox the form when they send it back, then i have a copy as well as you", and she looked baffled so i launched into a complicated explanation of how things might go wrong if there was only one copy, and she still looked baffled and i wz beginning to think uh-oh when we realised that she is TOO YOUNG TO KNOW WHAT XEROXING SOMETHING means!!

—:0

so now i say "can you gestettner it plz?"

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:29 (twenty-one years ago)

mark's one hair stands on end!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:46 (twenty-one years ago)

tracer we must do a weird-old-london psychodrift soon

(also: it's ALL my hairs standing end on end thx plz)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 17:57 (twenty-one years ago)

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