Recycling, reusing,

There is no doubt that British television produces excellent period dramas; ‘call the midwife’ is one of these but it is because of a small error in it that I am writing this. Sitting round a fire outside, a group of midwives and nuns were having a pleasant evening – but the fire was wrong!  Nobody in the 50s would have burnt wood that was clean and could clearly have been used for something more useful. Even now you will find men well into their retirement keeping bits and pieces that could be useful – bits of wood, tube, metal, fittings and furniture – almost anything that might be used at a later date to make or mend something without the need to spend anything other than a little time, knowledge and effort; what is rubbish to some is treasure to others. The make do and mend mindset was the forerunner of fashionable green recycling.

Milk Bottle Tops recycling

When I was a boy, when I were a lad, milk bottle tops were carefully collected by schoolchildren and were taken to school where they miraculously transmogrified into dogs for the blind - I think that is what happened.... Many probably think that recycling is something new but I also recall that brown sacks were left by the dustmen (yes, that is what they were called, no politically correct titles) for householders to put their newspapers into for collection the following week - so a culture of socially responsible care for the environment and caring for others did exist in the dark ages before you, young reader, were born.