Occasional posts on subjects including field recording, London history and literature, other websites worth looking at, articles in the press, and news of sound-related events.
RECENTLY FOUND A selection of letters from The Guardian newspaper dated June 2007, on the subject of rag-and-bone men. David Collins from Kidderminster wrote:
David Stanners from London had fond memories:
The radio comedy show Band Waggon ran from 1938 to 1940, and it appears that the character was either called Syd Walker or was played by Syd Walker.
A rag-and-bone man or ‘totter’ used to patrol the West End streets near where I lived as a child. The last drawn-out syllable of his cry sounded pure and remote to fresh young ears: rag and b-o-o-o-o-ne; an elegy that seemed to come from a great distance through quiet Sunday streets.
Someone on a web forum elsewhere thinks there’s a rag-and-bone man still occasionally raising his cry around Sutton in south London, so any information or accounts of hearings would be gratefully received.
The balloonist in the desert is dreaming
The Binaural Diaries of Ollie Hall
The Ragged Society of Antiquarian Ramblers
Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology