'There never seemed to be any unemployment when I was growing up in the 1950s'

The men who seemed to have the most exciting jobs were the bin men. Having an occupation where you could actually get dirty really appealed to us as children, although they, together with the coalmen, also seemed to have jobs that were the most strenuous.

How times have changed. No longer are there coalmen around, and the bin collections don't seem to involve quite the same level of hard manual labour from the bin men or dust men. Or are they called waste operatives these days?

Its not the first time things have been (or bin!) different. I remember living in what was then the West Riding and having a brown paper bag attached to a concrete stand by means of a wire contraption. You tied the bag up and left it for the bin men. It wasn't long before they were replaced by conventional bins as they weren't good in bad weather and subjected to investigation by foxes.

At our age we remember nostalgically the bin collections of yesteryear!

There wasn't much traffic around in the 1950s with few cars on our street. So, the arrival of any vehicle was exciting. Especially the arrival of the bin lorry when it made its weekly visit. Also eagarly awaited was the coalman, and rag and bone man, although in his case it was a horse and cart.

The bin men went to the back yard, hoisted the bin up onto their shoulders, took it to the wagon and emptied into its cavernous hole. They then took the empty bin back to its position in the yard.

It was hard graft with the men often suffering from severe back problems.

However, there was by no means the same amount of rubbish that there is today. No food packaging with many things used in other ways. Newspapers were used for the lighting of the open fire or cut into squares for the outside toilet. Potato and vegetable peelings were thrown onto the fire or the compost heap and ashes kept in a box outside to be spread on the path and pavements when it snowed.

In 1960 Lonnie Donegan immortalised bin men with the song My Old Mans a Dustman with binmen having the words chanted at them by groups of children!

My mother took to heart the verse which included the words 'Some folks give tips at Christmas and some of them forget' as she was always worried that the bin men would tip part of the rubbish onto the path if she was less than generous!