Above the hum of the washing machine

Above the hum of the washing machine

I heard a bell ring,

Over on the building site

Another truck was

Waiting by the gate

Ready to be filled with

The sad remains

Of an old tenement

I too am transported,

Back into my childhood

A rag’n’bone man

With horse and cart

Walked the neighbourhood

Clip-clop... Clip-clop

The creak of leather and wood

The scrape of metal wheel rims

On concrete

The ragged man rang a big brass bell

‘Any old iron...Any old iron’

He would shout

But just to be fair

‘Old’ did sound more like ‘owl’

Lonnie Donegan

Had a big hit record

In the fifties

Or was it the early sixties

With a song called ‘Any old iron’

One of many

‘My owl man’s a dustman’

Was another

He was a favourite of my mother

I was more the Beatles

And the Stones

Cream and Jimi Hendrix

Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll

White boys getting off

On black Americana

Oh how we loved the hype

Sing the blues like Jack Johnson

Play guitar ‘like ringing a bell’

Even though we were

Never Johnny

Just a white stripe

With disguise written

All the way through

Like seaside candy

From Blackpool Pleasure Beach

Postwar exotica

We were too naive

To understand

The meaning of erotica

The rag’n’bone man

Carried an aquarium

Filled with Goldfish

At the back

If we took out copper

Bits and pieces

Or a ‘Singer’ sewing machine

We could take one home

In a see-through plastic bag

To swim around in circles

For a few days

In a glass bowl,

My mum had once used for trifle,

Until it mysteriously

Disappeared

And we had to wait

For the next time

We would hear the bell

And the ‘rag’n’bone man

Reappeared.