A little more

I forgot to say other things we discussed when I went to my Mate's.
I told him that the back road to his house was closed. It didn't cause any inconvenience but in the summer it saves quite a bit of time. I suggested that my neighbour had told me that where the Olympic Torch was being carried, the roads were being tidied and many had been temporary closed. My Mate then told me that he bet the torch would go out several times and that there would be quite a few torches in reserve.
This bought to mind the time when I was in the Army doing my National Service. I was posted to Hong Kong and the Chinese were always on hand to try to sell us different things. Cigarette Lighters were a popular sale. They were ordinary petrol lighters with a naked picture on the outer casing. One day however, a new lighter suddenly appeared. Fro what I can remember, it was a cylindrical shape, made of some metal with a push on top. what made this different to every other lighter was, when you took the top off the lighter it immediately lit up. We were all around 18 and to be honest, very immature for our years. We didn't give it a thought that it was a dangerous object because what it contained was Phosphorous. If you left the top off for a lengthy period. I mean about 1 minute the whole lighter got hot, otherwise if you just lit your cigarette and put the cap firmly back all was well. The good thing was that the amount of Phosphorous was small and they only lasted for about a week before not working at all. My Mate just laughed he couldn't believe that we would be supplied with such stuff. He didn't know the Chinese of Hong Kong.
I also mentioned to his Mum if she had, like we had, a swill bin in the street. As I have mentioned before, we lived on an Estate which was privately owned. There would be about 200 houses on the Estate. I can not remember just how many swill bins were in the street but we had one about 3 doors up from where we lived. It did smell. What these were used of was this. All homes were not allowed to throw anything away that was not reusable. Things such as potato peelings, vegetable leaves and anything not eaten would have to be taken to the swill bin. This was a sort of Beldray dustbin. Beldray were the heavy duty dustbins. I think they were emptied twice a week, we were told that the swill was boiled and of course meal or some other stuff was added and it was fed to the pigs.
Our dustbins were emptied every week. Not as you would think but a Dustman would call with a two handled pan, empty the contents of your dustbin and then take out the pan and empty it onto the dust cart. This made sure that all contents in the dustbin were of no value.
My Mate's Mother remembered that well. I told her that in the 70s when the Baker used to call on me when I was in business. He used to tell me that at the end of the day, food that had not been sold and was close to being out of date, not that they had dates on but what would not sell. The food was taken to a local piggery and that was fed to the pigs. Now I guess that it is against the Law to do that. What a pity. Potatoes that were too small to be sold to the General Public were dyed purple so that they could not be sold, they were then, whether sold or given, I don't know but they went to the pigs. An excellent way to use unwanted food. More soon.