String.

[Jared Katooie]

I've been thinking about string lately. Bronw strign mainly.

I use to see a lot of it on the ground as a kid, when I was walking across the wasteland to the newsagents. There's always be little bits of it dotted here and there around the place.

Nowadays I hardly see it at all.

Has anyone got any theories as to where the string came from (people opening bundles of newspaper in a field)? And how come I don't see it anymore (Is it just because I'm further from the ground now, or has string become osolete)?

[Mister Pops]

I reckon it had something to do with postmen's bundles of letters.

Nowadays I keep seeing red rubber bands everywhere. I think that's also the postman. Any posties here to confirm that?

Also does anyone know where I can get some bailing twine? It looks like the brown string you're talking about except its blue

[I, Cosh]

Good question. I think there's certainly a difference in the lengths of pieces of string nowadays compared with when we were kids.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

May I also mention white dog poo, before anyone else does.

And pages from porn mags in hedges (who put them there? why?)

[flip-r mk2]

mmmmmmmmmmm hedge porn.



filip

[vzzbux]

Pallet/bundle strapping may have something to do with it.






V

[mogzilla]

i always had string in my pockets as a boy plus rubber bands ,paper clips and stones y'know just in case... also used to carry my cheapo penknife when such things where for carving twigs instead of others

[Van Dom]

I don't know where all the bits of string are gone. I miss them too. String! We need more of it!

As for that white dog poo, Dr. X, I've often wondered that myself. What's the deal with that? How did it come about in the first place (white poo?) and why don't you see it anymore (not that I want to, necessarily, but ya know what I mean!) Maybe it wasn't dog poo at all, maybe it was alien droppings, and now the aliens have all gone home.

With plenty of string.

[vzzbux]

White dog poo was the product of the calcium that was put into the dog food of yesteryear (Bone meal etc). A trait which isn't practised so much today.




V

[Van Dom]

Ah-hah! One of (my) life's great mysteries solved. Thank you kindly sir!
(would have been cooler if they were alien droppings though!!! )

[mogzilla]

i think it may also be age of poo.when we finally cleared my poor departed dog's shed there was a bit of poo that had been missed in the grief,it was white.

[Peter Wolf]

Heres another:

Just who is it that vandalises bikes that are parked in public places ?

You always see parked bikes where the wheels have been stamped or bent out of shape by some invisible force because i have never ever seen anyone actually doing this.Another is bikes that have been stripped of parts.

[House of Usher]

The red rubber bands are indeed down to postmen. Royal Mail rubber bands come in two sizes, erm - large and small - and they cost Royal Mail millions every year. For one thing a lot of them break, especially the small ones, because they are frequently overstretched. They are only meant to go round a bundle of letters side-on, not lengthways (that's what the large bands are for), but you still see postmen trying to stretch the small ones to the length of a bundle of A5 or A4 correspondence because they are too lazy to search the depot for a handful of large size, which are like the proverbial gold dust. Then the small bands they used incorrectly snap anyway.

When I was delivering I used to finish the day with a satchel pocket absolutely stuffed with rubber bands for re-use the next day. It makes sense to keep them because you don't want to waste time in the morning searching around for replacements, especially the large size. However, red rubber bands get dropped all over the place because some postman are too lazy, careless or wasteful to pocket them for re-use, but the postmen aren't exclusively to blame: some of the delivery pouches are so worn out they have holes in, so you may scrupulously deposit every used rubber band in your satchel only to find at some point along your route that you've been losing a lot of them out of a hole in the compartment you put them in.


Re: string. We sell string in the supermarket where I work. It doesn't have a very great breaking strain. I know because I used some to tie a bundle of newspapers weighing no more than 10 kilos, and the string broke when I picked it up. Thenceforth I resolved to use garden twine instead or double up on lengths of string for greater resistance.

[TordelBack]

i think it may also be age of poo.when we finally cleared my poor departed dog's shed there was a bit of poo that had been missed in the grief,it was white.

Indeed.  AFAIK from my days volunteering in an animal shelter, the white stuff is a calcium residue resulting from eating bones/bonemeal, and when the delicious organic brown stuff has been had away with, it remains as a sort of poo-skeleton or stalacpoo (hence the white can be just a treacherous crust  overlying still-vibrant brown in younger models). Thus it's both diet and age that combine to create this once-ubiquitous marvel.

[zombemybabynow]

ha ha string-theory