Gravity-powered frissons and fun of soapbox racing
EVERYONE SEEMS to think that the current drive to recycle our old stuff is a recent crusade. Don’t you believe it.
As youngsters in the Yorkshire town I lived in long ago, most people we knew ‘wasted nowt’ – without being persuaded.
This was not out of concern for the planet but because, as they used to say, ‘needs must’ – that is, we have to salvage the old because we can’t afford the new.
Without knowing it, back then we were also fairly ‘green’. Yes, we burned coal but our local comings and goings did little damage to the atmosphere.
Our buses – we called them ‘tracklesses’ – ran on overhead wires, and we walked everywhere, or biked (sometimes hitching a lift on a crossbar).
We were also youthful pioneers of another non-polluting, silent, environmentally friendly means of transportation – based on recycling mum’s pram…
Locally, our home-made vehicles were known as trolleys but from well before
