On the bus this morning I watched the dustmen at work along Paddington Drive and suddenly wondered if I’m alone in calling our refuse collectors by this Victorian name. Originally employed by the parish vestry in large conurbations, the dustman collected – well, dust. In the mid 19th century your average Victorian household didn’t throw much away, except dust, it would appear. Rubbish was sifted through to extract the really useful stuff such as rags, bones and old boots, but even the dust itself had a value in the brick making industry. The fine variety was used in brick making while the coarser stuff called ‘breeze’ was used in burning bricks.

Even in Victorian times there was big money to be made out of other people’s rubbish. In Our Mutual Friend, Dickens created the character of Nicodemus Boffin who had inherited a fortune made from London’s dust.

My mum had a whole repertoire of archaic phrases. One in particular I remember was ‘San Fairy Ann’ which she used at times of exasperated resignation. Although as a child I didn’t know what the words meant, I certainly understood the application. I suppose loosely translated the modern equivalent would be ‘whatever.’ It was many years later that I discovered that San Fairy Ann is a corruption of the French ‘ca ne fait rien’ meaning ‘it doesn’t really matter,’ brought back to England by the First World War Tommies.

In a recent episode of EastEnders Dot Branning, grappling with the street talk of new ‘youff’ character Fatboy, told him she wasn’t fluent in gibberish. Now I bet Dot and I would understand each other perfectly!