I HAVE lived here since 1938, in the days of open coal fires, each day's ashes going into the dust bin in the back garden - no plastic bags in those days.

Each week the whistling dustman came down the back garden, hoisted the full dustbin on his shoulder, carried it up the garden and tipped the contents into the dustcart. They always seemed a cheerful lot, laughing and joking as they worked.

How things have changed! Now we have plastic bin liners, which makes the bin-man's job much healthier and cleaner - but to hell with the housewife!

She can jolly-well take the garbage bag, down the back garden, across the patio, into the kitchen, through the dining room, down the hall, out the front door to the front of the house - all in the name of progress, progress for the dustman, certainly not for the housewife.

Fortunately I am a healthy nonagenarian, but many people younger than I must find this very difficult. Thank goodness I am on my way out not up!

I guess it was the Journal which found the right strings to pull to deal with car parking in Burford Road, for which, many thanks.

Now to a different topic, the Workman Bridge. It is so handsome and worthy of such places as Oxford or Cambridge, wouldn't it be lovely cleaned up, a real asset to the town. Since the Workman Gardens have been so very nicely renovated, why not the Workman Bridge. Can you find the right strings to pull?

BEATRICE M HEMMING, Burford Road, Evesham.