h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's common too see ice-cream vans doing their rounds to sell their wares to different areas. Hot dog vans tend to be stationary. What other services drive around speculatively like the ice-cream van does? A mobile library does it, but a mobile tyre fitter only comes on request.

What other services might profit from this strategy?

The cockles mussels whelk man (he's always called that, because that's what he shouts. We're not very imaginative round our way) seems to visit every pub from Chester Green to Belper on a Saturday and Sunday evening, carrying his basket of... no, you guess.

This post has been removed.

Explanation of in-joke:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Ice_Cream_Wars

Why! I do believe there's a song about a woman who sold cockles and mussels!

Not sure about whelks, mind.


Heres a radical idea: How about if people delivered milk to doorsteps in time for breakfast? They could even use small, eco-friendly electric trucks.

It could probably only work for small, cheap objects that people will buy spontaneously and preferably consume on the spot.

Perhaps blood donating units could do this. The only time I tried to give blood was when one turned up on a camp site when we were on holiday. They're not selling anything, though, strictly speaking.

We used to have a mobile video library come around a few times a week. Not sure if there would be much call for that nowadays. There is a couple of off-licenses in town that sell booze which is delivered to your door, but that's not the same, really.

And the onion man! A real honest-to-goodness Frenchman (oxymoron alert) on a bicycle selling onions! Ooh la la!

My hidden post suggests that the heroin trade could benefit from door to door sales. Which it could. *But I am in no way endorsing this as an idea.*


For thems as wants it there are plenty of places they can buy it anyway.

Meanwhile my daughter has a round selling tablet (a kind of crumbly fudge, for thems as don't know) and carrot cake door-to-door.

The estate I grew up on had a mobile shop come round in the evening. There's also burger vans that come around the school at lunch and home time.

On the Leeds-Liverpool canal in Saltaire there is an ice-cream barge. I'm very fond of that.

I suppose a lawyer could drive round looking for accidents, then leap out and hand out cards crying "No win, no fee!"

There's an ice cream boat that chugs up and down Studlands Bay, much to the annoyance of the National Front. Fortunately they can do bugger all about it, as long as they stay in the water and don't moor up.

Wouldn't an ice-cream boat melt??

And why do the NF take offence?

Have you been reading Happle Tea recently, MonkeyS?

http://www.happletea.com/2011/07/22/heat-wave/

Local nickname for the National Trust, who take exception because the boat's ice creams are cheaper than the ones sold from their vans.

There are a couple of mobile fish-vendors, that bring their stalls to you, although their fish is very pricey.

We have a great milk delivery service round here as well. The milk he sells really tastes much nicer than the cheap,supermarket stuff.


and not exactly a seller, but we even have a proper old-fashioned rag'n'bone man.



[I have replaced the title. I find threads with pre-modded contributions very tiresome, I don't usually bother with them, and unsub]

There used to be mobile chip shops, until insurance cover became too expensive to keep them going

I suppose pizza delivery and other home delivered take out meals, Indian and Chinese, are the logical follow-on from the chip vans?

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Bloody ice-cream nazis. Don't ya just hate em?