The Provident cheques ring a bell although I don't recall my mother using them. Don't know anything about them though, Pauline.
As for the rag and bone man, well, I always worried about the horse having to drag the cart along. I also hated it when my mother sent me out with a bundle of old clothes (and they must have been very old because anything that could be altered or cut down or mended would have been) because I could guarantee whatever I got for them did not suit my mother at all and then, naturally, I would feel bad about it.
Does anyone remember the old lady in Capstone Rd to whom we'd go for wreaths? She lived near the cut-through to the Catholic Church and had a garden full of hollyhocks. She also had what I now know to be lymphodoema in one leg. Anyway, she was really part of the 'village' system, wasn't she? No Interflora then, just round to her to order the wreath or posy. I never did know her name.