Tuesday, December 07, 2004

The perils of the charity shop

shop2

I got to the station too early yesterday for my train back to London from Leeds. To kill some time I decided to peruse the shelves of Smith’s. I decided to buy a copy of Arena Homme Plus. Not only is the magazine my style bible, but it features mucho pages of male models in various stages of undress.

On the train I start to flip through the magazine and come across this article on charity shops, which contained a mini review of Saviour in Notting Hill. I am reliably informed that I will find the long desired piece de resistance for my wardrobe amongst their heavily laden rails. So because I am currently a man of leisure, I decided that I would stop by on my way to the gym. Besides, I like the atmosphere of Notting Hill and I can imagine that art could mirror life and I might accidentally spill my latte down some movie star's shirt. One thing will lead to another. Probably.

I’ll cut to the chase. The shop was crap. Nothing in there that I liked. And the prices? Are you kidding me!?

People talk a lot of crap about charity shops. Especially journalists in highfalutin fashion magazines, such as Arena Homme Plus, which I hate anyway because it’s pretentious and the models are ugly. How many times have you heard some story from one of your hipster friends about how they claimed to have found a vintage Vionnet dress on the rails at their local Sue Ryder shop in some market town where “daddy” owns half the county (I am thinking of a particular acquaintance here).

The idea that charity shops are bursting at the seams with fashion finds is patently bullshit. Because in fifteen years of generally having enough money to buy clothes I have only once found anything remotely worthy of putting on my body – a beautifully cut, black polyester (yup, I said polyester) shirt from Birmingham Flea Market. I can wear it unbuttoned almost to the waist (best when I have a tan) and it shows off my chest nicely. I wuv you, my little black shiny shirt!

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the bargains are there, somewhere. Perhaps my finely honed fashion radar misfires in charity shops because I’m too busy avoiding the many freaks who congregate amid the musty clothes (people really have died in them if the smell is anything to go by) and the grossly yellowed Mills & Boon novels.

I went into a charity shop with my mummy a while ago and it occured to me the staff are all characters from the “League of Gentlemen” (for my foreign readers, this is a cult British comedy sketch show):

1. Little old lady – the one who is too scared to use the till so she does all the sums on the back of a paper bag, pausing only to yell across the shop, “Love a cup of tea, Connie, if you’re putting the kettle on!”

2. Surly teenage girl - who’s only doing her four hours a week because it’ll look good on her university application. That and the fact that her poor beleaguered parents are desperate to get her out of the house.

3. Finally, shifty, spotty “yoof” – wearing a shell suit and a sneer. He’s doesn’t go on the till either. But that's because he’s not allowed. He is only working there as part of his community service sentence for stealing mobile phones from people’s coat pockets at his local Wetherspoons.

But the most frightening aspect of any charity shop? The twitching, badly dressed man (which came first – the badly dressed man or the charity shop?) of a certain age who stares unblinkingly at you as you try to find something worth reading amongst afore mentioned yellowing M&B books (you know I did once find the “Hite Report on Male Sexuality” in a charity shop! Provided hours of adolescent homoerotic reading).

Four simple words: care in the community.

Anyway – compared to that motley crew the actual shoppers seem like the epitome of cleanliness, sanity and good fashion choices. Er, no!! Charity shop shoppers are comprised of the following cast:

1. Stingy mums – the determinedly Boho middle class type who are actually too stingy to buy new clothes for little Cosima and Bartley from Marks & Spencer, ensuring that the fruit of their loins are forever the victims of playground taunts (I know - I got beaten up because of the school blazer my mum bought from a charity shop. So I binned it and told her that it had been stolen during PE).

2. Middle aged man – he lives with his mum and spends three hours looking at every single freaking book and completely obscures your view of the shelves. Oi! Middle aged man! They don’t sell porn in Scope, so bugger off!

3. Hippies – of the type who really need to replace their mantra of “Better to reuse than recycle” with my personal fave, “cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

And last but not least, and it shames me to have to write this as between the years of 1993 - 1996 I was once one of these:

4. Fashion students – they humorlessly insist on buying horrible shiny monstrosities that looked shit in the 80s and aren’t going to suddenly look less shit 20 or so years later.

I guess at the end of the day everyone and everything has it’s place in the world. Charity shops will always be next to the fruit and veg shops and bizarrely within the pages of Vogue and Arena Homme Plus. And I am not playing down their importance - obviously they raise much needed cash for reallly great causes, like cat homes and church roof funds. But if you do accidentally wander into a charity shop please remember - do not look anyone in the eye under any circumstance!

2 comments:

Jef said...

We call charity shops thrift stores here in Atlanta. Jeff finds lots of cool things from J. Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch there.

I read the Hite Report On Male Sexuality in my late teens. It was kind of spooky to read about so many men that liked their girlfriends to stick their fingers up their boyfriends asses just before orgasm. I just hope none of them lost a Lee Press-On Nail during the process.

Anonymous said...

hiya everythingisnotreal.blogspot.com admin discovered your blog via yahoo but it was hard to find and I see you could have more visitors because there are not so many comments yet. I have found website which offer to dramatically increase traffic to your site http://mass-backlinks.com they claim they managed to get close to 4000 visitors/day using their services you could also get lot more targeted traffic from search engines as you have now. I used their services and got significantly more visitors to my website. Hope this helps :) They offer most cost effective services to increase website traffic at this website http://mass-backlinks.com