Charity Begins at Home

Once upon a time, I was a young boy. I know the thought of this mature, august countenance as a tousle-headed, freckle-faced youth is a bit hard to bear but yes; a boy I was. This isn't something that will surprise most people - it's one of those strange aspects of Life that we are born young and get older but I preface this particular blog in such a way for a reason.

In those long-past days one had very little compared to the present. Things lasted longer and we "made do". Clothes were passed down through the kids (thank God my older sibling was male!), toys were played with for many years, adults would sit around the television watching Billy Cotton's Bandshow on the one solitary channel and the only exhortations to buy were the local shopkeeper tempting the shopper with the promise of some lovely fresh sausages.

Then of course we got commercial television and the wonderfully exotic adverts persuading us to buy new and exciting products like Coco Pops, Fairy Liquid ('for hands that do dishes') and Smarties. The Milky Bar Kid became the hero of us all and we ran to the shop clutching our 3d, having fallen under the influence of early marketing. Time passed and the marketing industry became more sophisticated until we reached that stage where we became inundated with pleas to buy everything from holidays to health products, cosmetics to caravans and eye surgery to iPods.

This consumer society meant houses were filled to bursting with all sorts of "must collect" products which, once they got home, quickly became "dust collect" products until somebody had a bright idea - charity shops! Suddenly, houses were quickly emptied of products and a whole new era of shopping heaven was born. Those first charity shops tended to be full of very old books, yoghurt makers and quaint clothing but it was still a chance to browse through for the odd treasure. Time passed and it seemed that every empty shop became the repository of abandoned goods for some charity or another. There were bargains aplenty and it enabled people on a lower income to perhaps benefit as well as providing funds for the charities in question. Of course, it also enabled quite a few people to make a fast buck as they quickly realised that the charities hadn't really appreciated just what a gold mine they were sitting upon.

The reason for all this? I have to confess, I can't walk past a charity shop without popping in. As I walk through the door, there is a frisson of expectation and, more often than not, I emerge with something or other. Of course, the charities are a lot more slick these days and siphon off the good stuff but my 'treasures' are of the simple variety such as books, games, LPs,; perhaps even memories of times gone by that just have to be bought.

When I was doing my regular Quiz Nights, there was a constant source of reference material, when I went through my jigsaw period I couldn't resist several puzzles at a time, if I suddenly become fond of a particular author then I will scour the shops for their work. Last visit, we returned with the following:

• An unusual copy of Alice In Wonderland
• Jane's Aircraft Recognition Guide
• "The Office" Scripts
• A Terry Pratchett hardback (yep, there are still a few hardback editions I haven't got)
  
• A book on watercolour perspectives, and
• The one Bill Bryson I needed to complete his entire collection
  

It's quite interesting how trends change in charity shop bookshelves. Once, every shop would have plenty of Geoffrey Archer novels and it would be a matter of honour to spot one before we left (I never bought one - honest!). It was an arbiter of the day to come and, should I occasionally find an Archer-less shelf, I knew that the day was destined for mediocrity. Nowadays, it's The DaVinci Code and the game is to see how many I can find in one shop (current leader is Lewes Oxfam with 4 copies!). I'm often to be seen browsing through the kid's books as well, looking for Famous Five, William and other gems of my youth.

There has been the occasional embarrassment as well. One in particular occurred when I saw a very sweet rubber duck (have I told this story before?). Brand new and still in its box, I took it to the sweet little old lady at the counter and explained how pleased I was to find it as such things gave Mrs B a lot of pleasure and she had a large collection. It was only after, when we opened it, the we found it was actually a novelty vibrator and the duck's head was not quite the shape that we envisaged! Needless to say, I haven't ventured into that particular shop subsequently.

To those of you dear readers that enjoy charity shops, help me beat the DaVinci Code record. To those of you who don't, please bear them in mind that us poor addicts need your cast-offs. Might I suggest Help the Aged as your chosen charity as I may well need them in the near future!

I'd love to know what your "best buys" have been. Feel free to leave a comment :-)