Confessions of a charity shop worker

This was an article I wrote for the Liverpool magazine Plastic Rhino some time ago. It might be a lazy way to fill out this new blog, but what the heck. I need to get a few posts in, and this piece explains a lot about me and my interest in old things:


Confessions of a charity shop worker

Charity shops saved my life. No really they did. From the ‘thrift shops’ on the various RAF camps where I lived as a child, to my student days and beyond, I would have struggled to clothe myself, equip and furnish my numerous shabby bedsits, read as much esoteric and trashy literature or listen to as much esoteric and trashy music without them. Charity shops fed my obsessions with an unpredictable supply of lucky finds, nurtured me as a collector and provided a smugly satisfying contrary form of elitism. All through the eighties, I sneered at the designer label obsessed masses, and never missed an opportunity to crow about how little my new acquisitions cost me. As unpleasant as this perverse snobbery sounds, I’m reluctant to condemn my younger, smart arse self, since I was making a virtue of a necessity. Like a lot of people at that time, I was permanently skint.