Paulclem
Why you’ll find my old clothes in a charity shop over my dead body.
by , 04-30-2011 at 04:31 PM (3126 Views)
I was in some charity shops today – those shops where people donate their old or unused stuff to be sold by the charity for a small profit – as my wife and I like browsing in them. I bought three books for a quid – actually they came to 50p as it was an “Everything Half Price” day.
I bought Hammond Innes The Strange Land – mainly because it is a 1966 copy, and I find the cover alluring. I got a Len Deighton – Hope which is the second in his Faith, Hope and Charity trilogy. They didn’t have the first one – Faith - which would have been better. Frustratingly they also had the second two of another trilogy of his. The third book I bought was Kahlil Gilbran’s The Prophet mainly because I had seen references to it on this forum.
They do serve a good purpose these shops. They raise a good amount of money and provide lots of people with the opportunity to gain some work experience. I know a chap who works in one who used to live in the Salvation Army Hostel. He’s now got his own place and works there. He also volunteers with the St. John’s ambulance. It’s nice to see people moving on from difficult circumstances.
It also means you can get kitted out – if you need to – pretty cheaply, though I wouldn’t buy my pants from there. The thing is, you just know that the clothes will probably be from a clearance of some poor old bloke’s wardrobe when he died. Most of them look like they are. I don’t usually find any clothes in them, though I have bought items from them in the past. I’m not squeamish in that way, but they tend to be old guy’s type stuff, (or should I say older guy’s stuff?). But I was wondering why there aren’t more men’s clothes in a younger type range, and perhaps it’s because blokes wear stuff differently to women. (There are always loads of ladies clothes).
It might be just me, but I tend to wear stuff into the ground. If I buy something, I wear it come rain or shine until it is unsuitable for human wearing again, and my wife surreptitiously throws it out. Is this other bloke’s experiences? We don’t tend to talk about clothes and so I have no idea what other blokes do either. What leads me to think that it might be true of other blokes is that there aren’t usually any good selections of clothes in charity shops for men.
My shirts wear out along with my shoes, my jumpers shrink or stretch, my trousers usually go on the seat due to my cycling, and my t-shirts tend to disintegrate and fade. This all goes to show that it is only when I’m dead that you’ll be able to buy my clothes in the charity shop – they’ll not be worn out like I finally will be.
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