If you’re especially enchanted by vinyl collections that include everything from the ivory-tinkling of Liberace and Mrs Mills to orchestras conducted by either André Previn or James Last – not to mention numerous brass bands and even long-forgotten dance twelve-inches from the early 90s – chances are the record section of the humble high-street charity shop is your favourite corner of said Aladdin’s cave. I’ve uncovered the occasional gem over the years in such locations, though more often than not the LPs crammed in the racks resemble the kind of budget label kitsch yer granny owned and you never heard her actually play. I would imagine the majority of albums that end up in charity shops are amongst the last items standing once family locusts have stripped the home of their recently-deceased parent; unwanted, unfashionable, and – in the case of the Black and White Minstrels – unplayable, these house clearance leftovers remain the staple diet of the charity shop record section, but are also accompanied by the cassette and the CD, with both formats largely echoing their vinyl siblings in terms of terminally-unhip content.
Sharing the enclave containing the shop’s record section are shelves stuffed with DVDs, and their plentiful presence is yet one more pointer to the transient nature of technology; introduced to the UK market a mere 25 years ago, the DVD is already regarded in some quarters as being about as relevant as the 8-track cartridge, what with streaming and downloads all the rage these days. Personally, I prefer my sound and vision on physical objects that cannot be edited or censored by over-sensitive broadcasters, but most movies on those shelves tend to be products of Hollywood’s past decade or so and are therefore both undesirable and unwatchable. Sure, there are the occasional box-sets of decent enough TV shows that one watched at the time without any great craving to watch again, but a large proportion of the motion pictures represented on DVD are what were once referred to as ‘straight-to-video’, i.e. films that had no cinema release due to not being very good.
True, there have been times when rich pickings have been sourced in charity shops, though these were transitional moments between old and new mediums. For example, there was a period in the mid-to-late 80s when men of a certain age were persuaded to re-buy their entire record collections on CD, dumping the vinyl versions at the nearest Help the Aged or British Heart Foundation emporium; I remember purchasing numerous classic albums for next-to-nothing during this fruitful era, and had a similar experience when the VHS made way for the DVD. As with CDs, the DVD was a pricey successor in the beginning, and for those who couldn’t afford either newfangled format, the sudden influx of first LPs and then VHS tapes into charity shops meant collections could be extensively added to with little in the way of expense. Such is the pace of change, however, that charity shops – whilst still accepting vinyl in light of the format’s renaissance as a hip listening tool – will no longer accept VHS tapes. Old enough to recall a time when new VHS releases were priced at well over £20 each on the elite shelves of the most upmarket stores, it’s somewhat strange to see the lifespan of the format has been so brief that even the charity shop won’t act as the elephant’s graveyard for an item that every home once owned in abundance not so long ago.
Books remain something worth checking out in the charity shop, though it often depends on how large the branch is. My local Oxfam is a dependable library of the best the written word can offer, whereas the smaller charity shops in the neighbourhood favour ghost-written ‘biographies’ of daytime TV presenters or celebrity cook books that are reasonable Mother’s Day gifts if nothing else. Meanwhile, clothes are usually the first things the visitor to a charity shop is confronted by, and I’ve bought my fair share of sartorial bargains now and again in such places, albeit not for quite some time. After all, most charity shops sell whatever was fashionable three or four years ago, and there’s no appeal for me personally in the sidewalk catwalk of this century. Perhaps the thought of wearing clothes once worn by somebody else was responsible for the stigma that attached itself to charity shops for a good few years; to some, the prospect of being clad in anything that previously contained the body of a stranger is anathema, and charity shops were regarded by these folks as repositories for smelly old rags nobody with any decency would be seen dead in.
Of course, many people who bought their clothes from charity shops did so because they simply didn’t have the money to buy brand-new gear; but some began to patronise them not because they were skint but because they were skinflints, too tight to fork-out for outfits they could easily afford and instead opting to slum it as a means of saving cash they were hardly short of. At the same time, the cultish popularity of charity shop goods amongst the young led to some being rebranded as ‘vintage’, the difference being a fair few quid could be slapped onto the items, thus pricing out the traditional hard-up patrons in the process. I recall one local charity shop being revamped in this manner, receiving a chic makeover and ramping up the price of goods to reflect their new vintage status instead of their past ‘junk’ tag; it closed about six months ago, though I did pick-up an LP by one of the acts mentioned in the first paragraph during its final day of trading for the sum of 5p, probably the first time I’ve bought anything for a mere shilling in about forty years.
The aforementioned stigma once associated with charity shops lingers to an extent, with their omnipotence on the high-street viewed as indicative of the high-street’s decline; however, recent falls in living standards have forced many into reassessing their prejudices and realising the charity shop may well be the only alternative to the chain-store rapidly moving away from their financial reach. London’s Brent Cross Shopping Centre has this week acquired a so-called ‘pop-up’ shop scheduled to be open for a month; masterminded by Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemingway, what is called a charity super-market resembles an old-school department store in size, though its contents would be familiar to any regular visitor to the local PDSA outlet. Stats quoted by Hemingway’s partner in the project, Maria Chenoweth, suggest the appearance of a larger-than-usual charity shop in such a cathedral of retail as Brent Cross is a sign of the times. ‘When you look at the demographic of people who are shopping in charity shops,’ says Chenoweth, ‘it’s the people who are leading the way in thinking’; according to Chenoweth, 65% of people in the country are dressed in second-hand outfits at least once a week, implying the old stigma is losing its grip on the popular imagination in the face of harsh economic factors.
Apparently, the site the charity super-market has taken over till the end of February was previously a Topshop, which is telling; many of those to have passed through its doors so far have done so with a ‘sustainability’ agenda in mind, preferring to donate their pennies to charities in exchange for goods rather than continuing to feed the corporate chain-store machine. Wayne Hemingway also sees the increasing interest in second-hand goods on the part of the young being reflective of other aspects of their lives, such as struggling to pay the rent and the simultaneous realisation that they might not own their own home before their 40s, if ever. There’s also the eBay element, so engrained in younger generations – i.e. a charity shop bargain could be resold online at twice the price it cost in the shop, thus bringing in a few more extra quid. Wayne Hemingway is hopeful this particular pop-up model can effectively go ‘on the road’, popping-up in other cities across the country and being akin – in his own words – to ‘the fair coming to town’. Perhaps if more people than ever now need charity shops as much as we’re being led to believe, a pop-up should become permanent.
© The Editor
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The MSM response to the so-called ‘Twitter Files’ that were unveiled during the final few months of 2022 exemplified the way in which new and old news outlets reside in parallel universes that rarely crossover. The BBC and Fleet Street focus on each (admittedly plentiful) example of Elon Musk’s somewhat eccentric behaviour ever since taking over the single biggest influence on public discourse over the past decade, upholding the accepted narrative portraying the bonkers billionaire as a right-wing threat to all we cherish rather than highlighting his stated intent to make Twitter an open forum for opinions of all persuasion by both restoring dubiously-deleted accounts and uncovering the truth of the site’s previous moderators in keeping a lid on storylines potentially damaging to those on ‘the right side of history’. The fact that the FBI and Big Tech conspired to suppress the Hunter Biden story and sought to discredit the lone New York Post from reporting it during the run-up to the 2020 Presidential Election in order that it wouldn’t damage Sleepy Joe’s campaign is a revelation arguably on a par with Watergate, yet the pitiful coverage it received in the MSM is testament to how our fat controllers filter the output we are delivered on a daily basis and decide which particular viewpoint will best preserve their hegemony.
Some characters that emanated from the pages of children’s literature during the medium’s century-long reign as the prime launch-pad for the imagination appear to be in possession of a remarkable durability that enables them to charm successive generations of young readers. The anthropomorphic animals from ‘The Wind in the Willows’, the cast of surreal eccentrics from ‘Alice in Wonderland’, Winnie the Pooh and his engaging sidekicks, Peter Pan and his nocturnal Neverland – all continue to sprinkle the same stardust onto the children of today as they sprinkled onto their parents, grandparents and so on. Most of these success stories have, of course, had their lives extended by being reimagined in other mediums that arrived later – primarily cinema and television; and the latter not only adapted these established franchises for a fresh audience, but eventually created franchises of its own. Some had impressive longevity, whereas others remain known only to those who watched with mother at the time. There are, however, a select few who have continued to wave their magic wands throughout the decades – and once even extended their omnipotence to the breakfast table.
Upon hearing of the death of David Crosby – coming so hot on the heels of Jeff Beck passing away last week – I remarked to a friend that the 60s generation had become their own Dorian Gray portraits, ageing and decaying before our eyes whilst their over-achieving 20-something selves continued to be their definitive public image, frozen forever in the high summer of youth. Crosby’s CV was a case in point, making his most fruitful recordings as a member of two key American bands of the era, The Byrds and then Crosby, Stills and Nash (with or without Young); but he always had a reputation as being something of an awkward sod. Indeed, Doris Day’s record producer son Terry Melcher worked with The Byrds during Crosby’s tenure in the band as well as Charles Manson when the latter had a failed shot at being a pop star himself; Manson developed a dangerous grudge against Melcher comparable to Adolf’s beef with Jewish art critics, but Melcher nonetheless once stated that given the choice of re-entering the studio with either Crosby or Manson, he’d opt for the future murderous guru.
Although forming part of the Dystopian future narrative so commonplace in pre-‘Star Wars’ sci-fi films of the 1970s, ‘Logan’s Run’, the 1976 movie starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter, contains an element in its storyline that is both telling of the era in which it was produced and prescient to where we are now. The citizens of the sealed society housed within a self-contained dome to keep them safe from the polluted air outdoors receive an implant in the palm of their left hands as babies; this implant changes colour as they age and when it begins to blink as they approach 30, they are forced to undergo voluntary euthanasia in an elaborate ceremony attended by crowds in a manner recalling a sporting occasion. At the time the film was made, 30 was viewed as a key cut-off point in a pop culture still trading on the Bright Young Things of the 60s, all of whom were remarkably creative individuals whilst in their 20s – and many of whom died before they made it to 30; 30 being the age at which citizens are deemed over-the-hill and therefore need to be ‘renewed’ seems logical for the era.
New Year hangovers aren’t simply physical after-effects characteristic of 1 January; 2023 so far still seems bogged-down by the headlines from last month, many of which were covered in the previous post a week ago. Lack of Winegum action has been in part due to spending a good four solid days on a new instalment of the filthily evergreen ‘Buggernation Street’, now firmly settled in its new home on my Patreon channel; but the aforementioned absence of fresh output on here can also be blamed on a general lack of inspiration arising from the news. Of course, alongside the catalogue of strike action and the annual ‘NHS on the brink’ story, the MSM has been mystifyingly in thrall to the vain, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing public therapy of a ginger whinger; as one half of a couple worthy of comparison to Posh & Becks or Peter Andre & Jordan in terms of class, the ‘spare’ has been flogging his ghost-written misery memoir across newspapers and TV channels that should know better for what feels like the entirety of 2023 to date. The tabloid quarter of Fleet Street professes to despise said twosome and routinely hammers this point home; yet it simultaneously stops at nothing to devote ludicrously disproportionate coverage to them. Both they and the MSM are engaged in an unedifying spectacle akin to watching a pair of pissheads scrapping on the pavement to get at a fiver they’ve just spotted hovering over a grate.
As we currently reside in a winter wonderland, the NHS is naturally on the brink of collapse. This annual event – one that usually dominates the headlines of news outlets less than sympathetic towards the Conservative Party every January without fail – is making its yearly appearance at the moment, counteracted by evidence from the other side of Fleet Street concerning how many millions our most beloved of institutions squanders on the likes of ‘diversity coordinators’ and so on, thus depriving frontline nurses of wage increases they’d otherwise not have to strike for. But the narrative that traditionally opens a New Year tends not to recognise this strand of the storyline; it’s far easier to pin the blame on ‘evil Tories’ because black & white heroes and villains translate the myriad intricacies of the morbidly obese and unmanageable behemoth of bureaucracy the NHS has become into a more digestible bite-sized tabloid snack. Of course, there are always a few dependable Blimp-like Tories who will gladly provide sufficient fodder for the Mirror and the BBC by coming out with a reliably stupid quote to uphold the narrative, though these tend to be detached backbenchers who are all with Bupa anyway.
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