British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research, Scope, HMV. Which is the odd one out?
Yes that's right it's HMV cause they are not a charity shop. How do I know? I tried to take my unwanted books, toys, games, curtains and Y fronts in there the other day and one of the blokes serving told me that they were not a charity shop!
It's a good job they were still open cause if they had been closed I would have left the lot outside the front door in error!
So why mention the list of company names above? It's a lead in to this blog post which is about charity shops.
God I love em!
In the old days if you wanted to donate to charity you went looking for a man (or woman ... charity collecting is of course full of equality!) who could be found outside Woolies rattling a tin shouting "Give to the blind children for medical research" or something similar, and that was it! Ok you may get a sticker or a paper poppy but that was it.
Now days of course you can't walk down any high street without spotting one, two, three maybe even twelve charity shops all within a few yards.
So what do these modern day money raising premises offer the new age cash donator?
It's a right mixed bag I can tell you! So here's a quick virtual reality tour of whats on offer in an average charity 'temple' without all that flashy crap that Google uses on Streetview. Just use your imagination, something some of you probably haven't used since you were ten years old!
DVDs
Lets start by saying that the odds of finding a copy of Iron Man 3 in there before it has been released, is zero. The same is probably true for any dvd you saw in Tesco for £ 9.99 in the New Releases section!
If however you want a copy of a dvd about dogs, cats, trains, knitting or some other pet/pastime then your luck is in!
Ok you can find films in stock but many are ones that everyone has seen hundreds of times or B movies so bad that even the label 'straight to DVD' hangs its head in shame!
Oh and don't expect to find them in alphabetical order or even the right way up! They are not HMV you know!
CDs, records and tapes
You show your age if you buy any of the records or tapes they stock! Sadly for those so old that you see a gramophone as the ipod of your youth, there are no 78s or 8 track tapes! Oh and those shiny shiny things are called cds not futuristic coffee mats!
VHS tapes
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...... look at the funny brick shape things mummy? Are they giant lego blocks?
Enuff said!
Clothes
It's an even split between women's clothes and men's clothes ..... 95% to 5% is the norm!
Do they think that men don't like buying charity shop clothes or is it that most men generally wear their clothes out completely until the clothes cease to exist, leaving nothing to donate?
Who knows? What I do know is that if you ladies want to buy a coat, some shoes, bras, skirts, dresses or shorts then pop round my house I'm selling off my 'weekend wardrobe"!
Cups, sauces, bowls, vases, pans, pots etc
All for sale at smashing prices ... if you drop any of them!
Books
Books, books, books and more books... everywhere. They are like bloody libraries some of them!
That's just a sample of the stuff available. There is more but I'm getting bored so need to wrap it up before one of us dies.
So remember before you buy that expensive fur coat, diamond necklace or shoes, pop into you local charity shop. You never know, members of the royal family might have had a clear out!
