Kirstie Allsop in The Times…
If I could do one thing this year it would be to persuade people that second-hand and home-made presents are not in any way second-rate. I have no concept that there is anything shameful about them. This may be because I was brought up seeing the worth in second-hand pieces because my father worked for Christie’s…
You see the thing is… That’s how they (yes, them) get away with it. You say something so outrageous that you simply disarm the opposition. It worked for Lenin, it worked for Goebbels and now it’s working for Ms Allsopp.
My other half, Ben, and I live in a huge house in East Devon that we couldn’t possibly afford to furnish unless we used recycled goods…
My heart simply bleeds for them.
There is an amenity skip in our local town. It’s meant for old fridges and sofas but people take all sorts of things: I got five framed Where’s Wally pictures for my stepsons’ bedroom and Ben got a Moroccan tajine cooking pot. I found a puppy cage one day and we nabbed a complete patio set — four chairs and a table. I can’t bear to see things thrown away.
“Stepson”. That strongly implies Ben is not exclusively a practicing homosexualist which is a surprise. Although after he got the tajine who knows? They do some dirty things in North Africa. I have dumpster-dived in my time and it’s not something to write a leader in The Times about. Round where I now live (which I must say is disgustingly middle-class) there is nowt worth rummaging for. I once found a mother load of Jim Reeves records and some books on German History* in a skip in Leeds. It was one of the first dates with the woman who I now know as my wife (I am that classy). She held the torch. But that was on Meanwood Road which was just as Dickensian as it sounds.
So I go up to Lizzy’s room in combats and a leather jacket looking like a right miscreant. I brought the torch. I knew there had been a house clearance and it was 3am. I do awful things in the late watches of the night when I’m bored and Sid Meier ain’t doing it for me no more. I once filled a fridge with aerosols and copies of The Times and torched it. You should have seen that one go! No fingerprints or DNA so they can’t fit me up for my perfect crime… It nearly took down the wisteria and left me laughing like a mad bastard. But Jesus Christ, when the cans went-up there was a four metre-high mushroom cloud of pure flame issueing from the top.
The neighbours were, the next morning, full of how terrible the kids were round there. Yeah, right! Nobody suspects the thirty-ish astrophysics graduate. I kept the laughter internal.
Well I’ve read Edgar Allen Poe and I am hostage to the imp of the perverse.
*And let’s be honest. I also found the hardback of “True and Fair - The History of Arthur Anderson, Accountants”. But I don’t like to talk about that. I almost read some of it.
Recycled shamelessly from Mark Wadsworth.
Cant quite see what you are having a pop at here Nick.
Admittedly I dont know Ms Allsopp from a hole in the ground, and she does sound a bit of a twat with the Christies crack (if you do purchase a Picasso that is straight from the factory, I fear you have been royally ripped off) but what is wrong with re-using stuff if you can?
I love second hand bookshops and record stores. I have had many a great bargain in Charity shops (my neighbourhood is even more classy than yours and they give away great stuff) an Italian leather jacket for instance that must have cost all of £300 I picked up for a tenner.
My bedroom suite is over a hundred years old, as is the 3 piece suite in living room 2, I inherited them both, and they are still going strong.
In my youth, you took your empty glass bottles back to the shop you bought them from and got a deposit back. They then sent them back to the makers and they washed them out and filled them up again.
I dont regard this as re-cycling though, just sound common sense and saving money for all the goodies I want that cant be found in skips and Charity shops.
Hypocrisy?
Kirstie Allsop “doing” tatty-chic in her “huge house in East Devon” (poor dears, how the aristocracy have to live these days, not us of course, though daddy did work for Chrisities).
What on earth would a Moroccan tajine cooking pot be doing in a skip - in one piece? That was a lucky find for Ben.
Oops, for the patio set they actually got into “nabbing” (we can be a little bit naughty, too) but it´s not just that, imagine all that waste.
Al Gore hates waste as he ponders it all in luxury accommodation, too. Such nice people.
Puppy cage is borderline “Ugh” but it survives in the mink and manure surroundings.
But the rest I think is Nick engaging some mega fantasy stuff. Sounds rather good though (as long as no animals were hurt in the production ) reminds me of when I stuffed a piece of pipe with home made gunpowder and jammed the one end solid with . . . .
Actually, I do feel sorry for anyone who lives in Devon. Talk about being cut off from reality.
RAb, as you well know I’m a computer tech and that means having a “bits box” - actually several. I know more about re-using stuff than any number of twats who extract tajines from skips in Devon. You bring in a five year old machine into my shop needing a part I can pretty much guarantee I won’t be able to get it from Aria Tech (maybe Ebay) but a rummage round the back and I might have the very thing.
John, the skip in Leeds and the fridge in Manchester are entirely true. Thing with fridges is that they are insulated with polystyrene. Stick a Calor gass cylinder and a copy of the Sunday Times in and you have Little Boy. A few cans of Mr Sheen and you got something thast would impress Edward Teller. I also torched a chair in Leeds and blew the fuck out of a sideboard.
Sideboard nobody wanted, back yard and half-empty gas can. What else was I going to do?
No animals were harmed apart from the chair incident. And then they were small animals because I torched that fucker because the cushion moved seemingly of it’s own free will. There were things in it you see. Things.
I could be tempted to relate the adventures of the Watchman’s Hut and the Propane Tank and the Bonfire and the Rotorvator but I deem the World is not ready for them as Dr John Watson MD concluded about the case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra.
I don’t mind skip hunting either. You get the odd Pentium-II now and then, still working and “just add hard disk”.
It’s that poncy woman’s crowing about a Moroccan Tahini pot I can’t stand. (It’s “Tahini”, not “Tajine”: us Lebanese wallahs know what we are talking about round here.)
And you don’t go getting Tahini pots in skips: it’s not kosher, just sad! - you buy them at Terrence Conran’s place, or else. Computers are all right though!
The best thing I got recently in a skip? A pair of Pioneer speakers, hardly damaged at all.