The Outside Of Everything

Chapter 3
The Charity Shop

The Thatcher years. The 1980s. Everybody’s got an opinion about them. The empowerment of entrepreneurs. The downtrodden forgotten. This story is somewhere in between.

Whatever the colour of your politics one of the facts of the ‘80s you could not argue with was the rise of charity shops. There’s a whole thesis to be written on the wheres, whys and hows of this phenomenon. Nevertheless as the 1980s progressed, more and more charity shops appeared on our high streets. Good news and bad news. For some a boon. For others an eyesore. But a fact of life for everyone.
We were all for them. Without formal employment money could at times be a little tight. And our tastes tended shall we say to the esoteric and exotic. The chain stores couldn’t cater for us. We were if you remember into other people’s rubbish, what they threw away. And charity shops could, nay should be treasure troves. Quality cast-offs. Abandoned vinyl. Dispensed with books and bric a brac. Veritable wealth redistribution.

These days every shopping centre looks the same. The same chains of stores. The same prominent brands. Things were slightly more fragmented back then. Simpler in a way. Though in those days of poverty and plenty there was considerable concern about empty premises. Heaven forbid some squatters should move in. And this was where the charity shops came in. By way of a legal loophole they could get some cracking deals on vacant leases and get something up and running for next to nothing.

And yet even in the twilight world of charity shops there were the haves and have-nots. The likes of your Cancer Researches and what was then the Spastics Society could command complete refits and refurbs of premises. The likes of your local hospice shop and something to help the children of Romania would make do with whatever ladies fashion-and-formal-wear store left behind before they vanished into the sunset amidst a stream of unpaid suppliers and cross customers. Generally we didn’t care just so long as the books were odd, the records odder, and the clobber on the disposed of designer side. That s until we had another of our ideas.

The Redhead’s mum. A lovely lady. She put in quite a bit of time in one charity shop or another. She loved buying. She loved browsing. She loved people. And she had the time. So she helped out and did her bit. And The Redhead, he would help out too occasionally, when help was short. Personally I thought he only ever gave of his time so he could get his hands on the old soul 45s should they appear, but that’s maybe mean of me. I know the old dears that came into the shop had a real soft spot for him.

One of the good things about the ‘80s was that if, like us, you were one of the ones that opted out you tended to be left alone. Just so long as you signed on every fortnight, and attended the occasional interview to discuss your plans with someone who really couldn’t care less. And when you were left alone, you had time on your hands, and time to think, and time to come up with ideas. And the world of charity shops presented us with an opportunity not to be missed.

The Redhead got to learn quite a bit about how charity shops worked. At the same time he got very hot under the collar about how the money taken over the counters tended to get eaten up unnecessarily. Eaten up by administrative overheads, useless shop refits, wasteful wages for managerial wasters, awful advertising campaigns and ridiculous rebranding, staff get togethers and training. A taste of things to come. He used to sit there with us of an evening scribbling down figures in a notebook, working out how much was siphoned off, before it even got near the people the money was meant to help.

He’d got quite friendly with an exiled antipodean guy who was big on energy but a little short on brain cells. This guy had put in a spell managing a charity shop or two, falling foul of the intricacies of paperwork, and needing to move on, despite working wonders. The Redhead pumped this guy for info, and came up with the idea of doing something ourselves in terms of a charity shop. Asking around he’d found out how to get a charity registered, apply for a lease on a short term basis at a knock-down rate, and it had to be said it all seemed pretty straight forward and simpler than it should be. Exploiting a few contacts; calling in a few favours; and taking advantage of some sympathetic shufflers of paper and a few friendly form fillers with a sense of the absurd and a twinkle in the eye helped enormously.

So in an alarmingly short space of time we were up and running. Help was soon rustled up with the help of The Redhead’s mum and her network of ladies with a hint of autumn in their hair. Donations were not hard to come by. Our old antipodean friend had access to a van and proved invaluable. One of our masterstrokes was deciding to take furniture in, and that proved to be a swell way to boost our takings. Folks in the better part of town were forever off to get something newer and better but being cheapskates at heart resented paying the Council to take away their old and used. Which was where we came in.

And we provided a valuable service. New furniture cost a fortune, and was inclined to fall to pieces in no time. Whereas the older less fashionable fitments and settees were made of sterner stuff, even if like the people purchasing they had lost a little of their shine and lustre. We soon became experts on Ercol and Schrieber, and what to look for on the bottom of cups and cutlery to know what we were selling. Believe me, when we took some of the furniture to its new homes and saw what some of the people were getting by with we knew we were doing a good thing. Some of the estates we visited were grim, and even the Rottweilers roamed in pairs, but that’s where people were put, and we brought some sunshine into their lives.
What did we get out of it? Well, we were quite clear from the start we were not doing this for personal gain. There was too much of that around. No, we were quite content to just take the occasional old soul 45 as payment for our services. What we wanted to demonstrate was that the true spirit of charity, pure practical kindliness, could be recaptured. So once the paperwork had been meticulously completed, bills paid, and all that dull as dishwater legal stuff sorted, we could consider what to do with the net profits. And we decided to help out the more forgotten among the downtrodden in our neighbourhood. Surreptitiously, I think would be the appropriate word.

So, an envelope of money here for a couple who had been swindled out of their life savings by a couple of unscrupulous cowboy builders, and a wad of notes there for the Asian couple in the off licence who had been firebombed by racist thugs only to find the small print in their insurance policy didn’t really cover such eventualities. A timely gift from above for a gentle soul spending his earnings on nursing home fees for his blessed mother after she was run down by a hit and run driver. Some practical help for a principled professor striving to save his name after horrendous accusations were made by a twisted soul in the local press. There wasn’t another charity under the sun that would have helped these people. And they never knew where the help came from, despite the explicit instructions about what to do with the money and why. All that they knew was that their special package contained a calling card signed by ‘The Outside of Everything’. Human nature being what it was, however, word began to get round and questions started to be asked. We knew it was time to shut up shop and move on.