Charity Shopping

     Trust Jonny to try and haggle down the price of a £3 fleece in a charity shop. The absolute cheek of the boy, it’s astonishing… 

- I tell you what: if you give it to me for £2.50, I’ll bring back one of my old jumpers for you to put on display and I won’t even ask for any of the takings. The poor old dear behind the desk looks like her hair is about to fall out with shock. 

    - I-I’m afraid that’s not how it works, young man. You see, we sell items that people bring in, but the money we receive all goes to ou- 

    - But it’s got a ‘kin hole in it, look! Jesus, Jonny, tone down the fucking swearing or you’ll kill her dead. - I refuse to pay the £3 it’s priced at if I’ve picked it up and found that it’s faulty. That’s just not on, love.

    - Young man, it is priced as such because we have already taken into account any damage found on the item. This is a high-end product, you kno-

    - High-end? Fucking Kipsta? High-end my arse. 

    - Sir, I… 

    Taking Jonny anywhere is always a laugh, because he just loves kicking up a fuss for absolutely no reason (see exhibit A) and he almost always ends up winning, so it never turns out to be too embarrassing. I mean, obviously Milo and I are always sure to distance ourselves from the boy as much as is physically possible, communicating between the clothing rails with a string of nervous looks and eyebrow twitches, but it’s all good fun. On this occasion we are trapped in a tiny little Oxfam down Allerton Road, pretending to read books on Indian mysticism and the etymology of Swedish swear words convincingly enough to make the little old lady believe that we really are nothing to do with him. It might turn out in our favour, though, all this fuss. My thinking is that if Jonny wears her down now, then maybe by the time I go up to pay for this skirt and T-shirt, she might instinctively give me a buy-one-get-one-free deal to avoid any potential conflict she could assume is on its way. God, I sound just as bad as him now, don’t I? Ha. 

    The three of us ever leaving the house together in the daytime is such a rarity lately that today is a bit of a miracle. Usually we’re either feeling too rough, have conflicting schedules, or just ‘cba’ for no real reason other than the fact that bed is comfortable. Not today, though. Today we are all completely free and nobody can tell me otherwise. Strikes have just started, so none of us has anything to do apart from work, and none of us are going to do any work anyway, so we are all free. It took a little bit of prodding to get Jonny out of bed and raring to go, but Milo was easy as anything. All I needed to do to get the Chuckle Brothers wired with a bit of enthusiasm was mention the possibility of popping into some charity shops whilst we were out. Those two words, when said to any semi-edgy student, are proven to be more effective than any stimulant available on both the legal and illegal markets when it comes to provoking an excited response in participants (Linyard, Vi Frugal Bodies: The Comprehensive Guide to Student Life in the Modern World, 2020). At the moment of mentioning, they were both up and ready to race out of the door, despite their ‘bitches’ of hangovers from last night’s surprise footie viewing at The Newie. Out by eleven thirty on a Tuesday must be a world record for these two. I was glad that the plan worked though and that I wasn’t going to have to spend the day walking around Allerton on my own, because I’m in too good of a mood not to share this morning. I don’t know why I’m feeling so good - maybe the surprise bout of sunshine we’ve had this week or the new batch of pills I got from Levi the other day? - but I want to make sure I make the most of it before it starts to disappear again and I go back to normal, which will inevitably happen before too long. 

We caught the bus towards Penny Lane rather than walking it today. On any other occasion Milo would insist we walk, he’s all about utilising our ‘god-given mode of transport’ and tends to guilt trip us into taking the shoelace-express whenever he can, but today I think the boys just needed to get as far from home as quickly as they could before their hangovers really started to sting and made them want to turn back, so Milo barely batted an eyelid when I suggested we caught bus. It only took five minutes and we were in charity shop heaven: Allerton Road. This little stretch of shops contains probably the best selection of second hand places in all of Liverpool and it has never failed to deliver when I’ve made a trip down this way. There are a tonne of charity shops, all in the space of about a square mile, and all amazingly well stocked, so you always come away with something at least half-decent. I have a theory for this success and it goes as follows: 

Allerton Road is the spine that runs between two of the more middle-class areas in South Liverpool (Allerton and Mossley Hill), meaning that the people around here are far more likely to have enough disposable income and philanthropic guilt to donate a large proportion of their clothes to charity shops than in other parts of the city. Because of the wealth of some of these donors, they can often afford to give away clothes that might have cost them a fairly reasonable price at the time of purchase - Ted Baker, Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, Adidas, etc. - which in turn means that the charity shops here are always filled with good brands at very reasonable prices, because the charity shops have no fucking clue what is deemed ‘trendy’ or ‘edgy’ or ‘cool.’ In addition to this is the fact that right next door is the overwhelmingly student-populated Smithdown Road, full of the children of these middle-class-types who donate to charity shops and who have passed down the ethics of charitability to their offspring. As a result, these children (and I am unashamedly one of them) are a major contributor to both the financial and fabric-based capital of the charity shops in Allerton, as it is their donations as well as their purchases which stay in steady circulation and keep them afloat. A student buys an item from British Heart Foundation, for example, wears it for a year or two, and then donates it back to Barnardos, where another student buys it, wears it for another year or two, and then donates it to Claire House. Obviously this is quite a simple theory, which doesn’t take into account all of the locals who utilise charity shops as well, but it certainly helps to unpick the micro-economy which exists in this area… because that matters, obviously.  

Anyway, here we are in Oxfam and Jonny wants his £3 Kipsta fleece for £2.50… 

- It’s a fucking rip off. Tell her, Mills! Turning around in an attempt to draw us both into the oncoming slew of court cases and paperwork that come with assualting an old-lady-volunteer in a charity shop, Jonny looks absolutely livid. Neither of us decide to respond, however, instead sticking our noses even deeper into our books and almost pissing into our shoes with laughter. - Mills! No?...  Vi, then?... I know you can hear me, you dicks!

- Look, young man, if you’re going to keep being so aggressive then I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises, I’m afraid… 

- ‘Kin hell. This is not on. 

Jonny, almost indigo in the face, throws the fleece onto the counter in an attempt to cause some kind of comotion (it barely even makes a sound, let alone smashes the glass counter-top) and goes to storm out of the shop. It seems like it might all be enough to send the little lady into hospital for a heart bypass, apart from the fact that as he is making his way back out into the street, Jonny spends a good three seconds trying to pull the door towards him, despite the ‘push’ sign written being next to the handle in in bold letters. Everyone left inside the shop - Me, Milo, The Old Lady, a woman of about 40 in a matching tracksuit and a tiny old guy - start wetting themselves. Jonny just looks through the window, vibrating.