Nottingham Part 2: Even GP Taylor can't stop famine

After having become accustomed to having clothes washed so soft they felt like angel wings and silk and stuff, I now had to prepare to face a lots of old people in a charity shop surrounded by lots of old books and other-such junk based items. However, the Oxfam shop on Bridgeford Road Nottingham was nothing like what I expected.

"A keen eye for a priceless bargain, Torquer?" Well no, in fact. I was to be volunteering at this shop for the best part of two days, simply to add an extra row to the 'volunteer work' table of my CV. Ah, it was nothing, no need for any heartfelt applause readers.


I was to be assisting my perfectly able-bodied and communicative grandmother in this extortionate second-hand book and trinket shop. So, as I stepped through this ordinary looking shop frontage, it became clear that this was no traditional charity shop, full of other people's crap for 25p a time. Instead, there was a float to initialize, till to power up, lights to turn on (really!?) and an excruciatingly complicated banking system of record books, money bags, multi-columned paper and number writing.

For some reason, due to my obviously thieving nature, I was not allowed anywhere near the till, unless to wipe it with a dishcloth as grimy as Robin's hair after playing tennis with him. My generous pleas of "Let me help you with that dear Grandmother" where overruled by shouts of "Get in the back and sort them expired road atlases into equal piles!"

After being forced to purchase an over-date Fair-trade smoothie for one pound bleedin' thirty-nine, I was given the task of filling a box with books that had been out on display for more than 6 weeks. I duly took all the books marked 'Wk 4' (for it was now week 10 of their pointlessly complicated stock control system) and placed them gently into the dusty fruit box I had been thrown by an old man with a yellow shirt who smelled of cement and urinal cakes.


My Grandma then charged into the back of the shop when I told her that I had finished, scooped up the box, opened the fire exit door to the alley behind the shop and lobbed the crate into the dumpster.

Horrified, I stood and gawped as some books that I was going to buy at the end of the day where now mixed in with the remains of Monday night's kitchen waste from the trendy wine bar next door! Sigh, I could have fished them out nice and clean: if only it was still a Natwest.


The second day started even earlier than the first and we were the only people in the shop again. Thus I began the pointless task of selecting which books to dumpsterate, and which to keep, making sure that my personal pile was safely stowed away from slippery-fingered volunteers, behind I large mound of unsold GP Taylor novels.

After a frankly boring and fruitless day on the my mother's Penguin classics book collection expansion front, I followed my Grandmother home on the bus to the rare occasion when my Grandfather prepare the dinner. Sainsbury's really do make half-decent ready meals.

I have since established that Oxfam (and like probably many other 'charity shops' nowadays) is certainly not one of those small charity shops with a low turnover, shelves of battered old books and deserving local cause. It is instead a national organisation that just so happens to accept donations of strictly 'saleable' items, just so happens to be run mostly by volunteers (they were recruiting two paid full time staff for other branches in Nottingham) and just so happens to give some of its profits to famine stricken countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The rest it spends of wages, shop fittings and various sheets of coloured paper to remind people to turn things of when they leave and notices explaining that it is against conduct to attempt improvisation.

Furthermore, they insist on sticking f***ing sticky labels on everything! Any book that has a paper cover in any Oxfam shop across the country has now been completely ruined. I tried to remove some from my purchases and even a generous lashing of WD-40 failed to budge it or the slimy residue they leave behind. Strewth!! Dammit!!