Another kind of work
July 31st 2007 20:13
It’s a kind of work picking your way through op shops (charity shops, if you’re English) and car boot sales. When my wife and I check these places out we both tend to look for different things. She goes for audio books (of which there are a lot more in the UK than in NZ), for children’s toys, sometimes for clothes. I go for books, of course, because that’s part of who I am. But I also check out cufflinks, and paper knives. And we both sometimes look at things like egg coddlers.
It’s hard work. Trawling your way around several op shops is hard on the feet, but trawling around dozens of stalls at a car boot sales is harder still. You have to keep your eyes peeled at all times, otherwise you’re likely to miss a bargain. Cufflinks are so small that it’s often hard to spot them amongst earrings and other jewellery. There are usually a very small number in either op shops or at car boot sales, so spotting them is a bit of a task.
Paper knives are even thinner on the ground, and we’ve only picked up a couple since we’ve been in the UK, but today we found one like an old-fashioned sword with a handle, the type that fits around the sword-fighter’s hand.
Books, of course, are everywhere. The trick with them is to learn how to spot what might be interesting without literally digging through every single title. You can usually ignore some very quickly, such as the piles of Mills and Boons, and we’ve got every Dick Francis published so there’s no use looking at those. It’s the books with old style covers that often prove interesting, or the occasional gem amongst a swag of biographies. I tend to look less at fiction and go for non-fiction, as it’s in this area that you find books on topics you’d never expect, or which appeal because their subject matter is something that interests you, like creative thinking .
It’s hard work. Trawling your way around several op shops is hard on the feet, but trawling around dozens of stalls at a car boot sales is harder still. You have to keep your eyes peeled at all times, otherwise you’re likely to miss a bargain. Cufflinks are so small that it’s often hard to spot them amongst earrings and other jewellery. There are usually a very small number in either op shops or at car boot sales, so spotting them is a bit of a task.
Paper knives are even thinner on the ground, and we’ve only picked up a couple since we’ve been in the UK, but today we found one like an old-fashioned sword with a handle, the type that fits around the sword-fighter’s hand.
Books, of course, are everywhere. The trick with them is to learn how to spot what might be interesting without literally digging through every single title. You can usually ignore some very quickly, such as the piles of Mills and Boons, and we’ve got every Dick Francis published so there’s no use looking at those. It’s the books with old style covers that often prove interesting, or the occasional gem amongst a swag of biographies. I tend to look less at fiction and go for non-fiction, as it’s in this area that you find books on topics you’d never expect, or which appeal because their subject matter is something that interests you, like creative thinking .
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