Priceless

A charity shop near me always overprices the tat they get in. Cliff Richard biography? £20. Old set of blue peter albums £2 each. Battered tap shoes £7.50. I once bought a telly for £35 there labelled as working that turned out to be a useless reflective surface for the next 2 yrs (I was too weak to get it back to the shop alone and the curly haired old vipers inside terrified me).

Their defensive pricing structure never fails to amuse me as I amble past. Maybe they were so terrified by tittle tattle on the charity shop circuit of 2p ming vases and 50p old masters that they're convinced there's real money to be made for their church sect marking up ripped Halloween costumes and cantebury tour guide books from the 60's. Maybe its just nostalgia. Maybe they can remember a time when things were made and mended, not grabbed 2 for 1 and flung. Would love to get them into eBay, they'd probably make a killing but till then the discerning eyes and tweed pocketed fingers of your average Edinburgh charity shop rakers are unlikely to twitch.

Then again my dear old gran would have loved this plate, and isn't it just so delightfully kitsch, just so.. and wouldn't so and so love it for Christmas... ? I wonder if I could stencil moustaches on? Charity shops. Up there with scrapyards and bins as Capitalism's graveyards and creativity's nurseries.

But would you pay a tenner for this?