Hipsters, scenesters, club kids, old skool indie kids, new skool indie kids, emokids, rockabillies, greasers, third generation riot grrrls, burlesque beauties, queercorers, Goths, Nu-punks, original punks, baby dykes, Earls of Suave, roller derby queens and their ladies in waiting and doddery geriatrics all frequent the St Aloysius jumble sale.
I'm there behind my stall on the second Sunday of every month. I carefully display my wares salvaged from skips and charity shops and Freecycle; snapping up unwanted white elephants in need of a good home. Like, I know that someone will come over to my stall one Sunday and fall in love with the really horrible watercolour of a pug dog wearing a frilly collar. The poor mutt has such a sad but dignified look on his face that completely transcends the bad brushstrokes and the fact that the artist thought it would be a really good idea to paint a picture of a pug dog in drag.
Or the papier-mâché brooch shaped like a grapefruit. At least, I think it’s a grapefruit though it could just be a big citrus yellow blob, but where's the poetry in that? I arrange it in a more prominent position on the table in front of me, just to the right of the 'Keep Calm And Make Cupcakes' sampler I painstakingly cross-stitched and just as I'm debating whether I should keep it for myself I realise that The Boy is rifling through a collection of yellowing comics I'd found in a skip.
"Are your hands clean?" I ask even though I already know the answer, because he'd been eating a cheese and pickle sandwich five minutes before and he's a really messy eater. "Let me see!"
"Jeane!" The Boy presents his hands for my inspection, because he knows that arguing would be futile. "You said if I helped you out this afternoon, you'd try not to be bossy."
We bicker back and forth, no heat to it, especially when I promise to pay The Boy in cake. I leave him instructions as I head off to buy him baked goods. "Ivy. Old lady with a zimmer frame who collects china pots in the shape of vegetables," I murmur. "I found her a condiment dish shaped like a tomato. It's in the big plastic crate marked 'bric a brac'".
"Technically tomatoes have seeds so they're actually a fruit rather than a vegetable," The Boy says forcefully. "Just so you know."
"That's not a very helpful thing to say," I snap, glaring at him until he wilts into submission. "Let her have it for a pound and if anyone comes along to pick up or place a knitting order, then they'll have to wait for me to come back because I have a system and you'll totally mess it up."
"Fine. Whatever. Don't forget the cake," The Boys sighs, flopping down on my little camping stool. "I'll phone you if I have trouble counting out change."
Much as I love my own stall, and there aren't many stalls that have a whole section devoted to Blue Peter annuals, I love sifting through other people's cast-offs. Handfuls of old 45 records gathering dust lying like loose change next to an old fashioned plastic radio, with a built in turntable to play them on. A row of rubber ducks, the smallest one beginning to deflate. A pair of Bart Simpson high-top trainers.
And then I head over to Tabitha, because she's a goddess swathed in a leopardskin coat and sitting in a deckchair. My heart races and my pace quickens and when I reach her empire, her boyfriend Tom greets me with a song, an old b-side from an old band, which I've never bothered to grab from iTunes because I love having only snatches of it sung to me like I am right now, "Jeane, the lowlife has lost its appeal/And I'm tired of walking these streets to a room with its cupboard bare," he sings to me in a pleasant baritone as Tabitha hands over three dresses.
The dresses have that musty mothball smell that all the febreeze in the world can't kill, but I don't care. The first dress is made of thick stretchy one hundred per cent polyester; it's neon purple with serried lines of green diamonds marching all over it. It's too big. It's too bad.
Dress the second might have been a baby doll nightie in another life. It's fleshy pink and eminently flammable with coffee lace edging the neck, the hem and the armholes, though I wouldn't be surprised if the lace was white until its previous owner spilt a cup of coffee over it. I'm not the sort of girl who wears baby doll nighties, wouldn't even have an occasion to wear a baby doll nightie, but I put it on the 'yes' pile because I am the sort of girl who'd wear it as a pinafore.
I've saved the best dress to last. It's black and I don't normally do black because why would anyone want to wear all black when there were so many fabulous colours in the world? People with no imagination and Goths who hadn't got the memo that the Nineties were over, that's who. But it's not just black; it has these horizontal patterns all over it; yellow, green, orange, blue, red, purple and pink squiggly lines that made my eyeballs itch. If it doesn't fit, then I'm going to cry.
I ease it over my head and contort myself to do up the zip, holding my breath as I slowly inch it up. Then I breathe out again but it fits so well, it could have been made just for me.
The unwanted, unloved, spurned dress has a new home. I have a new dress. The Boy wants chocolate cake, I buy him carrot cake instead, because it has cream cheese frosting and I know it's going to lead to an argument, but I have a new dress.
Life is good. The jumble sale is even better.
(Photos used with kind permission of the awesome Wills-Moody jumble sale peeps.)
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