Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
If it’s charity you are after then forget about foraging for something cheap in the ever-increasing number of charity shops in our high streets.
I used to think that, for those who could not afford designer labels in the posh stores, charity shops were the ideal solution.
But no. Prices in charity shops are rising. They are the province of wealthy millennials and GenZ shoppers. The dedicated followers of fashion. If you are part of the nation’s poor you will have to content yourself with a nose pressed against the window watching the newly affluent snatch all the best stuff.
Latest figures from the Charity Retail Consultancy say people are no longer embarrassed to be seen in charity shops.
Quite the reverse. There is growing demand from younger shoppers. The old second-hand image has been swept aside. These are the new boutiques sought after by upmarket aspiring types.
Of course they want to maximise profits. That presumably is the whole purpose. And why not pitch their wares at the new breed of “ethical shoppers”.
A friend recently visited a local charity shop looking for a jacket. He found one he liked, until he saw the price tag of £40.
Jayne Cartwright, director of the Charity Retail Consortium, does not beat about the bush on the question of pricing. Asked if poorer people were missing out she explained that “charity shops are not a lending library”.
They are businesses and not there to give stuff away. They don’t want you dumping your old rags on the doorstep either.
The status of the charity shop is a sign of the times in town centres and there is competition with fund-raising rivals for the upwardly mobile pound.
However you aren’t going to find many poorer people parading in Versace dresses or even in quality high street brands. Charity for them may not begin at home.
Where are their manners?
Put that phone away, sort out your knives and forks and, most important of all, get those blooming elbows off the table.
Hopefully I am not addressing these remarks to regular readers of this column. I imagine most of you are bred of the last generation that was brought up right and proper to mind its manners.
Knowing your salad fork from your fish knife and sitting up straight at the table when eating are long gone. Young people find etiquette rules outdated and irrelevant.
According to new research, 60 per cent of GenZ (pronounced Zee according to Radio 4), the 12-27 year olds say table manners are no longer important. And 77 per cent can find nothing wrong with resting their elbows on the table.
I don’t believe in being a stickler in such matters. But every time I’m eating out and I spot mobile phones in use at every other table I cringe.
More than a third of young diners at a leading Italian restaurant said they could see nothing wrong with using their phones between courses, and sometimes during.
Good manners were not just the province of the rich. My parents were not particularly well to do, but they regarded manners as important. Manners, as my dad used to say, maketh man.
The kids did tell researchers they drew the line at talking with a mouth full of food, and snapping your fingers to summon waiters is a definite no-no. Thank goodness for some small mercies.
Indeed rejoice at the report from a journalistic colleague who popped into a pub for livener and spotted a notice which declared he was in a “digital detox” area. No sneaking a quick glance at the infernal small screen there.
Table manners these days might depend on one key factor. A table. I wonder how many modern families still sit down to Sunday lunch at home, or lay the table for the evening meal.
We live in an age of food browsers, eating on the move and sofa picnickers. No wonder TV antique programmes keep telling us there’s a depression in demand for traditional furniture. Nobody wants to buy a table, no matter how classy.
All the way from Downton Abbey to grabbing a sarnie on the run, with a ham and cheese in one hand and a phone in the other, it’s no wonder some of us feel the age of good manners has well and truly run its course.
A barrel of laughs
Remember Watneys Red Barrel? It was the horrible beer that was dispensed by every bar on the Costas back in the day when the British had just discovered cheap sunshine Spanish holidays.
I hate April Fool jokes as a rule. As a journalist I spent more hours than I could afford checking out spoof stories that had been sent into the newspaper.
But there was a good one this time by the chairman of the Campaign for Real Ale who sent out a press release saying Red Barrel was to make a comeback, its unique taste being re-created by use of water taken from the Thames.
Those who were not around in Red Barrel’s first incarnation almost fell for it until informed otherwise by older and wiser counsel.
