One of my all time favourite op-shop treasures – a red light globe filled with 140 matches with the metaphorical tag ‘Light Up!’ I keep that close, on the discarded hall table that serves as a computer station. And another, a relic from the Darebin Resource Recovery Centre (aka Darebin tip). This was before they built the soulless tin shed, tripled their prices and ditched half of their staff. I found this collage on a piece of rough hewn corrugated board, lost amongst the paperbacks, and took it to the counter for pricing. They said I could have it for free. I walked away feeling like I’d found a Pollock in an op-shop for a song. I like to imagine the Nonna that pieced it together from devotional cards kept from homeland churches, cutting down a fruit box with the blunt scissors she stored in the kitchen drawer. Many of my friends just find this creepy.
Sharks eat metal and so do trees. (At least trees in Italy do.) And so begins Nature's Great Revenge...
Oz Mite....then again Oz Mite not. Are the marketing team from Kraft getting all their ideas from 2nd hand knock-off badges from Camberwell Market? Probably!
Today’s op-shop booty will encourage me to practice my hospital corners, dry my dishes, apply sterile dressings to wounds, play chess, learn the mandolin and rescue my touring maps from being trampled to shreds on the floor of my car.
Every day is hard rubbish day on my flat lined street. This is mostly ugly but sometimes rewarding. I recently noticed a plastic bag on the nature strip, bulging with promise. Inside I found a bunch of obsolete phone chargers, a pair of scissors and this.....
What is this mystery object? Turns out it is an old acoustic guitar pick-up. Yes, it fits, it works, and now I can grunge-ify any ol’ folk song I choose. Or I can just amplify the dulcet tones of my parlour size guitar. I’m afraid I’m halfway to being that busker that mystifies you on the way home from work.
