Random reminder

Press, 12 June 1984, Page 37

Random reminder

YEA FREELY WILL I GIVE

In the glorious sunlit long hot summers of the Golden Age before the economic miracle hit us, when milk was tuppence a litre and coruscating adjectives were free, your average housewife would sooner dance naked along Colombo Street on a Friday night than be seen going into an Op Shop. Op Shops were where when the oldies died you rang up and they came and took away boxes of slippers to. One knew that — somewhere — someone was grateful, probably overseas. Nowadays, with the polarisation of New Zealand society into the lowermiddle class and the upper-middle class (the upper middles being the ones whose families have all the best things that life can offer, like jobs) the recycling of second and third hand haberdashery is one of the only two growth industries in the country, the other being massage. Prices have not gone up. The trendy liberal ex-middle-class bargain-hunter might never again afford the Overseas Experience, but from London's street markets, from Amsterdam’s dealers,

from the bazaars of Bangkok, she brought home the ability to haggle. This new wave of buyers is also a new wave of bringers-and-buyers. A whole suburban world of wardrobes and chests of drawers is being shaken out and carried along to the Op Shops. It is a cheerful and good-natured sharing of resources. The Christian churches, who run the Op Shops, are to be congratulated. Nothing like it has been seen since the 1949 Communist Chinese Revolution. It would cause one Spreydon woman no pain if the Op Shops were so successful as to drive out of business the private capitalist dealers. For some reason — convenience, parking, hope for a dollar — she had taken a box of expensive clothing to a “We Pay Cash” establishment. The counter-hand hardly disturbed the top layers enough to rub in the cigarette ash which she coughed down her cardigan. Nah, she said, looking at the Spreydon woman, who is just under average height. Nah. we dont wannem. Your clothes would not fit ANYBODY.