Open Writing

'Beggars can't be choosers' goes the old saying, and I always thought it was a true one, until this week.

Over the last fortnight I've had the unhappy task of clearing out the home of my late Auntie Nellie, who died suddenly aged 93. She'd had a good life and hinted over the last couple of months that she was getting a bit tired of it - but breaking up a home is a daunting task, whatever the circumstances.

I thought I'd sorted the removal of most items of unwanted furniture with the help of a long-established family firm, who agreed to take most of the furniture, with the exception of two large old-fashioned wardrobes and the accompanying dressing table.

'You'll have trouble giving those away' I was warned by their representative. 'There's no call for them nowadays.'

I found this hard to believe. The wardrobes and the dressing table were made of solid wood, none of your rubbish plywood backs, plastic drawers or complicated self-assembly instructions to follow. Those wardrobes may have been old-fashioned to look at, but they were built to last.

Determined to find them a good home I set about phoning a variety of charity shops, social services and charities committed to helping people set up home and make a fresh start in life. I might just as well have saved my breath and my phone bill.

Batley Community Furniture, who'd been asking for furniture to re-cycle, did come out and take a look. A pleasant young man gave the furniture one glance, and without so much as a scratch of his head or a suck of his teeth said; 'Sorry love, they're no good to us, there's no demand for them.'

He explained that they'd cleaned up similar pieces of furniture, heaved them onto vans and up numerous flights of stairs, only to be told by the potential recipients, who were being offered furniture for nothing, that 'We don't want those old things, we want something modern and fashionable.'

Beggars, it seems, can be choosers these days after all!

We both expressed surprise at this sort of attitude and he offered the opinion that it was too easy to get things on credit (or the 'never, never' as my Mum called it) and that people would rather get into debt than take second-hand things.

When Mr C and I got married (back in the dark ages) we were both lucky enough to have jobs, although these were not well-paid as we were both still training, and we were grateful for the second-hand bits and pieces various family members offered to help us set up home. These included a really old-fashioned washer, which had to be dragged from its lair under the stairs every Saturday morning for the weekly wash, which included feeding clothes through a set of rubber wringers, which 'ate' your fingers if you weren't pretty nifty. We soon learnt not to attempt this activity with a hangover.

For quite sometime we sat on tea chests and deckchairs until we could afford our first three-piece suite and we scrubbed the coal-dust out of the orange carpet we inherited with our very first little house, a cosy little terraced property on Caulms Wood Road with a shared backyard and a pocket-handkerchief garden.

We didn't care a jot that we didn't have modern, fashionable, furniture, or a state-of-the-art kitchen. We were glad to have a roof over our heads and if someone had offered us free wardrobes and a dressing table we'd have taken them, thank-you very much.

Gradually we replaced the hand-eating washer with what was then the latest machine, a twin-tub, and the coal-fire in the front room, which only got a good blaze going when it was time for bed, was swapped for a gas fire which provided instant heat when you arrived home from work on a cold, wet winter's evening.

Yes, we did eventually buy a few things on H.P., when we were confident we could make the payments comfortably, but we wouldn't have dreamed of ripping out useful carpets and curtains and taking them to the tip - which is where the old wardrobes ended up - and doing the whole house up on the 'never, never.'

It's true today as it was then, good things are worth waiting for. If you've never spent your evenings sat on tea chests or deckchairs you'll never really appreciate a comfy three-piece suite!