Well, it’s not really been any busier than usual but it certainly feels like it. Aidan has been working away this week, standing around on an airfield testing out road signs. I think it sounds a lot more glamorous than it probably was. So I’ve been on my tod with the two munchkins. Jeez… I don’t know how people do this on their own. I am shattered. Admittedly, Dexter decided this was the week he wanted to wake up again in the night. As soon as Aidan arrived home, Dex slept through again. Typical. I decided the way to power through the week was to get out and about. For me, this involved a bit of charity shop hunting.

Now in the days before children, during my school holidays and actually before I had a car too, I used to get on the train into Manchester then get the tram down to Altrincham and Sale one day, then Prestwich and Bury the next. It didn’t matter how long it took, I could spend aaaaages in every single shop and would come home usually laden down with my finds. I think I even got the train to Bolton and Preston a few times. The key thing – I realise just how important this is nowadays – I could literally wake up and be out of the door in half an hour if I needed to. Not any more.

Now, it’ll take half an hour just to get the change bag ready. Even though I’ve now got a car (I can drive, it’s still a revelation to me) it’s an absolute faff. Getting kids in and out of the car is not my favourite thing to do. Especially when the one year old has discovered he can get free by putting his arms above his head and slipping down through the straps. Looking round the charity shops is also fairly chaotic. They need a wee, a nappy change, a snack, more snacks, a drink, it’s not the right drink; they want to get out of the pram (one year old) and pull things off shelves; they want the toy the other one has got… That can be in one shop. It’s a miracle we find anything any more!

This week I went to the Emmaus in Mossley. It’s a ginormous charity warehouse filled with all sorts of stuff. We always enjoy having a good look around there. We’ve convinced the kids that charity shops are actually called toy shops, and this one is a particularly big toy shop… They do furniture upcycling there, it’s got a cafe and it used to have a really interesting collectables room but that’s gone now. This time, I did manage to buy a few things…

There’s another batch of them too! My mum is a keen eBayer, like me, and she’d told me to look out for job lots of picture frames. Apparently people are buying lots of them to make into big displays. I was dubious, but she seems to be right so I thought I’d give it a go. I must admit, I can see why people would like it as a display. All the ones I picked out are proper wood or older metal. Some would look good painted, I think, but I’m not skilful enough to try that.

These glasses were thrown in for free – I love them, but we really don’t need them. So they’ll go onto eBay too. I’m ebaying everything in sight at the moment, trying to save up for a new laptop.

The final things I found, just as I was leaving were these old chairs:

They were a fiver and I grabbed the thinking I could try my hand at painting them. I’d got Dexter under one arm at the time, wriggling like mad, so I didn’t pay too much attention to them. But now I’ve got them home, I think they’re too nice to paint.

If someone else wants to do that though, I do think they would look good in a bright colour. We’ll see, hopefully I’ll sell them and make some money.

Did you see the picture of all of the West German pots at the start of this post? That was when we lived at Duke Street and we honestly had those pots out like that for a couple of weeks! We just had nowhere to keep them. Thankfully, we have a double garage to keep them in here. And we do have a few of those pieces of pottery still.

See the big 1950s Scheurich? We love it, absolutely love it. Goes well with the Sanderson wallpaper and the Lego… That’s not supposed to be part of the display, but there’s nowhere else to keep it out of Dexter’s reach.

After the Emmaus, I went up to the ‘top’ part of Mossley. Never again. It was like another world up there; there were about five people in the whole town and only one charity shop which was really expensive and full of tat. I genuinely felt the people that were about were looking at me thinking, ‘how did they get over the border?’

The next day, buoyed up by a good sale on eBay, we went to Hyde for a look round the chazzers. I got nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was a complete waste of time. I know you can’t predict what and how much you’re going to find, but I normally get something. Ah well, I think we’re going off to Holmfirth today for a look round, a walk and a drink in the Longley Farm cafe. Happy Saturday and good hunting!