When I was in high school, I had this army coat - it was a knee-length green officers coat, and even had these golden-coloured buttons with the Dutch lion on them. An old lady one day approached me to sigh that her husband, he'd had the same coat. Which was a nice change from how old ladies usually looked at me.
So, last month - no, in December, I discovered the "give-away shop" run over at the Vredenburg by the squatters. Their tagline is a play on the ubiquitous "Stop Zinloos Geweld" slogan ("Stop Senseless Violence"; theres been a spate of random passers-by being beaten to death and so on, triggering in turn a series of wakes etc); it's "Stop Zinloos Geld" (Stop Senseless Money). Heh. Concept is simple enough: bring what you can, take what you need. We're a rich enough country to in theory have enough for everyone, after all. So I first brought a pile of
bookcrossing books that I hadnt gotten round to release, then came back to bring some old clothes.
Now that was a bit tricky, cause I keep clothes - OK, stuff, period - forever: I never throw
anything away. Used to wear clothes till they were threadbare - now I just kinda ... keep them. So what did I end up bringing? Eh, well ... this pair of sleek, shiny Bill Tornade pants I bought in Budapest in '97 (once a favourite), a Swiss army jacket I wore when I started studying, an old black t-shirt or two. Another t-shirt my German friend once bought me that had this square on front, bottom half silver, top half kinda dark-red silverish, Martine Girbaud and everything, xcept the silver had become all dull and washed-out. A thin grey sweater from H&M the seam of which kept folding up (does anything from H&M ever just be right?). Eh, yeah. Emmaus wouldnt even have bought any of it, I'm sure. Oh, and my old green army coat.
The give-away shop is actually always full & busy, but not with the alternative squatter-scene types I'd expected (hey I remember rummaging around in army dump stores). Instead, Turkish housewives, some homeless folks. So the place actually does serve its purpose! And the one day I brought stuff there, there was this mentally handicapped girl who was overjoyed to have found a simple photo camera. "I can have this??", she shrieked. "Yeah sure, go ahead", the guy goes. "I can just take it!?", she, unbelieving. Yeah, its free, you can take it with you. "Oh!! Then I can make pictures! For Christmas, I can take pictures for Christmas!" Positively overjoyed, she was .. <smiles> that was so cool.
That was gonna be a WMYST post back then, but I never got round to it. But yesterday, on my way to the station I passed by two beanpoles of youths in front of McDonalds, guys of I dunno 17, 20 ... goth types, but not the pretty goth boys but the ones with long black smudged hair. And, in this case, one of 'em, a knee-length green officer's army coat! Just like me! Perhaps, I suddenly realised, actually
mine ...
That made me smile, which means two smiles out of one Give-away-shop stop. Hey. ;-)
