Ecumenical Charity Shopping for Education

As a frequent visitor to charity shops for clothing, I detest the ones which sort men's trousers into nothing more illuminating than S, M and L. While women might be happy to try on every damned item in a shop, regardless of whether it fits or not, men generally know at a glance whether they want something and don't wish to be detained beyond the couple of nanoseconds it takes to look at the waist size, taking it on trust that the leg length is adequate. S, M and L just don't give you that scope.

There's a charity shop merchandiser operating within Chipping Sodbury who seems to be hired by the charity shops on a rotation basis. She is really good and makes the shops she merchandises look more like an up-market boutique. Ladies' clothing colours on the racks are co-ordinated - purples, blues and blacks at one end, reds at another, yellows on yet another and whites, creams and pastels on a fourth; only the most tasteful ornaments are put on display. You can see when she's left one shop for another - very quickly it all goes tits-up again with a real mish-mash of colours and styles looking like a 4 year-old (or 80 year-old) threw it together and the ornaments on display gravitate back to those hideously kitsch china figures only your granny would have bought.

Have you noticed how TV adverts are fixated on ecumenical families - one parent white and the other black. They seem adverse to showing a black couple for some reason. Wonder why? Seems like tokenism to me.

The Department for Education had cause to issue a statement about something yesterday. The single sentence statement contained the word less when it should have used the word fewer. Oh the delicious irony.