Round Up Again.

A few bits and pieces before an obligatory hiatus comes this way, including a shout out to one of my favourite places to keep you going.

Crest Charity Shop. Walthamstow

I've made no bones that I quite like Walthamstow despite it being stuffed full of leftie weirdos and Christians. Its essentially a massive street market complete with shops off to the side. One of these is Crest Charity shop.  Whereas most Charity shops are resolutely corporate in their pricing and outlook this looks like a mix of junk shop and the craziest bazaar ever.  Most charity shops do no look like some mad hoarders back room filled with random piles of junk now, however this does.  Its always worth a look just in case you need to pick up a Slovenian - English dictionary or cables for obscure outlet points.

One of the most odd things I've found there is a small A5 magazine called Home and Freezer Digest from 1980, a mix of old ads, recipes and articles for women that doesn't really exist anymore. I check out Take a Break and Now! in Smiths but they seem to have an uneasy fascination for Paedos, Psychos and Celebs that Whitehouse would be proud of.  So I kinda pine for the old days of women's mags where hearth and home were always fore front and you always got a serial (story) and never a serial killer.  I know its probably sexist (everything is nowadays) but it seems more wholesome than the endless my boyfriend is Ian Brady / Chanelle Hayes loses / gains weight drama.

Face Exercises.

Really should have ponied up the pittance they wanted for this just to get a better shot / scan of the article above.  Part of a facial exercise regime featuring some weird androgynous child woman thing (that nowadays would have its own Tumblr blog complete with 6 made up personal pronouns and genders) that totally does not look like a blow up doll.   They had a good few vintage ads in there for Kotex jam rags and American Burgers as well as fridges and food ideas.

I also briefly touched on weird cables and shit above and I'm not kidding, I saw a VGA to HDMI connector last time I was there and decided to dig through the various gubbins they had spread through various baskets to see if its still there.  Lots of things for obsolete phones, quite a few PS/2 cables, Toner cartridges for Laser printers and what probably is a coup. a dock for a GP2X handheld console.  Looking like a USB hub on drugs, it packs a serial port as well as 4 USB ports for good measure into its form factor.  I'm not sure if it can be used outside of the console itself but its a strange thing to actually find seeing as the device itself is a obscure homebrew only device.

Quite strange.

Like I said its quite a place for weird and wonderful things and outdated PC hardware.  I picked up Knights of the Nine DLC expansion pack for Oblivion and have previously got a J Pop 3" CD there. If you are there come and visit as its worth a look.