Op Shops Revisited -and a Bit More

Here I am again

I sound annoyed, but the annoyance is directed at myself. Despite my intellect, despite my awareness, I am hooked. How attractive still are the racks of clothes. How appealing is the neatly arranged, matching furniture that will just fit a corner in my house. It is still bouncy and unfaded ( unlike the furniture in our house with the cats and wear and tear of being shifted constantly or left out in the rain). Great colour. I have thankfully fallen out of love with trinkets, photo frames, beautiful old glasses. I am falling out of love with scarves and earrings, only because I think my mode of dress is changing as I age/ mature!

Today, despite my banning myself from these places, I found myself back in my favourite Op Shop. I guess that is some progress as I selected the place, rather than walking from one opportunity to the other in a street that is full of opportunity for me , and for many other OSAs ( it’s a new diagnosis on the DSM scale )

I have already written about the Op Shop phenomenon, when shops were reopened post Covid ( see In Praise of Opportunity Shops 17/5/20). However there is always more to write. I have noted the time wasting opportunities, economic and waste reduction benefits of Opportunity Shops. There is more to add two years on.Here is a bit of a winge from me.

Two years after that WA Covid peak, Op Shops are participants in the cost of living rise. Despite the fact that all is donated, prices have risen considerably. Alongside a cleaning up operation. This is rather similar to the addition on plates of burgers and chips of a carefully arranged leaf or two of lettuce with maybe a squeeze of a strange tasting, differently coloured mayonnaise. Worth 50c, but you pay double. As the “ retro”and “ high end” fashion sections grow, the racks and displays have become increasingly full of any clothing that vaguely fits those descriptors. Even Cotton On has joined the high end so that in some shops you pay more for the second hand item . I’m sorry, for the Pre- loved or ‘New’ fashion.

To this cynic it feels as if the good old honest Op Shops have joined the let’s call a rose by another name club. With vegan burgers, green everything, protein bars, healthy sweets, losing weight by some magic expensive formula that does not involve sweat or exercise, pretend meat, numerous vitamins .The list is endless

And here I am today in a new area, in an Op Shop I have not visited for a while. This one is different. Oh well.

Yep need to stay just a tiny bit weird

Oh the Thinks you can Think Walking with a Pusher along Back Paths.

Yes walking slowly with a pusher. Having had a cup of coffee, baby asleep and heading home . Maybe he wakes up , maybe he doesn’t . Either way you’ve got time to kill because there’s still 3 hours till his mum arrives, and you might as well enjoy the walk, the sun, and thoughts.

Ooh Coffee, on Stirling Highway, North Fremantle, is now my favourite coffee place . The reason for this is quite clear to pusher- pushing people: lots of space outside, quick service and several newspapers. Oh yes, and clientele I don’t know so they are either fully occupied in keeping pushers moving as they drink coffee while holding on to dogs, or carefully avoiding any interaction with a person clearly engrossed in a baby. For me the additional item is their vegan burgers, tasty chic peas and avocado in toasted bagel. Díaz will eat this ( one of the few food items he’ll eat as he prefers breast ) so, despite the chilli, I can finger feed him the less spicy pieces and eat myself. That’s if he’s awake and I can’t read the newspaper. He eats the newspaper.

This morning he is perfect , eating bits of burger between smiling at everyone. I am even able to check some of the West . Always a disappointing experience but a long term habit. I now only read free Wests, in cafes .

But Díaz is displaying low level annoyance: throwing his rattle to the floor, arching his back a little and making that growling sound.

So I replace him in the pusher, he smiles again and we start back home. We turn left towards the railway line and then into the end of Pearse Street which stretches alongside the railway to the Leighton station .

The small park in Pearse
Mushrooms and cycle path and spring

Such a pretty path I have walked down so many times . The prettiness is framed by the industrial presence; train line and various bits, graffiti,building work, wire fences and signs. Ahead is the entry to the station and the Leighton beach complex . Depending on the vantage point of your phone shot , interesting combinations of shape and colour.

And as I reach Leighton train station, he’s had enough of the pusher. So we hurry home. I’ve had my bit of thinking for now .

Thank you Dr Seuss .

Spring is here. A pinch and a punch.

So let’s step out and greet those sunny days with a spring in our steps ( ha not a very good pun!). Well I’m getting up early again just as dawn breaks and heading to the beach. But after a plunge a few days ago, am not rushing into very very cold water.

However it’s a date tomorrow at 6.20 am. Me and the sea .

The garden, neglected for a while, is taking off. I have just managed to pull out some nasturtiums before they smother any plant not strong enough to resist their deceptively pretty flowering stems, gradually wrapping themselves around whatever they can reach.

I have been watching the olive tree for weeks and yesterday morning it seemed like the leaves have budded overnight. The morning sun was streaming through its still naked branches and pushing its way through the tree canopies in the front garden.The cactus leaning against a tree trunk has reached the lower branches.

Spring is here

A visit to the South Fremantle Markets , and Thoughts about Place

This is not about organics or even the markets. I was too late for the organic and ended buying preservative free at the ordinary veggie stall.This is more a reflection on change.I have not been this way for years.

I am getting back into driving . So it seemed a good idea to combine a drive with a weekly veggie shop. I abandoned my routine of Fremantle Markets each Friday morning and plumbed for an organic shop .

I drive from North Freo, into Amherst Street and to the short, pretty Wood. I used to cycle that route to Beaconsfield Tafe which is long gone. There are so many new houses in what used to be mainly industry and empty blocks. Now there are some attractive new houses, and old ones cleaned up and lived in. There are new cafes and planted verges. Penny Lane is still on the corner though and the original community/ industry/business mix is attractive. manoeuvre the vehicle around the traffic calming of Wood Street and am happy nothing much has changed here: just licks of paint , a few extra verandahs in the front of the older smallish houses, and lots of greenery.

Turn left into South and right towards Lefroy . The Childcare Center my last child and then my grandchild attended, in front of South Fremantle High, has gone. In fact I hardly recognise this gleaming SFHS with its extensive grounds .

No more Tafe building. Just a board signalling its demolition. It’s strange but there is a vacuum here. I mean no specific memories , bad or good, spring to mind . Yet I spent a part of my working life here. I guess with the old bricks gone and the passage of time the stories have faded , or maybe they have diminished in importance in relation to the life that followed . All the ups and downs of a working life, the people,the scurrying about getting to class on time , filling in forms, teaching , laughing and winging, all the myriad actions of staff and students have merged into one continuous fairly ordinary stream of memories, blurry around the edges .

And where is the market that used to be just here with its ad hoc stalls ? There are cars parked where it used to be, and cars and more cars in each side street. So I drive to the oval in front of where Tafe used to be and manage to squeeze in .

Fremantle Tafe long gone and the building is finally being demolished

I park the car and walk to the markets.

How cool , how trendy, how laid back . How unscruffy compared to my ilk 35 years ago . The clothes, the coffees , the organics, with exotic names. The plants tied with bows, the range of breads ( we made ours in tins and rising dough and the loaves all looked solid and often tasted solid too). Pretty women and some men wheeling pushers or carrying babies in slings, children walking alongside. So relaxed. Momentary cynicism gives way to a reminder NOT to be cynical or critical from a vantage point of age . Whatever, as is said, I’ll leave that one .

I’ll have to think some more.

Leaving the South Fremantle Farmers Market
Shopping done

Waiting in line at the eye clinic: hey old old old

Waiting at the eye clinic

And I’m here too. I can hardly see, have to squint at this phone to get the letters. My eyes are filled with drops ready for the eye doctor. I’ve done the preliminary eye testing “ for the doctor” and a field test where you are instructed to keep one eye and then the other on the yellow light. Press the button each time there is a flashing light on the perimeter. It’s important not to look FOR the flashing light!! . After a while concentration goes and one sees flashing lights that are not there, or miss the flash. A solution is to press that button to randomly as the law of averages ensures partial success.

TV churning out ads and news on loop, line of reception desks with mock wood and a large in wall tropical fish thing behind . Gradually people are called to the front by the uniformed staff and they fall into another black chair outside the particular doctors door . And wait some more.

So here in a soulless room as most hospital rooms are :Beige shades , white , grey ,black chairs lined in even rows( not plastic as this is the private SJOG .) and we’re all , all old .

We sit passively masked like so many zombies . Arms folded on tummies holding bags or stick. Some in wheelchairs. Enterprising ones are stitching.One person is reading a book . A few are gazing sleepily at phones. Most though are looking blankly at the TV screen.

My glasses are foggy and I can’t find my cleaning cloth. The scratches on the surface of these expensive glasses are now winning, Can’t see anyway as the mask is obscuring my peripheral vision.

I feel old . Old, deaf, slow moving and poor sighted.

. The TV voice drones on .