19/04/18: Margaret Thatcher plate (All Aboard)

All Aboard, North Finchley. Price: £5.

29/07/17: Charity shop hop, Finchley Central

1. North London Hospice. Bought All is Lost DVD, still shrink-wrapped, for £1. This is a tremendous film starring Robert Redford about a man whose boat sinks. Basically: Gravity at sea.

2. Cats Protection League. Joan Baez – "Silver Dagger" 7" EP was £1.99. Tempted, but didn't buy. Also on the shelves: several Duran Duran CDs.

3. Cancer Research. Several Primal Scream CDs, plus an entire shelf of guitar tutorial CDs. There was a man sneezing a bit too close to me, so I didn't hang around.

4. Sue Ryder. Seriously overpriced. A Shirley Bassey vinyl compilation was £3.50. A water-damaged paperback was £2. No, thanks.

5. All Aboard. Tiny selection of CDs virtually hidden behind the till, making for awkward browsing.

6. Oxfam – small shop, overpriced vinyl. Weary by this point. Headed back to the car in the rain.

29/07/17: Charity shop hop, North Finchley

1. The Bothy – saw a white-label record with a message written on the sleeve: "To Steve, Thought this would be a good first record. Good luck, Sam." But what's on the record? Nearly bought the Substance CD by Joy Division. Not sure why I didn't, actually.

2. Cancer Research was closed, even though the list on the door said it should have been open for an hour already.

3. All Aboard. Plenty of DVDs. "Two books for 50p" special offer still running, but couldn't find two I wanted. Or even one. Nearly bought £1 vinyl copies of Commoners Crown by Steeleye Span and Johnny Cash and His Woman, but they were both too beaten up.

4. North London Hospice. Nearly bought CDs by the Sex Pistols (NMTB), Queen (Greatest Hits) and Talking Heads (Stop Making Sense), but again the condition wasn't quite good enough. Various Anne McCaffrey fantasy novels on the crowded bookshelves.

5. RFFR. Bought three vinyl LPs for £1 each:
• Many a Mile by Buffy Sainte-Marie (1965).
• Back Home Again by John Denver (1974).
• Songs of the British Isles by Nana Mouskouri (1976; one of 200-plus albums Nana released).

23/06/17: A brief charity shop hop around North Finchley

In All Aboard, they were selling all books for 50p and they had a buy-one-get-one-free offer. It seemed like a great deal until I actually started going through them and found a disappointing array of old cookery titles, shoddy thrillers and romantic fiction. Someone had donated an entire shelf of Star Trek novels. Looked at the 50p CDs, but there was very little of interest. They had the usual copy of Rockferry by Duffy, which can be found in every charity shop in the UK. I didn't buy anything.

In the trying-on booth, a woman was trying on summer tops without having closed the curtain. She seemed quite happy to do this in full view of the customers, even though she had nothing on underneath.

In North London Hospice I bought one book (Thomas Wolfe's 1935 autobiographical novel Of Time and the River: £1) and one CD (Vanessa Paradis by Vanessa Paradis: £1). They had a live-from-Glastonbury broadcast on the radio, and a woman was singing along to the music to entertain her young child in the pram.

In British Heart Foundation I looked at the books and CDs, but they only seem to stock new and recent-ish items now. That's fine if you want last year's "beach read", but not if you have more exotic tastes.

Looked at the T-shirts. The only music shirt was for Oasis. No thanks.

I couldn't put it off any longer, so I went to have my hair cut.

03/12/16: I Love Rock 'n' Roll (All Aboard)

All Aboard, North Finchley. I very nearly bought this copy of I Love Rock 'n' Roll by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, but the pages of the booklet were stuck together. Instead, I bought The Visitors by Abba on CD – a masterful album – for £1.

31/07/15: Judith/Now & Then/Scrooged/Sundown (All Aboard)

In All Aboard, Chipping Barnet, I bought a Gordon Lightfoot LP (Sundown), a triple-gatefold-sleeve Carpenters album (Now & Then), a Judy Collins record (Judith) and a DVD of the Bill Murray film Scrooged:

Fittingly, they had Neil Powell's book Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations next to books by Kingsley (The Anti-Death League) and Martin Amis (Yellow Dog):

They weren't taking good care of their vinyl...

06/03/16: Before Sunrise/set (All Aboard)

All Aboard, North Finchley. Didn’t buy the dolly or the moustaches, but I did buy two DVDs. Before Sunrise is a 1995 film directed by Richard Linklater. The plot deals with the chance meeting of Jesse and Céline – and what happens next. Before Sunset is the 2004 sequel. I found both in a boxed set for just £1. A third film (2013's Before Midnight) was not included, but you can't have everything.

Also bought a cheery rubber phone case for 50p.

06/03/16: Manly Moustaches (All Aboard)

All Aboard, North Finchley. For 50p, you can transform yourself into ALL of the following:
The Biker
The Banker (my favourite)
The Wise Guy
The Snob
The Casanova
The Villain

06/03/16: Dolly, vase, tiger (All Aboard)

All Aboard, North Finchley. Dolly peers out from vase. Tiger looks on. Dolly has nice jumper, but scarily small hands.

06/09/15: Spiders (All Aboard)

All Aboard, North Finchley. Spiders is a 1996 album by Liverpudlians Space. For some reason there were four copies of this on the shelf. Also unwanted: Atomic Kitten, Five, David Gray and Madonna.

01/02/15: White Ladder (All Aboard)

01/02/15: All Aboard, North Finchley. CD copies of R.E.M.’s Reveal and David Gray’s White Ladder can be found in most charity shops. Many of them have multiple copies. Perhaps I should have bought the CD by The Bangles. No purchase made.

11/01/15: Nanci G, drum & bass CDs (All Aboard)

Few messages could cheer me more than “charity shop open”. All Aboard in North Finchley sells its CDs for very reasonable prices. I bought:

• Nanci Griffith – Other Voices, Other Rooms – 50p

• Various artists – Essential Drum & Bass 2: 20 Drum & Bass Cuts from the UK Underground – £1 (it’s a double set)

Who doesn’t enjoy a bit of drum & bass? The sticker text concludes with “genuine value”. Certainly can't argue with that.