09/01/20: Erratic pricing (British Heart Foundation)

An unsuccessful trudge around five West Kensington charity shops. The only item of interest was a copy of Broken English by Marianne Faithfull, but it wasn’t in very good condition.

One of the shops, British Heart Foundation, has split the CDs into two categories: some are 50p and some are £2. It didn’t make any sense to me, because one of the £2 discs was by Robbie Williams, available in every charity shop in the land – and usually for 50p.

03/06/19: Cuts Both Ways (British Heart Foundation)

British Heart Foundation, West Kensington. Cuts Both Ways by Gloria Estefan is one of those CDs you see a lot of in charity shops. The same goes for Starsailor and All Saints.

19/03/19: CD bargains galore (British Heart Foundation)

British Heart Foundation, West Kensington. The quality of CDs in charity shops has gone up a lot lately – perhaps because of the silly "declutter" fad. These shelves included great albums by Elvis Costello, The Smiths, The Byrds, Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie.

21/01/19: The Smiths (British Heart Foundation)

British Heart Foundation, West Kensington. "These are the riches of the poor."

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.

22/01/17: Cher – Believe (British Heart Foundation)

British Heart Foundation, North Finchley. They had a CD sale and seemingly quite a few copies of Cher's 1998 album Believe.

03/05/15: Led Zeppelin/Contra (British Heart Foundation)

British Heart Foundation, North Finchley. Bought the first Led Zeppelin CD (even though I have it on vinyl) and the second Vampire Weekend album (Contra), which I've never heard. 'Only 99p' say the stickers.

22/03/15: Thelma & Louise (British Heart Foundation)

British Heart Foundation, North Finchley. Having never seen this modern(-ish) classic, I was more than happy to spend 99p to find out if it's as good as everyone says.