Archive for September, 2010

Day one went great! I got help with over 25 things and said goodbye to lots of treasure.

A neighbour from the apartments next door was our first customer at around 12.05pm, she gave me advice on driving lessons and took a green coat.

Jo Mangan was the first person to take something from “The Tat or Treasure Trolley”, Shane Carr won the 3 o’clock quiz easily, and my mother entered the shop just as someone was helping me with the question: “How can I know if I have really cut the umbilical cord from my mother?”

Help yesterday included: “What should I buy in Ikea?” answered by a six year old, “Which of the classics should I read?” “How can I get on better with my family?” and “How can I spend less time worrying about things that probably won’t happen?”  (I will post up more and some answers when the shop is finished.)

Marketa from The Performance Corporation answered one of my favourite quesions so far… “Show me the contents of your handbag and give me something from it that will help me!”  But I am not saying what she gave…

Thanks to the Fringe volunteers Rachel and Gail for all the dish washing and help with telling people what is happening, and of course to production manager Irene O’Mara for doing everything that needs doing.

Lots more stuff in the shop and lots more needs – including “Bring your favourite cake to the 3 o’clock tea, cake and chat”… 

See you if you can visit and please, don’t forget to ring the bell when you enter!

Well it is nearly here. Only one day to go and the shop must open! After some panic and denial things are taking shape. It wouldn’t have happened without a lot of help! A full list of people I want and have remembered to THANK can be found on the Thank You! Thank You! page of this website – fantastically designed by Victor Terenetiev.

It is fun being in the shop venue now, as people pass by and want to know what is happening. Today I got asked for a job, and someone wanted to sell me her homemade sushi, and lots of people asked if I will take donations of their stuff. Irene O’Mara, the Performance Corporation Production Manager kept things on track brilliantly and designer Catherine Murphy has finished her lovely window display – letters supplied by my mother and photos by me.

We started to count the things in the shop and there are over 600.

It is slightly scary realising how many things I have, and these are just the ones I can do without! I hope it all goes, or almost all. It is hard not to take some things back and the treasure I am finding hardest to part with is labelled High Risk.

Today is the National Campaign for the Arts Action day, and artists are doing things all Ireland to show  the importance of the arts in Irish life. This post is about an action I want you to take for me…

People have been offering me their stuff to sell in the shop, but I have too much clutter of my own. So I am not accepting donations of stock from people, except my mother. She gets to be an exception because she had a role in my last show, and she is finding it hard to sit this one out.

So no donations of your unwanted things, but here is another exception: I would love people to donate their unwanted LPs, cds and cassette tapes to play in the shop.

I ran The Robinsons’ Sunday Roadshow Café in the Clonmel Junction Festival last year. I was trying to recreate our family Sundays, and this included playing old family records, a lot of which were hymns and spiritual tunes, with titles like Country Western Hymnal and Gospel Songs and Spirituals for Little Children. (Thanks to my older siblings’ musical taste, Neil Young’s Harvest was also in the café and was easily the most selected record.)

Some lovely, local teenagers adopted my café and visited often. Matthew and Thomas took pity on my record collection and loaned me a few of their own. I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was ACDC and Black Sabbath, which didn’t fit in with the Robinsons’ Sunday theme but made a great change from the hymns!  

So here is your chance to put Help Me! Help Me! on a track – pun intended – it might not otherwise go on. Records, cassettes and cds accepted in the shop from 12pm Thursday 23^rd September. Or post to Priscilla Robinson, c/o 45 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.

p.s. Big thanks to Ali White who came up with this idea of only playing music people donate, during one of the talk shops I organised, where people drank tea and talked about  charity shops!

My landlord visited my flat recently, and saw all the bags of stuff I am storing up for the shop, as well as the clutter I am not giving up. “You have a lot of stock”, he said “That is fine. But you should not bring in anything more.”

I was glad to hear that I have a lot of stock, but I did not want to lose my tenancy so I started to move stuff to my mother’s house. She will not evict me because I do not live there. My old bedroom is now full and I have started taking over the guest room for sorting purposes.

It’s time to sort because I’m finally working out how to display the goods in my shop. There are lots of possible ways to categorise the things I loved, things I still love, things I made,  things I regret buying, things I picked up off the street, things people gave me but I don’t know why etc. etc.. It is going in the direction of putting objects into groups with a name, such as: “You say Tat, I say Treasure” and “Presents: welcome and unwelcome”.

I’m starting to struggle with the realisation that my things will be going for good, and I was showing my friend Deirdre all the stuff I am hoping to reclaim. She was laughing at me and advising I label these “high risk” and keep them near me in the shop, at all times!  Perhaps I should tie them to me, or carry them around in a bag, or hide them in the shop and see if they get found by someone who wants them as much as me…

The great American photographer Stephen Shore said he liked to take pictures of “things not happening”. I was thinking that charity shops are often places you can see “things not selling”.

The objects sit crowded on shelves waiting. It feels like you could go back a week, a month or maybe a year later and they would still there. I felt this about many of the charity shops in Holyhead, Wales. 

I was there waiting for a boat a few years ago, and I wandered up the main shopping street after being tipped off it was a haven for charity shops. I found an amazing shop which I later remembered was something to do with feral animals. The old ladies working there were exceptionally friendly and happy to discuss the animals, the quality of the linens on sale in their shop, and Ireland or whatever topic we tumbled into.

This year, I returned to Holyhead in May, but the much loved Cat Action Trust shop was now closed. The signage was still there: “Help with the problem of feral cats – without killing”.

A local told me that the town is full of banks and charity shops, and I found plenty of the latter, including one which didn’t seem to have an actual name, just a sign in its window saying “We are raising funds for the local Holyhead Community mixed bilingual choir”. It felt like a shrine to anti-marketing techniques, with no attempt to display things aesthetically, nothing priced or labelled, and things laid out in such a way that it was hard to tell whether they were for sale or permanent fixtures. 

Two very similar televisions sat on a table, a crumpled Dr. Who poster and a curtain were displayed on the back of a door, a lone squash (?) racket was placed next to a mirror, two plastic folders and a whisk in a curious still-life arrangement, and there was a bag of unopened Readers Digests, still in their plastic wrapping, with the name and address of the intended owner.

The shop staff put no pressure on me to buy or even to look at things. There was a curious air of calm. You can see more pictures here…

The great news is we have found a venue for the shop! It will be in the former Smock Alley Café, on Smock Alley Court which is off Parliament Street and really in Dublin 8 although most people think of this area as Dublin 2… Hmm, I think I will add a map.

It’s a lovely space, and used to be a fantastic café. I’m very grateful to Lynsey Ní Rainaill and all in Temple Bar Cultural Trust for letting me use it.

Thanks too to Irene O’Mara from the Performance Corporation (who are producing Help Me! Help Me!) for trying to get hold of various landlords, and to everyone who suggested possible homes: Delwen, Ann- Marie and Tom to name but a few. I can only name a few because my short term memory is getting worse, and will be in shreds by the end of September, so please remind me who you are if you come into the shop and I look dazed and confused.

The Help Me! Help Me! shop will be next to another shop, which sells very attractive merchandise, some of which has been “upcycled”! I think my stuff is more in the “downcycled” category.

I am just back from Greenbelt Arts Festival in Cheltenham. I counted up and this was my 17^th time going. There’s a charity stall there called Solomon’s Glory*, and I’ve being buying something from it nearly every year. There’ll be a blue bag in the Help Me! Help Me! shop which I got there at my first one.

I asked Frances – who runs the stall – if I could take some photos and then she asked me if I would let her put them on her website. We had ourselves a transaction, and I started to take a few tranquil shots of the empty stall. But she thought this was a bit silly and told me to ask a group of young people who were nearby to pose for me. It turned out they were on their way there anyhow. Marketing meets real life…

Everything is half price on the last day of the festival so if you find something good you can wait til then, and try to get a bargain. I found a black jacket with suede epaulettes one year, and showed it to my friends, but they told me I had enough coats and not to be buying anymore. I regretted it and when I went back the following year the coat was there again so I bought it and my friends admired it and asked where I got it.

At the festival Oliver James, the author of Affluenza gave a talk called “It’s a mad world” and discussed the link between a rise in mental illness and our placing higher value on possessions, fame, appearance and money. He suggested, that to challenge consumerism we could use the question, “do I really need this or want this?” I wonder how this would work in my shop? Maybe we can discuss it at one of the daily 3 o’clock tea, cake and chat sessions. I am still working out what that will involve, I will probably get a grip on it at around 2 o’clock on the opening day. Maybe you could send me your ideas!

* I know it says Tatenda Charity Stall on the green sign at the top, but there is a sign at the back of the shop which says Solomon’s Glory, and that is what we always called it…