Second-hand heaven
Alex James
The tent had been a big hit over the summer. They called it a tent, but it was big enough for elephants and tightropes: a big top as big as a ballroom and just as plush, lined and interlined like a lush pair of curtains, certainly ridiculous, but pretty and practical. Our friends from LA had been back here for summer. They pitched it in their garden in June and didn’t strike it until September, more or less living in it on rugs and cushions for the whole time they were here, in the garden but out of the rain. We’d been to two parties in it, parties where everyone agreed it was a brilliant tent, and wanted one, especially when we found out how much they’d paid for it. It seemed a remarkable bargain — less to buy than to hire.
They left a couple of weeks ago — back to LA to boss impossible actresses around. Then last week we had an email saying that the tent was ours for 500 quid. They were worried it wouldn’t survive the winter in their shed. ‘The pegs are in a big wooden box on the right,’ said the email. ‘The sides are in the Cambodian canoe with the poles. Roof is on the floor in plastic in front of the tractor.’ There was a fully comprehensive list of instructions, for finding the tent, retrieving the tent, how to get the number for the guys who come and put it up and take it down, two combination codes for gates, the code for the lock on the shed.
Having followed all the instructions carefully, I found myself standing in another man’s shed on Sunday morning. It had taken a bit of fiddling around with a cigarette lighter to find the lights, a friendly web of gimcrack wires snaking off in all directions, and even with the lights on it was quite dim and mysterious in there: a damp cave of brilliant curiosities. No, that couldn’t be a Cambodian canoe. It was almost certainly a punt. I lifted some tarpaulin. Still no canoe, but instead a gleaming Land Rover, a miniature one. Wow, some shed, a whiff of the second world war about it, asbestos roof and sides, rickety doors and cute wooden windows, all neatly packed and jammed to the gunwales with treasure. It’s not normally possible to have a shed that isn’t full, and this one was no exception, full of every big boy’s toy imaginable: at least two perfectly parked ride-on lawnmowers, a gleaming mini tractor and topper attachment, what looked like a couple of Harleys under dust covers at the far end.
God, I love sheds but I didn’t want to be too nosey. It seemed quite strange being in someone’s shed without them: such an intensely personal place, a shed. You can tell far more about a person from their shed than from their house. The shed is where all the apparatus of joy and halfcooked dreams are kept, inviting comment. Friendly places.
The tent was already going a bit mildewy and smelly. I could tell fetching it was a matter of urgency from the emails. The only way I could grab it as quickly as I did was by buying a spiral staircase, unseen, from a man who said he’d deliver it on his trailer. I said I’d take the stairs if he’d help me with the tent. I just hadn’t had time to organise anything more logical. I called a couple of van people but they wanted to know how big the tent was and all I could tell them was ‘really big’ and they wanted me to call back with dimensions and volumes which made it all too complicated.
A spiral staircase has been right at the top of my shopping list for some time, so it was actually all looking very neat and tidy. Of course the stairs weren’t quite tall enough to reach the first floor, but these things are never perfect. Buying second-hand always calls for a little bit of creativity and ingenuity but what I really love about secondhand stuff is that it has lost all the sheen of its marketing and just exists for what it is. I’d buy everything second-hand if I could. Junk shops are just sheds where everything is for sale.
It had, in fact, been a bumper weekend for second-hand shopping. I nabbed a cello for less than a hundred pounds on Saturday, something I’ve been on the lookout for, for years. The smelly tent is now hanging out to dry in my shed, with the too-short stairs, in a hundred pieces. I’m still contemplating how to make them a foot taller — a cast concrete plinth should do it. It’s all part of the fun. I could always put them up in the tent. ❑
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