Category
5 articles
The free section of Britain's classifieds is a literary genre all of its own: half a tin of paint, a piano with one working key, and a phrasebook of passive-aggressive conditions. Here is a tongue-in-cheek taxonomy of the nation's most optimistic giveaways, plus a protocol for collecting a stranger's cast-offs without losing your dignity.
While the big museums argue about sponsorship, a quieter tradition carries on in chapels, spare rooms and converted sheds: the single-room museum, run by volunteers with magnificent obsessions and an honesty box by the door. I went to have a look.
A kitchen-table project devoted to the handwritten labels on second-hand cassettes found at British car-boot sales. Part taxonomy, part accidental biography, and entirely powered by tea.
A small, slightly obsessive archive of handwritten dedications found in charity-shop books — apologies, birthdays, forgotten aunties and a startling number of messages to someone called Debs. What nine months of cataloguing other people's presents reveals about British gift-giving, memory and the afterlife of a paperback.
I tried to build a cheap desk gadget that logs kettle boils, room temperature and my mood. It worked, sort of, badly. Here is the diary of a home project that taught me more about ritual than any sensor ever could.