Out with the old? In with the old!

Dear Mum,

I have, of late, experienced various craft events and vintage institutions, which offered a plethora of homemade keepsakes and reminders of the past.

As a result, I am itching to recreate past decades. This itching is, in part, due to the eighties style cable knit jumper I’m modelling. The one you said made me look like I should be in Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ music video.

My knitting needles have been clicking furiously and Caro Emerald plays on a constant loop as I hope to time travel to another decade – ideally not the nineties, having been there, done that and got the Spice Girls t-shirt.

A recent getaway break in Lyme Regis with Sarah offered a charming getaway.

A walk along the Cobb before tea amongst a caricature like group of locals made the two of us feel like we were in an Agatha Christie novel. Cue the suspicious disappearance of a wealthy young man. I’ll bring my knitting.

In our exploration of the coastal town we stumbled across two second-hand book shops.

One was positioned on the seafront, a crumbling, makeshift corner of a shop that was as large as the cupboard under the stairs yet packed to the rafters with volumes and tomes. We left no nook unexplored, no book untouched.

Another second-hand book store extended over two floors and consisted of some five rooms. Each room was cluttered with maps, postcards, puppets, record sleeves and patterned shawls plus leather hardbacks and forgotten paperbacks.

Customers found their feet tapping uncontrollably to the salsa music that filtered throughout the vicinity along with the vocal exercises of the owner – a chap in his sixties who wore a Russian-style fur hat.

Between them, these two shops stocked every book ever written. I bought a 1955 copy of Orwell’s ‘1984’ for just £5.25. This choice of purchase was mainly because of the Classic novel’s iconic orange cover and well thumbed appearance.

It even has that old book smell that you oh so loathe, Mum. I wouldn’t go as far as Cary Bradshaw in the first (and slightly better, only slightly) Sex and the City film when she inhales a book of love letters, sighing that she loves the library book smell.

But the idea of pages having been thumbed by over five decades of readers, as far back as post-war Britain and the Queen’s first years on the throne, does make cheer with P.G. Wodehouse sentiments of “Jolly good” and “What-ho!”

Similarly, at the Kitsch and Sitch Fair that you, Kate and I recently attended, the three of us cooed and swooned at old fashioned doilies and rusting jewellery.

Our nation has gone vintage crazy. Never before have shapeless crocheted cardigans and mismatched china been so desirable.

After all, the word ‘vintage’ essentially means ‘second-hand’ yet has been bandied around these past three years and gained a multi-layered definition as a result.

If one sees a CD Discman or black and white Nokia, for example, they’re labelled vintage. A Mickey Mouse watch from the 80’s is vintage. An old stained tea caddy is vintage.

If you had referred to Kate’s hand-me-downs as ‘vintage’ when I was fifteen I would most probably have worn them with more enthusiasm.

There is nothing wrong with this new label. Vintage items offer value for money, a one-off piece and a little piece of history. Ideal for a cash-strapped graduate with a hunger for a chic lifestyle.

Now where did I leave my sewing bag...?