Julie BURCHILL
I’ve had volunteer jobs for more than a decade now, but never one like my cushy billet at the local Mind shop in Hove. For the past five years I’ve gone there, five mornings a week, to steam hundreds of pounds worth of clothes and invariably bounce back home in a wonderful mood, having laughed non-stop with my coworkers. When we closed indefinitely on March 21, I was bereft. So imagine my excitement when my manageress, the beautiful and dynamic Ms Chuang, messaged me on Sunday saying that we would reopen on Monday!
I was so excited on Sunday evening that I went to bed while it was still light, feeling like a child on Christmas Eve. Odd as it sounds, quite a bit of this excitement was about seeing the steaming machine, whom I call “Stephanie” – my temperamental mistress, forever blowing hot and cold with her affections, occasionally spitting at me when I work her too hard.
Over the three months we’ve been parted, I’m not ashamed to admit that not only do I dream of her, but I’ve often put my face up against the Mind shop window, on the off chance I’ll catch a glimpse of her.
I can’t believe how the shop has changed; the chaotic cornucopian feel has disappeared, and it now resembles a minimalist boutique, with a whopping one thousand fewer garments. And there in the little anteroom at the back is Stephanie, looking not a day older than when we were so cruelly separated. I wonder if customers will be put off by the change – but many say how much they like it, even though it’s not the jolly free-for-all it used to be.
We’re very grown-up now – only five people on the shop floor (one staff, four customers) one person at the back of the house (me), all members of staff wearing face masks and customers encouraged to wear them, too, hand sanitiser at the door and at the till point.
Signs are already good: though opening hours have been reduced to 10-4, on our first day back we see around 40 customers and make £256. (Our pre-plague average was £250-£300.)
That’s not to say we’re back to normal; donations must be quarantined for 72 hours before sorting and steaming, leaving a lot less work for me. Still, it’s a great result and we’re so pleased to be one of the 34 Mind shops opening in the first phase.
We do feel that we’re more than a shop. Ms Chuang says: “I see us as not just raising money for Mind, but also as the face of Mind, to clarify people’s awareness of mental health issues and to direct people to the resources that Mind can provide.”
Even before lockdown, one in eight high street shops stood empty, as people got wise to the fact that the pathetically named “retail therapy” solved no problems and created more, from personal debt to ceaseless landfill fodder. “All new clothes are the Emperor’s New Clothes now,” as I wrote sternly in this newspaper last year.
But considering the mental health problems exacerbated by lockdown, now shopping of any sort really can be seen as an altruistic act, as we attempt to save those in the retail sector from joining the everlengthening unemployment line – and the Depression/ depressions that will inevitably follow.
And from a purely selfish point of view, I don’t ever want to be asunder from my Stephanie ever again.