A couple weeks ago, as I was escorting my US friends Jim and Heidi through the bustle that is Dagenham Heathway, we happened to notice a sign on the St. Francis Hospice Charity Shop window, asking for volunteers. I took down the number they posted, and called when I got back home. This seemed easiest for me if I was going to do anything in the name of humanity, although I do give a monthly donation to the British Red Cross. Shit, when they come to your door, and you can see they really are committed charity workers, it’s hard to turn them down, even though paying something as minimal as £6.50 on direct debit is still scary to me, as I still fear the difficulty of stopping the payout if I needed to. I can do small things like that for my fellow man, though if Bob Geldof wanted me to sing a line or two on a charity single, I could be persuaded I’m sure. Just don’t ask me to bicycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats, (for US readers, Southwest England to Northeast Scotland, at 700 miles, the longest land distance in UK) or swim more than about 50 metres in any water colder than I would bathe in, or run any further than to my nearest ASDA. Too often I get the vibe that people who do physical feats of endurance in the name of charity are also doing it in the name of “Look at how good I am.”

                    Mostly, I’ve been wanting to find something to keep me occupied while waiting for either a career change or at least an upsurge in whatever career I have left in the UK comedy scene. I get a reasonable amount of inspiration when I’m at home trying to alleviate boredom, and I do get quite a bit of writing done in those circumstances. But when you’re doing someone else’s gig, you don’t have time to think about how things may not be going exactly the way you want them to go. I couldn’t be worrying myself about Olly Murs, last year’s bland X Factor runner-up, holding this week’s number one. I couldn’t even think too positively about news from California on the 2nd place San Francisco Giants’ latest surge at the struggling first place San Diego Padres, losers of 10 in a row.

                 No, I really had to think about moving bags of clothing from the basement to the main sorting room, and looking for videos from the basement that would fill up the racks, and possibly sell, even though they were almost entirely VHS videos that few people still had the equipment for. I also had to fill up the book racks in the same manner. Would a Gordon Ramsay or Nigella cook book sell quicker than Will Young’s autobiography or the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records? There’s no clear cut answer to that, so you display them all. And as a real sign of the times, the only person who looked through the vinyl records in my four hours there was me! Makes me real scared if I have to sell any of my vinyl over here, and how much below my estimated value of the records I would have to accept.

                    Mostly, I was reminded it was indeed a charity shop, and these being difficult financial times, the shop was pretty busy most of the day, with many shopping here and the adjacent 99p shop because that’s all that was affordable. My favorite was a mother and her three sons, ranging in age from infant to about 5, with the older boys tethered to the youngest one’s stroller just for mom’s sanity. The children’s section is pretty well defined, with books, videos, toys, games, and stuffed animals of all descriptions. The middle boy seemed fascinated by an obvious piece of a larger set, probably from a young girl’s imitation beauty parlour. It was a mock hair dryer, in a very feminine purple colour, that made a hair dryer type sound when you flicked a switch, but no air was actually emitted. The boy kept harkening back to it, and only when I made a comment to mom on the lines of “How come he’s so fascinated by the mini hair dryer,” that she at first laughed, but there eventually appeared some genuine alarm over his future sexual preference. This escalated into more and more frustration on her part as she would bury it amidst other toys and he’d still fish it out. She eventually let fear, homophobia, and overall Essex-ness dominate as she finally exclaimed, “Leave it or ah’ll ponch y’ fockin’ fyce, innit!” Ah, I love this county! Such couth, such class, such intellect, such a way with words. She did buy her kids some Roald Dahl books, so at least illiteracy was not going to be an issue in their house.

                      Overall, I loved my day there and have agreed to come in every Monday until they decide they don’t need me, or I get a world tour booked. The four hours went fast, something very unusual for me on my first day of anything. In the whole time there, no one asked about what I do for a living, few even asked about where I’m from, and about as far as I got into personal life was when the boss, Toni, was pulling out a wedding gown to display. While it was a nice looking gown, in very good shape, I pointed out to Toni the near impossibility that someone would be looking in charity shops for a wedding dress. She went on to plug the Wedding Shop that the charity has in Hornchurch, and I mentioned I wouldn’t be patronizing any shop like that for a long time, having been married and divorced three times. She definitely wasn’t expecting that, but seemed to find it, and me, amusing.

                          More importantly, if I’m going to stay here, and particularly stay in Essex, I gotta mingle with the people, and try to understand as much as I can about who and why they are. You sometimes become a bit jaded if you’ve lived in big cities, which I have for most of the last 40 years. Living and now working in Dagenham has allowed me to get down with my adopted peeps in my adopted ‘hood. Can’t wait for next Monday, though they may need me sooner than that.