RICHARD ORD: The reaction to my unwanted charity tat simply beggars belief!

​For a moment I was elated, ‘They’ve cured cancer, brilliant’, why else would Cancer Research be turning away donations?

Sadly this wasn’t the case.

It reminded me of the time when I went to London and, on stepping out of the station, I was asked by a homeless man if I could spare him some change for a sandwich. A very particular request, granted, but by sheer chance, while I had no change, I did have a sandwich in my backpack!

I rummaged around and, feeling rather chuffed with myself, I presented him with the sandwich.

He eyed it suspiciously before shaking his head and mumbling: “I don’t like Coronation chicken.”

Turns out beggars can be choosers.

Anyway, with that particular charity shop not taking donations that day, I took my ‘pre-loved’ clothes to another. I don’t call them ‘pre-loved’ by the way, it’s what these clothes are called by the stores trying to sell them back to people. For ‘pre-loved’ read ‘currently hated’ but I guess that isn’t so attractive to buyers.

Maybe a more accurate description of my charity clothes is ‘pre-fat middle aged man’, but then again not a very appealing sales pitch. They’re old clothes. Or, as the marketeers will have it, vintage.

Forced to seek another store to donate my ‘pre-fatman’ garments, I spotted the animal charity Far Place Animal Rescue and dumped my bag there.

Out of curiosity, I decided to visit the shop a week later to see if my clothing was on sale. And sure enough, it was. Of course, the fact that my clothing was still for sale a week later confirmed, in my eyes, their ‘currently hated’ status.

While I felt generous donating the items to the charity shop, I was troubled by the thought that, if sold, I may by chance bump into the buyer wearing one of my items of clothing. Would I be embarrassed?

Yep. A week after checking out my clothes in Far Place Animal Rescue I bumped into a Yorkshire terrier head to toe in my discarded apparel. The shame of it…