Back in London over Christmas, we naturally had a look around the local charity shops. We saw the above chest of drawers in a furniture charity shop, obviously mispriced at £50. We were going to buy it immediately – but how to get it back to Cornwall? We ummed and ahhed about it, then left it. We returned later to buy it; naturally it had gone. A few days later, H was looking around Oliver Bonas and saw the exact same chest of drawers in the shop – for £495. I cursed about it non-stop for days.

This was a rarity, however. Aside from finding a few choice Christmas presents in charity shops, there were no barngains to be found. The prices of records and books in charity shops has gone through the roof; indeed, I also browsed some secondhand record and bookshops (both traditionally fairly expensive) and noticed, in general, that they were cheaper than charity shops.

In fact, my only barngain of the season was in the V&A bookshop (not their general shop). There were numerous lovely art books reduced from £40 to £5 or £10. I almost bought about a dozen, but finally settled on just one: a lovely facsimile copy of William Morris’ socialist-sci-fi novel, News From Nowhere, reduced from £30 to £5.