Shane Hegarty's encyclopedia of modern Ireland
A tongue of yellow plastic lolls from your letter box. A black-and-white note features a picture that's been photocopied one too many times. Is that a photo of a child? Or is it a church? "We need your unwanted items for charity," reads the note. "Books, pets, shoes, toys, cast-iron fireplaces, clothes and" - here's the clincher - "bric-a-brac."
They say bric-a-brac, you think junk. The charities will tell you that for too many people the charity bag represents an ethical authorisation to throw in lots of stuff and let someone else decide whether it should be thrown out. It relieves you of that burden. You don't want to be wasteful and bin that dress you never wore, so let someone else do it. You can't bear to dump the ghastly Wedgwood gravy boat you got as a wedding gift, but putting it into a colourful bin liner makes it much easier. And if it's dumping, it's dumping for a worthy cause.
You find yourself challenging your prejudices of what people less fortunate will accept. Will they take shoes without laces? Should you sew up the hole in those socks? You prod your conscience and find it has been made lazy by wealth. How cossetted is the First World? If your biggest conundrum on charity is whether your old clock radio is better off in a landfill or a charity shop, then you can consider yourself very firmly rooted in the First World.
But, hey, it's for charity. Or is it? Because, although some bags are the real deal, others leave you wondering if they're actually for a good cause or just for some enterprising individual who's figured out a way of getting something for nothing. Aren't some of these "charities" a bit broad in what they'll accept? Would a child in Turkmenistan have much use for a Remington foot spa?
So you leave the bag on the doorstep, then mount a stake-out by the window, waiting for them to come round and collect it. With luck they'll wear a uniform or look somewhat charitably minded. If someone turns up dragging an open trailer behind a rusty van, then you'll get suspicious. So you wait and wait, the bag slumped in the rain, the outline of a carriage clock all too discernible on top of a pile of jumpers. The appointed time comes and goes. Still nobody comes to pick the thing up. And you realise you don't really care if it's for charity or not. You just want that bag gone before the neighbour spots her wedding gift poking through a rip.
But it squats unclaimed for a couple of days, until you eventually accept that it's never going to be picked up. Then you have to drag the sodden thing back in, the clothes inside now mouldy, cursing the luck of that blasted carriage clock. Still, it'll only be a couple of days before another bag drops on to the mat. And the more you look at that toasted-sandwich maker, the more you think you'd like someone else to decide if it has had its day.