Found

This weekend, Kathy and I mainly lurked around the East end of London (my old neighbourhood and her current one). We made a short trip west to pick up her new TV & DVD PLAYER (yay - Eastenders) and it was less traumatic than expected to carry these home on public transport. We caught the bus (due to the ubiquitous tube station closures for maintenance works) and went past such lovely London locations as Cheapside, Poultry Old Broad Street and the Famous Cock.

Much of the weekend was spent trawling the streets to find a table for Kathy's new TV. East London is a minefield of abandoned furniture, probably because of the high cost of wasted disposal in large cities. When I lived in Bethnal Green, my walk to the tube station was littered with chairs, car doors, desks, and so on. Once Elizabeth and I even found an abandoned piano on Brick Lane (upright, not grand). This weekend was not looking fruitful (except for a nice wooden folding chair, which we didn't take because we suspected it belonged to the angry-looking man in the nearby leather store) but on Saturday night a nice metal filing cabinet/office drawers combo appeared in Kathy's rubbish disposal area, right outside her living room window. These drawers are the perfect height for the TV and have the added advantage of storage. Other abandoned items included a black leather couch (gone by Sunday), mattresses, and a pair of large speakers and an oven. A chair and cupboards appeared the following day. Really, who needs Ikea? Previously, I had only seen this level of discarded furniture in Dea's street in Mt Lawley (fourth ave, I mean you) in Perth.