Despite the rubbish pun in the name, Freecycling is brilliant. Since we’ve all got crap in our house, things we’ve bought and looking back must have been absolutely high to have even considered purchasing. In a cupboard somewhere, I have a Lego robot that I purchased as a fully grown adult, because you can hook it up to a computer and make it do things. It cost nearly £200 and I’ve used it all of twice. Because I’m an easily led consumerist idiot.
Someone invented the idea of the freecycle, where you just give away the junk that you’ve acquired and is too good to just launch in the bin. The quality is variable, as you’d expect – there’s lots of London’s Burning videos out there for some reason, but occasionally there’s some old dear giving away a solid gold blowjob machine.
Couple of weeks ago, I gave away a mattress on there, because it’s been sat in the spare room doing the square root of nothing for the last year. Putting it onFreecycle leads to this massive rush of e-mails. First come, first served is a lie: they have to be literate and not called Xbox-Scratchcard to even get a look-in.
Eventually pick someone out. They seem normal, can spell mattress and say please and thank you. This is good. They can have it. And then he turns up.
I wish he didn’t know where I live, but I’m pleased to have done him a favour. He’s feckin’ massive, big swingy arms that could knock a hole in the wall if he fancied. All tattoos, too, you know the kind that have faded and you can just see ink contrasting against the hairy arms. Gruff voice, “cheers”. I try and say “cheers” and “mate” and stuff, act like I’m just a normal proper bloke. I know the truth though. I hope he doesn’t.
Now it’s gone, I’m worried about my old mattress. It’s probably in a brothel now. Eastern European girl laying on it sobbing and thinking of the broken promises made when she was trafficked into the country. Trying to remember what her family look like as another disgusting man empties his balls into her soulless mouth. On my mattress. Without me even being there.
I bet he’s actually a really nice bloke and delighted his little boy by giving him something comfortable to sleep on. A girl called Zofia.
Reminds me of a freecycler I had two days ago.
On that day I was expecting two freecyclers to pick up some assorted crap i was trying to get rid of. One item was a tattered old rug (and of which im sure my old dog had dragged his bum along several times) and another was some useless old SDRAM memory chips. I was expecting a woman and a Guy for these items respectively.
A guy turns up who looks a bit half soaked, and I enquire ‘is it Rob?’, to which I get a muffled, twitchy response. ‘Okaaaay’ I think, still I hand over the box of memory chips, and say helpfully that there a few old Pentium processors included which he can chuck away if he wants. I get a shuffling twitchy response. He mumbles ‘thanks’ and goes away.
Ten minutes later I get a knock on the door, with ‘Rob’ holding out the box of memory chips to me.
‘I have no idea what these are.’ he exclaims ‘I thought I was here for a rug’
You thought? Jesus man if you don’t know how am I supposed to know!!! Some people, really…..
For a moment, I had forgotten which website I was reading.
“This can’t be shoutingatco.ws!”, I exclaimed. “This is far too positive. I want to know what’s happened to N- ahhhh, there he is.”