2003-12-18

I just found five dollars blowing across the road as I rode my bike home from work. Hopefully an omen, as I was riding home after finishing my year's work and psyching up for 3 weeks off.

Then I started thinking how I haven't found money in quite sometime. Though I often find the magic twenty or ten dollar note in the pocket of some item of clothing that has not been worn in awhile. That's always nice. And I used to find buds around my room all the time when I used to deal pot, back in the day.

I remember, though only vaguely, finding fifty bucks when I was about 8 years old, and I was only allowed to spend half, the other half going into some kind of savings account I suppose. I bought a monopoly set with it.

I've found clothes on the street before, ones that have been worth taking home. One frock I still have was in a pile of stuff out the front of a very old and rundown house. It looked like someone had finally taken the house on and had cleaned it of years of someone elses life. I got the dress.

Rarely have I ever bought furniture, but in each and every house I live in there would always be funriture, often changing completely from house to house. My first houses were always furnished just from found furnishings - our couches always sucked, though.

Having said that, my current couch was found on the side of the road. Its impeccable black vinyl - I think its the classiest retro couch ever! My white wicker love seat is probably my current favourite found furniture.

I once found a wallet in a toilet at the Hopetoun Hotel and it had heaps of cash in it. I was evil and took quite a bit of it - but not all! I was younger, poorer, more selfish and drug addled back then.

Its gotten harder to find things, but there is still heaps of opportunity. People don't just abandon stuff like they used to - they may see some value and try to sell it first, or fobb it off to someone else. Either that, or it is plastic McDonalds toys no one wants anyhow.

When Dame and I go out to the junk collections (council rubbish pick ups, residents leave rubbish in piles out the front of their house for collection by the council) people have very funny reactions. The more timid ones just stare at you from their windows or front yards, too scared to actually hassle you. Then there are the people who feel they should give you a yell to "Get out of that!!" like they own the rubbish (which they may well do, I don't think a legal argument is necessary to overcome this issue surely!). One man even started running towards us, adamant that we were not going to salvage the seat off the old bicycle his neighbours had abandoned. But we had the seat by then and just drove off.

I found five bucks today...