Out with the new, cherish the old......

In the middle of Chichester, in the midst of the doom and gloom of recession, arguments about parking and who’s going to pay for the Christmas lights (no-one this year, so there won’t be any), a shop has just opened its doors which is truly different, which will lift your spirits and which will remind you why they call it Great Britain.

Tall claims you may think for a little shop – but there is something so uplifting, so hopeful, so bright and so utterly ingenious about Number Forty Three that I promise you it is justified. I guarantee you have never seen anything like it before. If you don’t smile the minute you cross the threshold, there is no hope for you.

The two friends behind Number Forty Three are artists and designers and their simple remit is to find things that are tired and dull and make them extraordinary and beautiful. Their aim is to offer an alternative to Britain's throw-away culture. The gifts and furniture in this shop are not antiques. They are things the rest of us would throw away, despite the great shape and the solid construction, because they are boring and old. On the price tags, it says ‘loved again’. (Even the price tags are made from slips of gorgeous old fabrics and written by hand).


And like all the very greatest ideas, everything you see makes you go, ‘Why didn't I think of that?’

The first clue that Number Forty Three is extraordinary is the traditional, understated grey sign outside listing opening times; it states that they are open Tues - Sat, ‘sometimes’ on Sundays. Next to Monday, it says simply, ‘tired’.

But it is as you enter the shop that the place really makes you smile. The walls are papered – not as you and I would with sheets in a carefully chosen design reaching from ceiling to floor but irregularly in different designs and sizes, a strip of this lime green pattern here and a longer length of that aubergine swirl there. The reason most of us don’t decorate like this, is because we’d get it wrong and it would look hideous, but this is done exquisitely and without confusion. (They will come and do your house for you, by the way, or 'upcycle' your old furniture for you).

Number Forty Three is laid out so that you are welcomed into the space as though it was someone’s living room. The owners are friendly and relaxed, chatting about their work because they love it, not because they are pushing the hard sell. They may well be visibly revamping in the workshop at the shop's far end. The rescued furniture has been repaired, painted and if necessary, reupholstered in the same colour scheme as the walls. There are armchairs, benches, towel rails and tables. There are curtains, picture frames and lampshades. There are necklaces and cardigans and shoe horns.
 

What makes Number Forty Three so enchanting is that its owners have quietly employed great skill and discernment in their work. It is eclectic, but not cluttered. What looks like a charming, quirky idea has actually taken a long time and a great deal of talent to make it work. While you may wander in and think, ‘Why didn't I think of that myself’, you quickly realise you wouldn’t be able to do it. It is clear you are talking to people who really know what they are doing and are good at it. Their workshop is in the shop, like a proud kitchen chef, who knows his skills are worthy of display.

That is the reason you will not just pop in once to Number Forty Three and marvel from a distance as though you were in an art gallery. You will come time and again to see what they are doing, what new pieces they have transformed. You will bring your own favourite oldies to be revamped, you will be greeted with genuine enthusiasm and you will buy. And no-one will have what you have.

Poppycock

This morning a friend of mine bought a poppy and was told he couldn’t have a pin to attach it with in case he hurt himself.  

This man, by the way, is 45 years old and has flown jet planes in war zones all over the world. He has a degree in engineering, jumps off tall buildings on a Saturday morning and has rowed a canoe single-handed up the Amazon to meet tribes who’ve never seen white people before.

Oh, and his granddad was back on the front line a month after being blown up in the second world war.

I promise I’m not going to get obsessed with the health and safety thing but, er, what now??

Of course we need to take care of each other and make sure gas boilers don’t explode and old people don’t fall down cracks in the pavement, but this isn’t even funny any more.

We are creating a generation of children who can’t leave their homes without crash helmets and elbow pads to walk to school.  Conkers are considered an extreme sport. Remember that shocking family who made headlines in the tabloids recently for allowing their children to cycle to school alone? We are talking about people who must grow up and run this world.  In future people will be asked to present risk assessments who have never been allowed to take any risks. How is that possible?

My mother will deny this because her memory is failing her, but I promise you when I was 11, my friend Susie and I used to pack a picnic, hop on our bikes, cycle the couple of miles to the harbour, catch the little ferry to the other side, cycle around a bit more and hang out with the swans on the other side until we ran out of food. Or it got dark. Without helmets.

Many years later, I cycled alone around barely inhabited Scottish islands for months. Without a helmet. Without a mobile phone, even, because as my lovely daughter pointed out, 'they weren't really invented in those old days'. I pitched my tent by the road a lot of the time and slept alone in the middle of nowhere and no-one worried that they didn't hear from me for days, because how could they? Even if I'd written a letter, there were hardly any post boxes and certainly nowhere to buy stamps. I did the same in Africa. 

But I admit it's getting to me. Would I want my children to do that now? Please God, no -but I suppose they might one day. And it will be worse because now you can phone from the middle of the rainforest so if I don't get a text every few hours I'll be sending in Timothy Cholmondely-Walker from the British Embassy to find them.

Talking of helmets, I came across another guy who had been racing at breakneck speeds in the pouring rain at Silverstone and went for a cuppa in the cafe afterwards – where they wouldn’t let him pour his own tea because ‘it’s too dangerous’. I’m not making this up.

Those brave soldiers who gave their lives for us would be turning in their graves, ashamed that we can no longer even wear a poppy to remember them because we are scared of a little prick......