Every thrifter has their Holy Grail.

There are, as every charity shop treasure hunter knows, certain things that hover permanently in the back of your mind. A collection of “most wanted” items. A wish list of impossibility.

They are things coveted, but usually unaffordable. Things that you never expect to see in a charity shop, but always keep a minuscule flickering hope alive that they might turn up one day, when hell freezes over and pigs learn to fly.

It is this that keeps people like me rummaging, never daring to pass by that unpromising jumble-sale of a shop, just in case in amongst the detritus lurks something on that list.

Occasionally you may have read, in magazines crammed with pictures of cool interiors, of folk bragging how they just happened upon that Eames chair discarded at the side of the road. Or pulled that perfect haberdashery cabinet out of a skip.

I never really believed in these people. I thought they were just making it up because they were too embarrassed to say how much they really paid for stuff.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday lad had a day off school. The sun was shining and we headed through the park and down the hill for a nose around the charity shops and lunch at Kiosk.

Whilst perusing dvds in the second shop we visited, a gaggle of small children suddenly dissolved into a flurry of giggling and pointing and sniggering.

Curiosity piqued, I casually took a look at what was attracting their attentions.

And there, propped against the side of the counter, was my Holy Grail.

A perfect, signed, custom-framed, Bjorn Wiinblad poster.

The bared breasts of the poster’s leading lady were the cause of the kerfuffle.

At lad’s request, I waited for the giggling children to leave before approaching the counter. The thought of his mother publicly buying a giant, bare-breasted lady in his presence was almost too much for him, poor lad.

And almost too much for me, too. I could hardly breathe with excitement at my find.

It was worth lad’s embarrassment. And the long, awkward journey home, carrying my treasure. And the aching arms at the end of it.

It fits into my bedroom perfectly…

But if you think that means I won’t need to go thrifting any more, you’re most definitely wrong.

The quest for a discarded Eames chair continues… ♥