one life for sale

I had decided to sell most of my belongings so that I could start afresh. I had hundreds of items in storage from houses I no longer owned – my house in LA, the six-floor house in Wilton Crescent and the rock-star mansion in Surrey. It was costing me a small fortune to hang onto these things, most of which I would never need again.

I know, I thought to myself, I’ll hire a market stall and sell them off.

A fun idea? No, a really bad idea, as it turned out. Camden Market, where I had decided to set up shop, was a very cool place to hang out generally. So I took a six-month lease on a big lock-up there, in one of the old railway arches.

I also enlisted the assistance of my friend and housemate at the time, Big Pete, and together we set about repainting my new premises in time for our grand opening nine days later. By the end of our first day of decorating our style was beginning to attract a bit of attention, to say the least. Against the backdrop of the white, curved tunnels, we were splattering random colours all over the walls, all over us and all over anyone who happened to get too close or was too nosey.

We embellished this with what we felt were deeply meaningful statements such as ‘Nothing in this store has a price – like life.’

Not only was this sentiment hopelessly idealistic but it didn’t make any sense, when it came to retailing. I had the idea of letting people pay what they wanted for items, hoping any potential customers would feel the whole karma vibe and pay what they thought was fair. But within minutes of opening on our first morning it was evident that any potential customer wanted everything as cheaply as they could get it and, as far as they were concerned, any karma could go take a running jump.

Upon realising this, price tags were hastily added, but alas to no avail. I had paid fortunes for some of the items on offer, $30,000 for a sofa, for example, but our asking price of £5,000 had people walking away as soon as they saw the second zero. Although we probably had more footfall that day than any other market stall in the western world, we barely sold a thing.

Still, we’d met some very interesting people and had a day out in the fresh air into the bargain. A fact we intended to celebrate, as we headed off to the pub once we had shut up shop for the day.

With a raging thirst, Big Pete and I hit the bar, shoulder to shoulder with our new colleagues from the market. They had enjoyed the extra publicity my new enterprise had created and were happy to share a few drinks with us – far too many, as it happened and enough to ensure that it was going to hurt come the morning.

This was a pattern that would repeat itself for the next six months. Pete and I continued to flog off the accumulated detritus of my life, whilst also learning a few harsh truths about the selling game, namely:

1. Regardless of hangovers, fines were imposed for anyone opening up late.
2. Our prices would have to be dramatically reduced to stand any chance of covering the £950-a-week rent we had to pay come Sunday evening.
3. We would never see the £14,000 cost of transporting all the items out of storage in the first place, let alone make any profit.

In short, the market stall was a disaster whilst also being evidence that the crazy bulb was still burning brightly somewhere deep in my ever-fading ginger head. For heaven’s sake– the house I had recently bought cost over three million quid, yet here were Pete and I freezing our knackers off and sacrificing a large chunk of our weekends for precisely bugger all. In fact, minus bugger all. But it was my own fault for buying all this nonsense in the first place.

I once asked a wise old owl friend of mine what one piece of advice he would pass on. This is what he said: ‘Whenever you think you might want to buy something – don’t.’ As he took another drag on his pipe and then a sip of his beer and looked out of the window I waited for him to finish this pearl of wisdom, but he said no more and I realised that was it.

Stuff and the owning of stuff is a nightmare, a needless headache. It’s the ball and chain of consumer addiction that we all fall for. Nowadays when I drive past a high street on a Saturday afternoon and I see all those hard-working people spending money they might not have on things they might not want and disappearing under countless bags in the process, I wantto jump out of the car and scream, ‘STOPPPPPP! For your own sakes, take it all back and go out for a nice meal instead, or save up for a holiday, or anything – but just stop.’

Having said that, I still own more cars than any one man ever needs, a house big enough to be a small hotel and a garden the size of a small county. Never mind, I suppose it’s a work in progress for us all.

However, let’s finish this section with a smile. I live very close to the house where John Lennon wrote the line, ‘Imagine no possessions.’

And his place was twice the size of mine with 80 acres out the back. So what the fuck was he going on about?