Going to the dogs

In the dim and distant past I used to write a strand on this blog called The Hoardiculturist, which was about my addiction to…collecting. For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m a serial hoarder and have a secret vacuum-sealed vault built into the bedrock of my house where I store all sorts of tat. Neatly filed [...]

I haven’t blogged for an age, so thought I’d mark my return with The Hoardiculturist, my regular (but irregular) series on the stuff I collect. So far I’ve covered Pez dispensers, succulents, postcards, Xmas records and lots of other tat, but the hoard I am about to reveal is (arguably) my most embarrassing by far. [...]

Do you have a guilty music pleasure? In other words, do you have a penchant for pop or rock music with highly questionable artistic integrity? For example, I know some people who can’t help playing an air guitar whenever they hear Jump by Van Halen or who turn up the radio when Toto’s soaring hit [...]

In May 1985 I was mooching around Nottingham town centre with a few friends when we stopped to watch a group of leather clad buskers banging out a version of Wild Thing. For a few minutes we stood listening with a fair amount of indifference until I realised there was something familiar about the lead [...]

I have a confession to make. I’m a serial collector. Records, books, postcards, aeoniums, old toys, bubblegum cards, comic books, Dr Who memorabilia, music magazines, gig tickets, matchboxes and lots of other stuff have caught my eye over the years, bringing me great joy, but resulting in a house that is full of tat, clutter [...]

In Joel Schumacher’s 1994 film The Client, starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, there’s a scene where a young boy says, ‘look, Elvis Pezley’, after spotting a Pez dispenser with sideburns and a quiff. Pez collectors went into a frenzy after hearing about this, but it was all in vain as there was only [...]

When I was about ten or eleven my parents gave me the Haworthia attenuata that had thrived on our sunny kitchen windowsill for many years. I was fascinated by this curious plant, whose untidy rosette of green leaves banded with raised white tubercles reminded me of the waving tentacles of a sea anemone. Despite competing [...]

Eureka, I thought, when at the age of 14 I opened a drawer in the geography classroom of my old school and found it crammed with old postcards, which were earmarked to be cut up, drawn on or stuck into books by my fellow classmates. Curiosity aroused, I then peeked into the drawer above it [...]

I’m a compulsive hoarder and have all sorts of collections from 1970s football cards to vinyl records, along with Pez dispensers, aeoniums and every edition of the Radio Times since 1983 that has a Dr Who related cover. I’m not sure what stashing away all this stuff says about me, but I usually justify it [...]