Trapped by trash

Dash to scrapstore. Tiger needs plastic tubing. She has a design for a water-powered car and says she is desperate. Squirrel wants more plasticine because she wants to create a farm and the only modelling clay we have left is white which apparently is no good if your sheep are purple. And Shark wants wool. If the knitting starts again I may have to kill myself.

If you don't know what scrapstores are, they are a lifeline. They are a blood supply to home ed. And for junk monkeys like us they are as close to heaven on earth as we can get. Scrapstores collect tonnes of business and manufacturing waste materials around the UK every week and then we stock it mostly in our back room; stuff like factory over-runs, off-cuts, rejected materials, excess goods, dismantled shop fittings, and production process by-products. Five minutes in a scrapstore can yield us paper, cloth, wood, paint, plastic items, cardboard; all of it in every shape, size, thickness and quality and in all description and style.

When I get the lorryload of new stuff home, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger squeal with delight at the boundless creative possibilities and then reduce all that potential and possibility to something like this:

Today while I am at Scrapstore I see these:


And I wonder how I can explain to Dig that these are just what we need in the back garden.