Everything Must Go True North

-What we're going to do is, we'll get the living room stuff out first.

-OK.

-A bit of weight in this jobbie.

-Yeah.

Are you struggling, son?

Go on, Chris! Get a bit of muscle on it!

The name of the business is Used Unique Boutique.

HE LAUGHS

We buy house contents, garage contents

and general house clearances.

That box is too heavy for me to carry, is it?

Yeah, I'll give you a hand with them.

With the house clearances, we would come,

make them a bid on the contents and clear it out.

Always find something at the back.

A lot of families wouldn't know who to phone.

There's a lot of wonderful furniture that would get disposed of

and what we're trying to prevent is stuff going in to

landfill that we can upcycle.

It's great when you book somebody that you can talk to and work round.

There. I'll get this big frame out.

And we get a lot of customers coming up, coming in for a hoke and a haggle,

seeing what we've got.

I don't want to go to the high-street shops

and see something that everybody has.

I would prefer to have something with a bit of soul,

a bit of story to it.

-It's a good shop, it's a good hoke to have.

-SHE LAUGHS

Well, it's a curious thing that everybody likes, having a hoke.

It's a wee whatnot.

Going into a house

and seeing how the person lived

and also the style of furniture that they'd maybe bought.

Horrible, isn't it?

The experience of Used Unique Boutique would be a hoke and a haggle.

Basically, you come in and have a good hoke about the place and then

if you see something you like, and there's maybe a price on it

and you want to get it for a bit cheaper,

we'll do a haggle. That's no bother whatsoever.

I think because we get on...

sometimes more like friends

instead of, you know, husband and wife at times,

we would know more or less how each other's feeling.

So we're lucky to have that sort of relationship, I think,

so we are.

Do you ever fall out over anything?

-Chairs, yes!

-SHE LAUGHS

He's got this thing with chairs.

Chairs, chairs, chairs.

Karen says I've actually got a chair fetish.

SHE LAUGHS

He has to buy all the chairs that he sees and I'm going, "No!"

cos I think at the last count, there was something like 200 and something chairs in here.

And I keep saying to him, "No more chairs! No more chairs!"

-But, doesn't work.

-SHE LAUGHS

Chair fetish time!

Every house clearance that we do is different.

You never get two the same.

And you enjoy it, because they are different.

Especially whenever...

The one in Ballyhoe?

Which I would say would be my favourite one.

It was really interesting with all the stuff that she had in it.

Cos you get all of their lives just in that one clearance that we do.

Her husband had passed away many years before.

And we found this cheque, it's the 11th of March, 1972.

The chap in question has signed it, "Any shopkeeper,

"something nice for Margaret, unlimited."

Northern Bank cheque, lovely wee story,

shows you how much he was in love.

It's bits like that we would hold on to.

And will find priceless.

They can be rightly emotional, so they can, at times. Yeah.

You know, we found her wedding dress

and it was only a wee tiny thing.

You'd have to be a wee stick to get into it, so you would've!

It's just wee silly cards you would find, too, that they have sent

to each other, her and her husband and some of them,

they have written really nice love letter type things in them.

You can really feel it at times.

Especially knowing that that person has passed on.

My mum passed away five years ago.

Dad's gone two years in February.

The house, it's just too big for me.

There's only me and my son left in Northern Ireland now.

All the rest of the family have moved away.

There's too many memories attached to it.

I have selected some bits and pieces which are of particular

emotion or relevance to me and the rest just has to go.

It's very difficult,

absolutely everything has some kind of emotion or memory attached to it.

It's something that I think 99% of people have to go through

with the passing of their parents at some point.

You just have to get on with this.

Do you want to mark that off your list?

This wee chest of drawers here, mum did a lot of sewing.

She made all her own curtains, dressmaking,

so I do have a lot of memories of poking around in this as a child.

It would have been boxes full of buttons and all kinds of different

scraps of lace for dressing up your dollies and all that kind of thing.

-INTERVIEWER:

-When you look at it, do you see her at it?

Yes, very much so.

-So you were interested in some of the tools?

-Yeah.

This is Dad's tool box.

Dad never threw anything out.

There would have been many interesting jobs around the house

done with these things.

I would say so. I would say so.

He was very good with his hands so there would have been all

kinds of amazing things produced from the old tool box.

Craig, you lift that.

There's only the one tool box, Regan?

I'm very emotionally attached to the house, of course,

as I was born here and it was the family home for so many years.

But it's not practical for me to stay here.

The ceiling here was hand-painted by my mum.

She just put up embossed wallpaper

and then she had two step ladders with a plank across

and she lay on her back, carefully touching up all the embossed paper.

That's one of my earliest memories of this house,

my mother being up this stepladder, lying on her back, painting,

for about three solid weeks.

It's a lovely old piece and this hung above the fireplace

in the living room and it keeps perfect time.

One of my favourite memories of my Dad is, he would always be

standing up, winding the clock and checking it with his watch.

I wouldn't say that it stopped whenever he passed away but I

certainly stopped winding it,

so it is set at the last time it was wound.

I'm not sure about selling this on because it is something which

brings back so many memories of Dad

and just an image that I have of him in my mind.

I think I'm dealing with it OK emotionally

but I know there is going to come a day when it is my last day here

and I have to shut the door for the last time.

That will be very hard.

The plant here is actually something which I'm more

-attached to than anything else.

-Is it a cactus?

It's a Christmas cactus so it comes out with these beautiful

blooms just in time for Christmas every year.

-So I'm definitely keeping the plant.

-Right.

No, that's us. We'll come back next week and there you go.

-Listen, it's been great. A wee hug?

-Yes.

-OK.

Thanks very much for all your help.

Listen, if there's anything else we can do to help, sure,

give us a wee bell.

Yes, any time, no problem. I'll be in touch.

What we actually try to do is obviously

we would sell second-hand furniture

but at least they are coming with a story to somebody else that

will maybe appreciate the story of where it came from

and where it's going in their own home.

We're here to see Jonathan.

He has now become a friend

and he would buy a lot of the up cycled items that we've made.

From Craig would be the electric chair, so it would.

I was in a dark place then.

No, no, it was actually done for a gimmick

-for coming up to Halloween.

-Halloween?

-Yeah.

Yeah, where you could have optics on it

and it was known as the electric shot chair so you were actually

getting a shot of alcohol rather than an electric shock.

And the Indian sign.

-We've got the rocking horse, what was it?

-A child's rocking horse.

-Also a barometer.

-This is the new addition of the outbuildings.

I still have two other outbuildings where there's

a lot more upcycling from Craig.

At one stage, we were all IKEA and new stuff and then it just flipped.

One day, our furniture, we sold it all

and it was like switching a light off.

It just changed.

We have collected chairs off you we've got the wardrobe, the units,

the suitcases. It's all him, nothing to do with us.

He picks and we buy.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What got you interested in this sort of...

It was in Euro Disney, Paris.

There was a ride called Tower of Terror and it was all Art Deco

and I really liked the inside of the ride.

I have been in some of my friends' houses

and none of their bedrooms are like this.

-Do you love that?

-Yeah, I love it in here, yeah.

You've got one-off pieces, that's the unique thing about it.

I would go to auctions if stock is running low.

The thing about the auctions is, they are fantastic to go

and get your bargains and stuff like that but you're not getting

the story I would get in a house clearance.

Whenever you're bidding, you can get very frustrated at times.

Whenever you're wanting something

and you going to get it at a really good price.

Then, somebody wakes up and goes, yeah, I'll be having that.

Then the bidding frenzy starts.

I've just got here to Laganside Auctions

and just got the catalogue here. Number 48, I am.

We're going in to have a wee look

and see if there's anything of interest to myself

and see if there's any ideas pop into the head there

that we can maybe upcycle.

Definitely worthwhile coming up for a wee nosy.

-How's them sausage rolls?

-Lovely.

-You enjoying them?

-Yeah.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Laganside Auctions.

Right, that's me organised.

INDISTINCT SPEECH FROM AUCTIONEER

Three pounds. I got a few old pulleys here, so I did.

And a couple of jerry cans.

The plan with the jerry cans, we're going to turn them into speakers.

Selling at 12.

Another bargain. There's a wee mahogany sideboard coming up, 50.

Georgian style sideboard.

36. 36 with me, 38, 40, 42, 44.

56, 58.

60.

-At £60, all done.

-GAVEL FALLS

Hi, Judith!

There you go, that's £132.75 please, Craig.

One, two, three, four, five.

140.

-140. Thank you.

-That's me empty now.

-That's you.

-SHE CHUCKLES

All done.

There are certain items that we would actually find that you

wouldn't find on the internet or history books,

that have been forgotten.

It's the photographs that get me, that nobody wants the photographs.

A photograph here that I actually found flicking through a book and on

the back, it actually says, Shorts and Harland, 27 November 1944.

This is Howard Hughes, there he is in black and white,

bold as you like, he had purchased the company two years after.

An eccentric guy.

You will notice that there's nobody else

within shoulder distance of him

so he's actually standing by himself.

Everybody else is shoulder to shoulder.

A great wee collectable.

It's a photograph you're not going to get again.

Well, Judith? How's you? Not so bad.

That's what we had got.

I'm sure it will come up nicely with a wee bit of polish.

That's beautiful.

You've got to sniff the old drawers.

There's somebody has upcycled this here.

Painted this here and added this. A wee 1960s...

That's gorgeous.

-Speakers.

-Speakers?

-No, no.

-Oh, right!

Wait until you see these here jobbies.

What we're going to do is,

I'll rub them down till they're a wee bit more rust

then we're going to cut the holes in and put speakers in them.

-That's a good idea.

-That's actually pretty cool.

-A bit of sand on the bottom.

-Bit of weight.

For a bit of weight and to control the bass.

You're a man full of ideas.

Full of everything else as well! THEY LAUGH

CAR HORN

Liz, how you doing? It's Craig here. I just missed a wee call.

'How are you?'

Och, hanging together like a busted sofa.

'I have...

-'It's like a vintage cocktail cabinet.'

-Yeah?

'I've put it on Gumtree, I'm not getting any joy.

'I mean, I put it on a higher band at first, because it's worth it.

'And then I lowered it.

'So I wondered if you might be interested in buying it from me?'

-Right.

-'Or offering me something for it?

'The other thing was, I'm interested in

'a hat and coat stand.

'I just wondered if you had anything like that at the minute?'

Liz, not at the moment. We have...

They're like hen's teeth at the moment.

Doing this job, it's a fantastic job.

Meeting fantastic people and listening to their stories.

Especially whenever some customers come down here,

and they're going away happy, so they are.

We were just out having a wee eye on the next project coming up.

And what are yous doing, yourselves?

I'm just keeping a wee eye to see if there's something that needs

a wee bit of life put back into it.

Absolutely, isn't that what it's all about?

-I'll go have a wee rummage.

-OK.

-See you in a bit.

-All right.

There's a wee table sitting down there that might suit you.

It's about that, by that depth, by that height.

Erm...

-Or there's another one.

-Ooh, let me see.

Maybe?

The floor's wonky.

It is. LAUGHTER

HE PLAYS CHORDS

(Needs tuned!)

A few times we'll maybe go do a house clearance

we'd find some lovely, old, vintage clothes.

And it's just great that it meant

so much to someone that they've actually kept it for all them years.

These two wedding dresses, I found in an old suitcase.

I just happened to open the suitcase up,

and these two wedding dresses were in it.

Do you still have your own wedding dress? Would you like to

think that someday someone will find it in a suitcase?

I think it would actually be quite strange...

to see someone else in my wedding dress.

I look around here and I think to myself,

this all used to be in someone's house.

It is people's history.

Do you ever think to yourself,

50 years' time, who'll be clearing out my house?

I don't want them to clear my house out!

The kids are always fighting over what they're going to get, anyway.

So I don't think there'll be much left for anybody else to take!

CAR HORN

It can be quite busy at times. It can be quite slow at times.

But with this business, you're not guaranteed an income.

So it's the rough and smooth together.

We find there's a story in every job.

No matter how small, people make what I do worthwhile.

We're heading over to Karin's house.

She's needing a fair bit of stuff moved.

And we've just bartered a wee deal to pick up a large wardrobe.

You might want to take the doors off to move her downstairs,

because she's really heavy.

She's just curious.

-I love it, it holds everything.

-Yeah?

But there was issues, apparently, with the previous owners of this house,

and Mum worries about the strength of this floor.

And since Dad died and I moved...

I live up here, she lives down there.

And she's slightly frightened it's going to

land on her in the middle of the night!

I came back into here about six years ago, when Dad died.

Dad never thought he'd really get to enjoy his retirement.

And he got to just before his 77th birthday.

-And he had a pacemaker...

-That was, of course,

the fact that he'd been clinically dead about four times before then.

That's right, a pacemaker.

He collapsed on a flight going out to play golf on the way to Spain.

They dropped the plane down a bit, and the air hostess was very

good with him, he eventually came around again, as he'd done before.

And when he walked back into the club again, somebody said,

"Oh, here comes Lazarus!"

SHE LAUGHS

This is actually feng shui.

Cos since there was a mirror facing the door, I covered it.

I didn't want all my chi bouncing straight back out of the room.

The phone rang, and we have this family thing, "Guess where I am?"

The answer is "casualty".

And Dad used to get rushed off occasionally,

and Mum said, "Guess where I am? Casualty."

And then she said, "Actually, not really, I'm still

"standing in the garage, your dad is in the ambulance." And I thought...

Yeah, the ambulance didn't move off, so I knew that that wasn't good.

But, the Sunday, I'd phoned Mum and said,

"Have you ever washed your mohair throw?"

She said, "Oh, yes, I've washed mine."

So I just bunged it in the wash,

-not realising you'd ever so carefully washed it alone.

-I washed it carefully.

And it came out felted.

MOCK SOBBING

And she said, "bring it up, we'll see what we can do."

And Dad came up, and he would do the thing where he would do this.

And he went, "I think it's pucked, love."

THEY LAUGH

And that was the last conversation I had with my dad.

Yeah.

Little bit dusty on top of that one!

-INTERVIEWER:

-Is there another generation?

No. Sadly, there isn't. It stops here.

-That's it.

-For various reasons.

-Two pussycats.

-Yeah, yeah.

But, yes, that's it.

The next generation has fur.

-See you later.

-Yep, will do.

Thanking you. Enjoy your wine.

-Thank you very much.

-OK?

That was wonderful!

-Take care, bye!

-Thanks, bye.

-Bye.

Thank you, bye.

SHE CALLS AND WHISTLES TO DOG

Come on.

Like to get out fishing,

relax a lot and sort of de-stress from all the hard, emotional

things that you would go through, seeing other folk's emotions.

Quentin's a very stern man.

He doesn't take any nonsense at all.

There's a bit of banter from him, he's a great guy.

I just switch off whenever we're out. No phone calls, no nothing.

Just a nice feeling.

I was a chef for 26 years.

Got to head chef, sort of, status.

Then, I was actually taking the daughter to school

and I seen a van in a driveway.

It was a refrigerated Mercedes.

Cos I was wanting to start a wheaten bread business.

I never even haggled with the fella. I got its MOT, got it taxed.

Then a friend said, "Oh, you've got a van,

"any chance you could maybe come out and do a wee clearance for me?"

It just started snowballing from there.

I don't miss the chefing. At all.

Oh, ar-r-r, me hearty!

It's 80 years old, this year.

She was just built for this sort of work, for commercial fishing

and trips in the summertime. That's all she's ever done.

The family's had her since 1947.

And I restored it in the '80s. And it's been running ever since.

This is not going to be her last day, is it?

I think we're going to retire the boat, yeah, I think so.

It'll need to be something really, really good to encourage me

back next year, I think. But I can't see it.

-INTERVIEWER:

-How would you know if you had a fish, Craig?

You'll feel the line going, so you will.

You'll feel a wee bit of tension in the line.

You'll know whenever you've got a fish on.

He's actually better asking me that question.

THEY LAUGH

Gordon, tell me...

Here we go, here we go.

Oh, it's off.

It's off.

HE TUTS Bugger.

I had a big one that got away.

HE LAUGHS A big bit of seaweed.

Caught.

Well done, Gordon.

You've caught supper instead of mackerel.

That's us.

We got the last ever fishing trip on the brothers' boat.

I think it's a bit sad, because it was tradition.

Again, if you haven't got the customers.

It's sad.

It is, isn't it?

Quinton, thank you.

Cheers. Talk to you later.

I suppose everything comes to an end,

but I think what the important thing is

is what we leave behind.

Another great wee find.

This is an old-fashioned iPod. Wind it up, who needs a lithium battery?

A bit squeaky.

ORCHESTRAL DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

Now, does that take you back, or what?

In various house clearances we get 8mm film.

Maybe shoved up in the loft and forgotten about.

It's good to actually see what's on them.

Oh, look, there's a wee...

That's them playing croquet.

It's quite good, actually.

It's really interesting, looking back at them having a good time.

It's just knowing that they're not here any more.

You know, but you can still enjoy their lives by watching

what you're seeing.

They really look as if they're having a good time.

That's our thought behind the whole thing.

If we didn't do this clearance, the stuff would have been disposed of.

It's a shame that things end up getting disposed, like that.

Us having pieces like this, we can share it with other folk.

MUSIC FROM GRAMOPHONE: # ..the show is over. #

People hold on to the, sort of, sentimental attachment to

certain items.

It does, it actually brings me pleasure and thoughts of what was.

Grandmother's stuff.

I've kept quite a few wee ornaments from her.

It reminds me, every time I look at them,

of the good times that we spent in my grandmother's house.

A Spitfire that my grandfather had

made in the Second World War is up on the mantelpiece.

So, every time I look at that, it's always there to remind me.

Well, I don't want to be remembered as somebody

that just collects furniture.

I'd just like to be remembered as somebody that collects

history and memories,

that goes along with what we do.

SONG: Tonight Will Be Fine by Leonard Cohen

# Sometimes I find I get to thinking of the past

# We swore to each other then our love would surely last

# You kept right on loving

# I went on a fast

# Now I am too thin and your love is too vast

# But I know from your eyes and I know from your smile... #