Guess how many shops in Church Street sell secondhand stuff. 

No, more than that: it’s eight. And that’s not even including the odd pavement stall that springs up at the weekend. Why, in a neighbourhood of well-heeled shoppers, is there such a roaring trade in all things that have been had before?

I’m sure it’s to do with our eternal quest to be unique. To not buy what’s sold in Ikea and H&M. It’s certainly the search for authenticity that sees regulars scouring the vintage clothing shops for ‘originals’. For fashion monstrosities, like the linedancing shirts that men are apparently asking for in Ribbons & Taylor at the moment, do have more street cred if they’re from the first time around. And behind each item, there’s a story – ‘Aha, but guess where I got it?’

That doesn’t always impress, I’ve learnt, mind. The cutlery I thought was a great bargain saw my flatmates turn their nose up in disgust. The keen restaurant goers said they knew it wasn’t rational, but they didn’t like to think in whose mouths the forks had been…
While the musty smell of clothes that greets you at the door of charity shops is none too encouraging, it is in fact the dull frumpiness of these places that makes them all the more exciting to shop in. It’s like panning for gold. When that skirt in the Relief Fund for Romania actually fits – and you don’t mind the pattern either – it feels like a match made in heaven.

That’s why I’m not so fired up when I step into the 100% retro stores, like Pictures & Light. Someone’s already had the fun, hunting out the 60s treasures. I prefer the ramshackle garage in Marton Road, where they even had a fully working PC glowing like a sapphire among the piles of chairs and coffee tables last week.

The allure of our secondhand bookshops, on the other hand, is that they’re even less of a lottery than the new stores, where you end up grabbing a couple of flyby-night bestsellers. Instead, you find the pure, digested reading of the neighbourhood’s intelligentsia on the bookshelves of Church Street. Course, it’s not so handy if you’re actually looking for something in particular, or the author’s name has slipped your mind. ‘I s’pose you don’t have a computer to look it up?’ I asked the man in Ocean Books the other day. ‘No, just a faulty memory’, he laughed. But he could direct me to the most expensive item in the shop when I enquired, no problem. Right on the top shelf behind the counter; Sex, by Madonna, retailing at £85. 

Yes, although I tell myself that I’m ‘not spending, but saving’ when I have a quick look at the latest arrivals, secondhand stuff in Stokey isn’t all dirt cheap. A double ‘baby jogger’ (those things for hectic, super fit mums – with twins to boot) was going for £95 the other week at the street stall next to Leila. But it did make me smile to see the guys – who’ve set up shop thanks to a friend of a friend who owns a shop nearby-type-thing – selling the same essentials as ubercool baby heaven Born just down the road.

For behind that façade of quirky distinctiveness, we are all looking for the same things – the same prams, the same music (seriously, the number of secondhand David Gray CDs I’ve spotted on my trawls…). That’s part of the attraction of junk hunting in Stoke Newington. Our secondhand shops are not bastions of individuality, but rather one big mutual hand-medown of well-thumbed pages, crackly records and lived-in jeans. I reckon as long as you can say you didn’t buy it new, you can still feel different.