I answered the phone quickly but casually, thinking it might be the girl. Nope, market survey. Whitegoods. I decided to do it purely cos I don't own any whitegoods that were made in the last three decades, and I love skewing the statistics.
A long list of 'nopes' followed, until the lovely young phone queen got up to the fridge section. The brand was 'Malley', which didn't appear on any of his lists. He asked how old it was, and I had to say that I didn't know, but I assumed it was the 60s, as it was kinda curvy.
He squealed, 'Oooh, retro!'.
I managed not to squeal back, 'Nooo, just old!'.
When did 'old' become 'retro'? It's happened to me with my mobile phone, too, which must be three or four years old. I didn't seek it out and pay lots of money somewhere in Chapel St or Brunswick St for it, I've just had it for a while. Fortunately, my car is too obviously crap for it to be 'retro' too. It's like when grunge was appropriated by Sportsgirl - it always seemed a mockery of the fact that you could pay good money to look really poor. And it means that op shops become more and more expensive (and the Smith St Salvos got eftpos in to cope with the slumming yuppies), and in turn, I had to scour places like Target and seconds shops to buy stuff I could've picked up for a few dollars before.