Swishing!

We all have too much stuff. If you’ve ever moved house, you know what I mean. Once a year we all should go through the experiment of putting all our stuff in cardboard boxes and carry it down and up a few flights of stairs. I doubt we would keep half of what we do now!

Some of this stuff is completely useless (e.g., since 2009 I have had a Hello Kitty bubble blowing pipe in one of my drawers and cannot for the life of me say why I keep it), but other stuff you have paid good money for and are reluctant to throw away. You look at that ill-fitting sweater and think: ‘There’s nothing wrong with this sweater. I bet many people would be glad to have it. Just not me…’

Maybe this is how the concept of ‘swishing’ came about, which Wikipedia describes as follows:

• Swishing refers to swapping an item or items of clothing or shoes or an accessory with friends or acquaintances. Parties must willingly give an item to participate in the transaction, once they have given an item they are free to choose something of interest from what others have offered. Value does not come into the equation, swappers do not necessarily get an item of equal value and are free to choose anything that the other person if offering (without having to pay).

I got to know about the phenomenon from a funny description of an evening of swishing organised by my friends E. and B., who told the tale of the occasion in one of their blog posts on Schoenen en andere kwesties. ‘Fifteen women, as many bottles of sparkling wine, and a huge pile of clothes’, to quote the post… Oh how I would have loved to be a fly on that wall! The adrenaline! The excitement! The ecstasy! Indeed, I must confess that I feel in fact a bit jealous of this women-only, but obviously thrilling entertainment…

Yet, I think you won’t quarrel when I say that neither I nor the other Fred are very much inclined to spend the evening trying on someone else’s shoes or jeans. We need something else, something slightly more ‘Fred-ish’, so to speak. That is: a bit nerdy, but with a twist. So we came up with this.

We are proud to announce the FRED AND FRED’S BOOK SWISHING!

For sure, it needn’t be clothes or shoes, books will do just fine for swishing. So here’s the concept. On Friday 19 August Fred and Fred will host a very swishy party, where our readers are invited to come along with their swishable books. Please keep in mind, though, that no one will likely be interested in outdated yellow pages, in books that have been partly eaten by your dog, or in your school copy of the Children’s Bible. To stay in religious context: ‘Do not swish unto another what you would not have him swish unto you!’. What I am thinking of is that novel you excitedly bought in a cute bookshop, only to discover a forgotten copy of it on your top shelf. Or that historical novel your aunt bought you for Christmas, while you absolutely detest that genre. Or that book you have started reading five times, but somehow never managed to finish.

You get the idea…

The exact rules of the swishing and the exact proceeding of the evening will be decided on at a later point in time. Perhaps you could entertain us with some stories about the acquiring of certain books (How did you get that copy of “Dagboek van een herdershond”?). Or perhaps we could read a passage from the swishees (How about a small extract on doing the Heimlich Maneuver on yourself from “The SAS Survival Handbook”?). But rest assured, we won’t let the evening turn stuffy or aloof. There will be plenty of booze (incidentally one of the Freds celebrates a birthday sometime in August) and if it all ends in a drunken second-hand book market, that’s just fine with us!

So please reply through the comment box or at fredcumfred@gmail.com, if you’re interested and we’ll get back to you personally with the details of the event!

PS: In case you didn’t notice, Fred and Fred are back from their summer break! So keep your eyes and browsers peeled for new posts which will be appearing regularly on weekdays!