My days at the Oxfam bookshop in Petersfield are currently over. 

Here is my long, and rather self-indulgent, elegy to those days so do feel free to get on with other important things in your day. 

But if you stay with me on this, next time you go into a charity shop, a bookshop or indeed any local – and please shop local – shop, have a thought about the work and thinking that goes into making it happen.

People are it.

You might think that people who volunteer in a charity shop are all ageing women who have led sheltered, domestic, rather boring lives and –  of course – you would be wrong. For a start, not all our volunteers are women – but that is just the start……

I have worked alongside someone who has sheltered children during the Biafran War.

Someone who has survived, and dealt with, two brain tumours and gone on to spend a lot of time out and about and at the theatre, been a stalwart of Oxfam, and who gently manages all of us who are in her orbit.

Someone who spends her other time dealing with disadvantaged kids and refugees as well as her children and grandchildren and will call to say she is a bit late because she is juggling all those things.

The book sorter who races through sorting donations as quick as he (apparently) cycles, the other book sorter who  deals with ageing and indeed dying parents and a business selling bee homes, and has chats with the DVD volunteer, who by the way is a film-maker.

A volunteer who made, among many other creative stuff, a street of snowy houses as a backdrop for the table in winter and has more creative ideas of how to make the table look good than you can shake a stick at.

The expert in old books who taught me all I know about every old book – binding marks, pagination, half-calf, the importance of maps at the back, the delight of period adverts …. and who always got a cup of tea, and sometimes a chocolate biscuit.

People with illness, disability, difficulties of all sorts going on in their lives.

People who have moved on from death or divorce, dealt with cancer whilst still coming into the shop, and people who are willing to be (sometimes) bossed into doing extra stuff.

An artist, a full time environmental worker who gives up her Saturdays, two vinyl addicts, a classical music expert, an immigrant over here to be near grandchildren, an engineer, a brilliant ex-teacher who taught me so much in my early days and who makes the shop a lot of money by putting clothes online – yes even a bookshop takes clothes and makes money out of them for Oxfam, the woman who has children in school and had a bored brain and wanted to give something back, a friend roped in to come and help, and the volunteer who (very surprisingly) introduced me to the books of Game of Thrones. 

I hope I have covered everyone but a sure I have missed someone(s).

Volunteers do everything from being at the till and dealing with difficult regulars, taking the towels home to wash, tackling a huge pile of donated books, pricing, shelving, re-arranging the books front-facing, re-stocking the shelves, moving stock to create space for new goods, checking off barcoded goods, looking up the value of a donated dress, measuring the inside leg of a pair of donated trousers, putting on the gift aid stickers (which bring in an extra 25% of the value of a sale), making sure the paperback fiction is in proper alphabetical order, spending an evening searching for the value of a donated book from the 18th century, putting out a display of special classical music and much more.

And that was all before Covid, So, now their brilliant contributions, thoughts ideas of this might work should all be brought together to make the shop work. 

And not for money, just for appreciation, a thank you, and of course for a very good cause.