Month: February 2025

An Afternoon Shooting Books

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As I have said many times before, working in the Oxfam shop is a mixed bag, indeed box.

Sometimes you have boxes and indeed bags of books which are just not saleable. They have been stored in a garage for years, they are what is politely called well-read and in fact means they have been trashed – by children.

They are a collection of books about royal weddings – long divorced. They are dated cookery books with no charm, they are guide books printed in the 1990s and whilst the monuments may not have changed, all the restaurants, hotels, bus timetables will have.

But of course, and it is the thing that keeps us book sorters happy, are the treat and novelties.

We don’t have time or indeed the patience to go through every book but there is usually a general check that it is not written in, scrawled in, has the first few pages missing ( all rather depressingly regular).

But after that we are busy processing the next batch.

So, a colleague was on the till the other day when a customer approached and said he had been looking through the book he fancied buying and found a £50 not sandwich between two pages. 

He handed it over to the rather surprised volunteer, bought the book and went home.

We have no idea who it was who donated the book so all I can say is that I hope they would have been pleased we got an extra £50 for their donation.

And then I spent an afternoon in the company of many, many books on hunting, shooting and indeed one or two on trapping and snaring.

This came about because someone I know locally has an auction company and is an antiques collector.

And he has been really helpful with old coins we have had for example, and lately he has agreed to sell a Victoria century carte de visit holder. (In case you were unaware, in those days, people dropped a card in with your manservant to say you had called and would be delighted to invite you for a cup of tea, game of cards, etc etc.)

Whilst we were talking he said he was having a clear out of books. Now for him, a clear out of books is not a couple of Waitrose bags but a good few very large packing boxes.

I took one  for now – bearing in mind we don’t have a lot of space and certainly not that much.

It turns out this was part of a library he had bought from someone and it was his collection of all things hunting and shooting.

I have to say it was a very strange time, spending a whole afternoon on my own upstairs in the shop valuing all these books about killing wildlife.

As some of them were old, and some valuable, I had to look through them all.

To the sensibilities of most people in this day and age, the thing that is striking is the fascination with nature along side the fascination with how to kill it on a one to one basis.

Some of these books were illustrated with great engravings and images.

But then you read what Ian Niall has to say about the hare:

Lovely lyrical description of the countryside and then explains you need to be a really cunning poacher to make sure you trap its legs so it can’t get free. How does that fit?

And you get this:

Followed by this:

Yes it is the same delightful bird and coveted shooting trophy.

Luckily and by sheer coincidence, as I was taking a break from killing, I found this is a nearby box of donations.

Yes it is a bit twee, but have to say it made me feel a lot better.

When I nipped downstairs to take the till volunteer a cup of tea, I bumped into a regular customer who I know because he drew up our wills.

‘Have you got anything on fishing?’ he asked.

‘Ahh, I thought, hunting shooting, and now fishing.’

As it happens I found him a rare-ish book on making fishing rods out of bamboo. He is apparently delighted.

Nearly Jamaica Inn

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A while ago we went back to Hawes ( in a lovely part of North Yorkshire in case you didn’t know).

Years ago, we had ended up staying there in a last minute booking in a pub which took dogs. 

When we came downstairs ( after that delicious moment when you take your boots off after a good day’s walking) we found the bar was fully carpeted in dogs.

Bigs ones, little ones, working ones, mutts, proper sheepdogs, waggy tails, bored resignation faces and all with waitresses adeptly stepping over them with full plates in their hands.

The Best Beloved loved it, so our recent trip was a bit of a pilgrimage – though we actually stayed in a rented cottage nearby.

The pub has moved on since we were there – something the BB always disproves of as everywhere should stay as he fondly remembers it.

There was real carpet, and fewer dogs. Ah well.

Anyway, we decided to play by ear where we should stay heading back down south, after all last minute Hawes (those many years) ago had worked out fine……

So, I booked a room for the following night in South Yorkshire hotel. 

Should have read the reviews, taken just a bit more time in sussing it out and where is was, taking good note that it didn’t serve food, mention of karaoke, the website saying it had been recently re-furbished in 2015…..

But we had a rendezvous with a pilgrimage pint, so I was not as assiduous as I should have been – not by a long chalk.

We arrived and parked on the run down road in the run down town, and heard the music from quite a long way away.

I went in to find it very, very busy given that it was early evening on a Sunday. No one seem riveted to the four large sky screens in the bar which was strange as trying to have a conversation over the music was impossible.

Suffice it to say in order to hear what I was saying to her ( ‘sorry we are not staying’), the nice young woman behind the bar had to usher me down a corridor into the function room…..

But then we got lucky.

Sitting in the car madly Googling dog friendly pubs with rooms nearby with immediate availability, the BB found the Dog and Partridge in Flouch ( no, I had never heard of Flouch either which is probably not surprising as it seems to be in the middle of nowhere but with the A628 to Manchester running directly outside.)

Inside, it was wood floors, log fires, a herd of young farmers, a walking group, nice good, comfortable room (the last one they had – phew) and effective double glazing so the A628 was like a film backdrop.

And out the back is moorland as far as the eye can see. 

Imagine Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn only in the North and run by thoughtful, kind, efficient, nice people.

We were sitting doing some of the back catalogue of Wordle, when a couple stopped and proffered a semi-drunk bottle of wine. 

They were on a tour of the country as part of a significant wedding anniversary celebration and had had more champagne than meant they could finish the wine.

Oh well, it would have been a shame to waste it. And of course, we got chatting.

In one of those amazing coincidences, he had been brought up in a village three miles from us.

Anyway, the next morning the view was not evident on account of it lashing with rain, wind and cloud so low you could touch it.

I didn’t have to, but would have been willing to beg to be allowed to stay another night instead of facing hours of driving down the ever-unlovely M1 dealing with lorry spray, lane-hogging, windscreen wipers on fast.

So, there we stayed.

Walkers had about an hour’s worth of discussion about whether they should abandon that day’s leg of their walk. They did and left.

The anniversary couple set off for Scarborough with (a vain) hope that the weather would be better over there.

And the three of us had the place to ourselves only being interrupted to ask if we needed more tea.

Bliss.

Tailor of Gloucester – again

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First of all my apologies for bringing you a bit of Christmas long past the time when it should be well and over.

So, if like me, you are very happy to be in the cool zen-like calm of January, then please don’t read on, it is not a short one.

Otherwise:

The Oxfam bookshop.

You will, probably, have read the preview for this. The Tailor of Gloucester. If you haven’t, you will catch up – at length.

As you may know, we have to start planning Christmas way back in the late summer – if you live and survive on donations, you have to hope that things come into the shop which you can use to make something special.

And like all retailers, we rely on Christmas to make our money.

So, the window and table display are well thought about.

This last Christmas my colleague did The Old Curiosity Shop in the window and on the table, I did the Tailor of Gloucester.

For those of you who don’t know, it’s one of Beatrix Potter’s stories. It is about the poor tailor who is commissioned to make the mayor’s Christmas wedding outfit. 

He lives with his cat Simpkins, always on the outlook for a mouse-snack in the tailor’s house.

The tailor sends the cat out for milk, bread and some thread to sew the outfit, and whilst he is out the tailor frees the mice who have been trapped by the dastardly cat under the tea cups on his dresser.

But the tailor gets ill and the grateful mice go to his workshop and make the outfit, but are short of a final bit of thread for the last buttonhole – Simpkins had hid it.

They leave a note saying ‘ no more twist’ but a guilty Simpkins gives it to the tailor, so all is well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tailor_of_Gloucester

Nice Christmas story you may think. And indeed it is. But to bring it to our display table took some waving of my hands and asking for help. More of that later.

We have a lot of donations of Beatrix Potter books but they rarely sell except to grandmothers……

So it was easy to collect them. Though I did have every book sorter on high alert for copies of the Tailor Of Gloucester – rarer than you would think.

Oddly enough, we don’t get mice in any shape or form donated. Nor waistcoats. And, although bizarrely for a bookshop, we do get crockery, we didn’t have any between August and December – I had to buy some from another charity shop. 

But when I explained what I needed it for, I got it on loan.

So, now I needed mice and a waistcoat. 

And so I flapped my hands and asked for help. A skill I seem to have perfected over the years.

A very clever local sewer made me a waistcoat small enough to look the right size on the table – lined and perfect, leaving me only to cover the button holes with cherry coloured ‘twist’ and pin a note in ‘tiny mouse writing’ saying ‘no more twist’ to the last buttonhole.

Our manager’s mother knitted some mice but she ran out of time, so there were not enough.

A friend leant me some of her collection of resin mice, another friend bought me some and donated them to the shop, a local shop owner who also had a display of mice, gave me a couple, I bought a few from the local pet shop (cat toys) and finally the sweet shop gave me some sugar mice.

We had enough mice.

It worked – actually better than the image looks, but again hey ho.