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.