tailor of gloucester

Tailor of Gloucester – again

/ aspinalllucy / 1 Comment

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.

A Winter’s Tailor

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In the Oxfam bookshop Petersfield, there are a few of us who take Christmas very seriously from August onwards.

Yes it is depressing to see Christmas cards for sale from then – and yes indeed they are – but as for the display planning, August is not too early at all.

After all, we have a tiny budget, actually no budget.

We have to reply on what appears in the shop and with amazing frequency that happens.

We have a window displays to plan, and planning we do.

Last year we did a Cluedo window so there was a desk with a decanter and knocked over glass, and old fashioned telephone, a bookcase ( of course, we are a bookshop).

There was a row of pegs with a scarlet cloak, a cook’s apron, some Coleman’s mustard, some peacock feathers, there was a fake dagger, gun, piece of lead piping.

You get the idea – or at least you do if you know the traditional Cluedo. 

This year the theme is The Old Curiosity Shop.

So, we have been looking out for appropriate baubles, stuff, things, knickknacks etc. 

We are working on how to make the plastic display shelves look like Victorian wooden ones.

How to hang a battered red velvet curtain.

And on the fairly firm basis we are not expecting a Victorian till to be donated, my window colleague said she thought an old ledger would work.

Now, I wasn’t expecting that we would get one of those either – in amongst battered Jilly Coopers and John Grishams, ledgers don’t appear.

But hey ho, look what was donated.

Whilst of course leaving room to display books after all bookselling is what we are there for.

This is the domain of my colleague/friend and I am around to help and tootle through our cupboards for stuff.

More my domain is the display table which is a rather nicely battered square one dating back 100 years I would say.

This year, I want to have a display on it based on the Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester.

So, if you don’t know the story, the gist of it is that the tailor is commissioned by the Mayor of Gloucester to make his outfit, including a waistcoat, for his Christmas Day wedding.

The tailor has a cat who is mean to the house mice, but they hide under cups, and bowls and Simpkin can’t find them.

Simpkin is sent out to buy some twist ( thread) so the tailor can sew all the button holes but he hides it in a teapot.

The tailor gets sick and whilst he is in bed, the mice got to his workroom and sew, and sew, and they finish everything.

Except one buttonhole and they pin a note to it saying ‘no more twist.’

Actually, it is a short book, you should go read it because it is a rather charming Christmas story.

So, our manager’s mother is knitting small mice to hide in cups, I have collected some old thimbles and cotton reels from other charity shops.

We have a shop cat ( fake obviously) who will take on the role of Simpkin.

The story will be printed out and run around the four sides of the table.

And a kind and excellent needlewoman I know has offered to make a child’s size waistcoat because we don’t have the room for a big one.

All a bit twee? Maybe, but don’t tell me that because I have been invested in this since August.