Oxfam

Daphne Du Maurier and Brexit

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

“Emma, who lives in Cornwall with her retired grandmother, a famous retired actress, wakes one morning to find that the world has apparently gone mad:

No post, no telephone, no radio, a warship in the bay and American soldiers advancing across the field towards the house.

The time is a few years in the future. England has withdrawn from the Common Market and, on the brink of bankruptcy, has decided that salvation lies in a union – political, military and economic – with the United States.

Theoretically, it is to be an equal partnership; but to some people it soon begins to look like a takeover bid.”

This is on the flyleaf of Rule Britannia, written by Daphne Du Maurier in 1972.

I had never seen this book before – but as you, dear reader, know by now, Oxfam is a Pandora’s box of surprises.

(Yesterday the box opened to reveal an inundation of books – just when Duncan, an Oxfam stalwart if ever there was one, and I thought we had the shop all sorted out – and they were mostly recycling-sack fillers.)

Back to Daphne.  As a (deflated) Bremainer, I am sure that we are living in the phoney war period and the real fall out will come over months and then years.

Yesterday, I was culling the Old and Interesting shelves and although we give them a longer chance than say, gardening, there comes a time when all good things must come to an end, and they have to go.

I picked up a book on the history of the Liberal Party in its early days and was about to throw it onto the reject pile, when I thought again – for the very pragmatic reason that I didn’t have enough alternatives to fill up the shelf.

Now, that book has been there for months but blow me down as they say, half an hour after I had moved it from one shelf to the one lower down, a woman bought it.

I asked her if she was a political historian and she said no but her daughter had done a masters in international politics and was now working in London.

Then she reduced her voice to a whisper and said, ‘ She was so angry about the Brexit vote that she joined the Liberal Party. She would have joined Labour but there isn’t really a Labour Party at the moment.’

(Whilst social and mainstream media is full of stories about vile threats and angry denunciations of Remainers and Brexiteers alike, in Petersfield it seems, we reduce our voices to a whisper when talking politics.)

And that young , likely-to-be-on-the-receiving-end-of-the-bad-news-about-Brexit  womanis right, there isn’t really a Labour Party at the moment and not likely to be one, or for that matter much in the way of a vigorous opposition party, for the foreseeable future.

So, with Trump dangerously likely to end up in the White House and the fallout of our referendum still to come, I am off to read what Daphne Du Maurier prophesied.

Colour Co-ordinated Books

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

I am never quite a woman of the zeitgeist so it took me a while to catch up on the idea that books organised by colour are becoming popular.

(My partner would be shocked and appalled at the thought that there should be anything other than alphabetical and topic organisation in our bookshelves – but I have to say I quite like the idea.)

Anyway, a few weeks ago we had a donation which included some of those old blue Pelican books – much too ropey and brown to put on the shelves and so they are usually sacked forthwith.

The shelves ‘out the back’ where the donations are put, are an interesting place to find all sorts.

On this day there was a broken laptop support ( who on earth would think we could sell that?), several 1500 piece jigsaws ( also not a great seller – anything over 500 pieces and you can forget it as a sales item), a diary from 2011 used for scrap-paper, leftover christmas cards, a book on Arabic cookery from 1982 – and usefully in this case, a ball of string.

I tied up the blue pelicans into bundles of 10 and they sold.

Then, on another day, a man came into the shop and said to the volunteer at the till, ‘I’d like to buy that shelf please.’ ‘What?’, she said. ‘That shelf of books, all of them.’

He was an interior designer….

On a quiet Monday afternoon – we get a good few of those – I re-arranged the ‘old and interesting’ shelves into colours. Blue, green, brown, mixed (for the leftovers) and those with proper leather bindings.

Now, I cannot be sure that this boosted sales but by the following Monday some books which had become old friends over the months (and months) had found new homes.

Sometimes we put all red books in the window, or I do a table display with books which have images of faces on the front, or I do all the front-facing books ( those on stands facing you with their front, rather than their spines) in a colour.

I am no expert on merchandising but it amuses me now and then and whiles away the time.

And last time I checked, our shop was one of the few, if not the only, shop in our area to be in the blue rather than the red against all our Oxfam targets – we like blue.

Kites,Crows,Owls and Oxfam

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

Well if it isn’t lambs it is birds as they might say in Deepest Sussex – if we knew anyone who was actually originated from Deepest Sussex.

We have a pair of kites living round here – no longer as rare as they were – but still a delight to watch soaring and sweeping around the back field.

They are not, in case you are not familiar with kites, small birds. Indeed the dog can look quite anxious and prey-like in certain lights.

But it is interesting to watch the corvids/crows/ravens mob them.

I should be more accurate on what type of corvids they are being a big fan of the book by Mark Cocker called ‘Crow Country.’

Amongst other fascinating stuff about corvids, It tells of the difference between crows and other corvids and explains that saying ‘if your see some ravens they are crows and if you see one crow it is a raven’ – or perhaps it is the other way round …..no, actually crows are sociable.

Anyway, these big kites are circling around looking for prey and out of the woods come the corvids and mob them – swooping around and chasing them off so the ‘poor’ kites heads off for the Downs.

The corvids are half the size of the kites but are quite determined and the kites seem either to be saying, ‘Bloody hell, is it harassment or what?’ or ‘Darling, shall we swoop up to the Downs and circle lazily round there and leave these rather plebeian types to their own thing?’

Whilst on the subject of predators, there is, what I think, is an owl box on one of our trees.

When I say ‘our’, I just mean trees we think of as ours in that they are on our horizon and are the two trees on the top of this blog – of course in fact, they are our landowner’s.

I am sure he knows what he is doing, and maybe the owls like a clear view of the catchment as it were – certainly it is not disguised or protected in any way and, as we say when one of us is washing up, ‘ don’t you think darling, it spoils the look of the tree?’

Remind me to tell you one day of the expensive bird box we put up which had been assiduously ignored by our birds who have then built their nests – insultingly – in the foliage alongside it.

Anyway, the Oxfam bookshop was open on Good Friday only from 10 till 3 so it was short shifts all round -and Joan was on the till in the morning, and I was on in the afternoon.

I had found a lovely book dating from 1941 which was sketches of children and although it was only worth about £3, I thought it was lovely enough to try it at £9.99.

Now Joan and I have a habit of me setting her a book-selling challenge on her shift. A big old bible ( but we had sold those before Easter), a Complete History of Fishing etc etc.

Essentially books I can’t find a place for anywhere else – I leave them on the counter and challenge Joan to sell them.

She looked at the book and although not usually a bibliophile, she was enchanted. That made me up the price to £12.99, and set her the challenge to sell it whilst I was out doing some errands.

In our cabinet – for expensive books (and vinyl as we now call records), was a set of three books called The Birds of Sussex.

(Should there ever be an avid reader of this blog with a good memory, they might recall than I found two of the the three volumes, which of course means they are worth a lot less, and then discovered the third volume under a pile of other stuff.)

Anyway, these books with gorgeous illustrations and I do mean gorgeous, had been in the cabinet for months and months. I was occasionally thinking of culling them and buying them to take home as they are so gorgeous – did I mention before how lovely they were ?

Anyway, (again) I got back from my errands, to find Joan in a high humour.

She had sold the book of children’s sketches – and sold The Birds of Sussex for a princely £100.

Because we were having a short day, I suggested we did not need to cash up once at lunchtime and then again at the end of the day as we usually do, but instead we could carry on through.

‘Oh not on your life,’ said Joan. ‘I am going to get the reading for this shift. You, Lucy, can eat my dust.’

And indeed I did.

I had a nice short shift with good weather and a holiday mood making customers smiley and generous, but no Sussex Birds for me.

A Mission In Spain

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

I do like a mission in life.

I would now like to be able to say that I was off to Lesbos to help care for refugees and support the over-stretched, very over-stretched, Greek people, but I am not. (Not least because I am not sure they need a middle-aged do-gooder who speaks no Greek, has no Arabic, no medical skills etc etc.)

So on the absence of a proper mission in life, I set myself small ones.

When we lived in Paris and the best beloved was at work all day and I had no friends, I used to walk across the city on small missions after small missions.

I might be going to buy a new wooden spoon and new there was a great cook shop by the canal, or I would create a trail based on Jewish shops and synagogues, or I would find yet another circuitous route to Shakespeare & Company, the amazing bookshop on the left bank.

That way, I learned a lot about Paris, and it kept me sane.

The best beloved hates British winters and wants to spend a month in Southern Spain in say February next year.

I don’t mind the winter, and have Oxfam, pilates, upholstery and other Sussex housewife things to keep me amused.

He wants a blast of sun and to write his book.

So, we went for a week to Seville to think about it for next year.

I really like Seville, enjoyed the tapas, nice apartment, Cordoba, sights and scenes and etc etc but I did wonder what my mission would be if I was there for a month.

Learning Spanish is not going to do it – before you, dear reader, suggest that.

He has suggested that, and indeed bought me a Spanish CD course from Lidl, but no, that is not going to do it.

I need something to get me out of bed early and cheerful with a sense of doing something purposeful and I am just not sure what it would be.

Before anyone berates me for having the problems of the rich, I would just like to admit that indeed it is a problem for a rich person but it doesn’t mean that I will be able to spend a month counting my blessings and doing bugger all.

Drought and Uncertainty

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

Usually I am complaining in a rather martyred way about the amount of books I am clearing every shift at Oxfam, making it quite clear that there is a never ending flood of books that only I am holding back from swamping the shop.

Well, dear reader, it is course not just me by a long chalk – and what is more, at this moment, the flood has turned into a drought.

So, out the back of the shop where we pile the sacks for recycling it is usually just this side of chaos – this week was clear, blank, empty – even, hoovered!

I am not sure what to do with myself if truth be told. Usually whilst sorting books I am complaining ( in a rather martyred way) that I could get on with all sorts of other things to make our shop even more successful if only I didn’t have to empty another ten boxes of books.

But, I have sold the latest collection of erotica to the second-hand bookshop – Oxfam frowns on the idea of selling sex in the shops.

I have put the hobbies and crafts into order – now embroidery books are next to knitting, well away from DIY in a retro/pre-feminist move – and all the books you would ever, ever need to learn how to paint or draw are sitting with each other.

Religion has been sorted into world religions ( in groups, starting with Buddhism and moving alphabetically onwards) with all and sundry other stuff about crystals and angels and spaceship visitations attached on the end of the shelf.

(One day someone is going to buy the massive tome on Dreams and Their Interpretations. I think it may have been around in the shop, one way or another, longer than I have.

Occasionally, I find someone has moved it to the Academic section and, although it protests, I insist on moving it back to Esoteric.)

I have re-ordered the Old & Interesting into blocks of colour – all the blue books, the green books etc etc.

And every time you change the shelves – update, juggle, fiddle, change the front-facing books, you always get more interest in them.

There were two books – dating from the 1960s – about hunting in junk shops.

They have been out on the shelves for months and I was just about the cull them – short as we are of books, standards need to be maintained, or at least upheld more or less  and anyway, they didn’t find my colour-coding plan – when a customer fell upon them with delight. At £1 each she had a bargain and another two books were rescued from the recycling fate.

Someone came in looking for an ‘interesting’ golf book for her son. (Now to my mind there are very few interesting golf books – and all of those were written by P G Wodehouse.)

But such is the drought, that we had none – we who are usually knee deep in golf and cricket books – had none.

After a bit of thought, I persuaded her that a much better idea was the lovely (and it was lovely) hip-flask with St Andrew’s etched on it. Luckily, that was £7.99 of hip flask rather than the usual £2.49 of ‘how to improve your swing’ book.

Upstairs, my stock of book collections is also looking thin.

We still have the box on heraldry and chivalry – based on a generous donation of heraldry books supplemented with anything I can find with a knight on the front.

But we need a centrepiece for the window to go with it, and no one I asked had a suit of armour within their reach….

We have a plan to do a window on the birds and the bees ( no, not a way to sneak in sex) using a few of the lovely bee palaces my fellow volunteer sells. (www.beepalace.com)

But we are short on bee books. Bird books, even lovely ones, are two a penny but there is a shortage, not just of bees, but bee books.

We might have to broaden it out to pollinators and include butterfly books, bat books -hummingbird books at a pinch. But birds and pollinators does not have the same ring to it.

Our manager reckons it is uncertainty about the EU referendum which is causing this drought of donations.

I’m sure in the corridors of power, they are talking about the influence of uncertainty in the referendum, but I bet they are not taking the Oxfam bookshop in Petersfield into account.