Track & Typewriters

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For anyone (at all) still with me on this, now for the models railway and typewriter – not a sentence I would have expected to write.

I knew nothing about model railways but an Oxfam instinct made me say yes when someone donating boxes of books said, ‘By the way, do you want some model railway stuff?’

And, I have watched enough (actually more than enough) Antiques Roadshow to know that can be valuable stuff.

It came in four large boxes and an old suitcase, and I went to get my haircut.

‘Don’t suppose you know anyone who knows about model railways?’ I said.

‘Strange you should say that,’ said my hairdresser, ‘ One of my kid’s godfather is a model railway enthusiast.’

So, the lovely model railway enthusiast and ex-real-train-driver came to help and spent an afternoon looking at what we had.

Lots of it is not of much value but will make a lovely display on the table. 

Some of it, we might be able to sell online.

We have track by the plenty – straight and curved; we have signal boxes and signals; we have a suspension bridge; we have old 125 carriages; we have freight wagons; we have christmas trees; we have grass coloured stuff and pink stuff for putting blossom on your model trees….

(And that is more semi colons than I have used in a long time.)

And, I now know considerably more about model railway stuff than I ever thought I would.

I do know quite a bit about typewriters.

When I was a young journalist, shortly after the Boer War, we had never heard of desktop computers.

We had shared or communal typewriters – never quite enough to go round if we were all in newsroom at once.

And indeed, one of the (shared) typewriters was a really old ‘upright’ one which probably explains why I bash the keys of my Mac too hard indeed.

not quite as old as this but a very close cousin

When you were on the day shift you went into the newsroom and grabbed a typewriter and hoped to get a half way decent one.

One of them, I remember, was so well used the ‘e’ had worn out. So, once you had typed your story, you had to go back through it pencilling in all the ‘e’s missing from your deathless prose.

For every story we wrote, we had two sheets of very thin, poor paper and sandwiched inside was a sheet of carbon paper so we had a copy of what we wrote in case the newspaper got sued and needed to prove what we had written.

Some (indeed sometimes, most) of what we wrote ended up on the spike – literally a sharp spike on the news editor’s desk on which he (and it was always a he) impaled stories that were not going to make it into the next day’s paper.

If you wanted to look up some background to a story, you would go to the librarian and ask for the relevant packet.

And it was a cardboard packet of newspaper clippings and sometimes spiked copy which he ( and it always was a he) had thought to save and file under that particular packet heading – it was sometimes (often) a lottery as to what was in any packet and how relevant its contents might be to what you wanted to research.

We would have thanked any god for Google.

So, after the rinse aid and tins of salmon, I was very gratified to find this.

It turns out to be worth £50. ( Thanks to those very same gods for eBay.)

We will put it on the table with books that would (probably) have been written on a typewriter – not a quill, or fountain pen or a laptop.

So, Hemmingway, Enid Blyton, F Scott Fitzgerald, E E Nesbit, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, James Joyce, C S Lewis, Sylvia Plath and any others I can rootle around and find.

The danger of this plan is that the typewriter sells immediately and customers look rather bemused at the random collection of books – but for £50 I am willing to risk that.

Modern Art & Soft Furnishings

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There will indeed be an update on the map and coins as promised but for now, something which happens, if not every day, then often enough to be one of the main reasons I volunteer in the bookshop.

So, you arrive in one morning and find boxes stacked high of donations and you glance at them to see enough damp, dated, battered, unsaleable, books to make your heart sink.

And you come across one which seems to fit that bill. 

But then you open it and it is a book of oddities and delights – and must have some stories to tell but I can’t tell them for you.

Here it is. 

Dated art books are not often very valuable but this one may have interest. 

Let’s start with the bookplate.

Desmond Young was not, having read his obituary, the kind of man you would have thought bought art books.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1966/06/28/82824598.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

Still, he clearly owned this one and his bookplate seems to show a devoted sailor returning to his loving wife after long journeys afar.

Maybe this is his (later) widow, and how he thought of them both.

And then there are the two sheets of receipts which have nothing at all to do with art or the book.

They are about furnishings being imported (see the import stamps) presumably for his house, in Le Beaupre, Sark..

I thought I would have a look at what his house looked like.

I put in the postcode and I searched Google street view but they had nothing. I looked up the address and history and found not much.

Now this was a quick fizz of a search so if you are more interested, here is the postcode: GY10 1SH. 

Meanwhile Desmond Young ( or maybe his wife) was ordering a large comfortable velour sofa, a two metre grey rug, and some 7 metres of legarde ordinaire from Charles Mellon-Charrier ‘upholsterer to her majesty, by special appointment.’ 

This is dated 1924 so we are talking, apparently, Mary of Teck (Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes, wife of George V.)

And we haven’t got to the book yet. 

Just to be a bit technical: it is foxed which means it has brown spots on some pages, despite the spine coming apart, it is tightly bound which means the pages are all holding together, the plates (pictures, and we will be coming to those) are attached one side only, each plate is numbered and there is an index showing XXVI (26) coloured plates and 15 black and white plates.

Bet you never needed to know that much about what has to be written up when you put a book to be sold online.

Each plate has a short description of why it is good and Charles Marriott has some pages to explain his stuff.

Now here will be a some of those plates. 

I have to say, being no expert, I have never heard of half these artists, with my Antiques Roadshow addiction.

But I think they are pretty damned impressive and I am betting that someone will buy the book to take out the plates and frame them and if it doesn’t sell, I will bring it home and ask the BB to do just that. 

Apparently this is called Lip Salve….

‘What?’ I hear someone cry, ‘ how can you rip a book apart?’

Well, here is why.

If it doesn’t sell our option is to send it off to be re-cycled. I would rather rip it apart and make pictures which we can sell and get some money for someone who needs food, water, housing, education.

But of course, of course, I would rather sell it to someone who will treasure it and its history.

But if and when it sells on Oxfam Online, who knows what the buyer will do with it……

Cues, Maps and Fishcakes

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In the greater scheme of things, see also the climate crisis, a week of full-on stuff in an Oxfam shop is small beer. 

But for those of us doing that week, it adds up.

And it is another week of unearthing stuff. It seems we have not (just yet) plumbed the depths of ignored treasures in the shop. 

And fishcakes.

For those (few) who are following this closely, a bit of an update. 

Though it is not absolutely certain, it looks like the cat is not coming back so the mice have a few things up our sleeves – remember the green sofa? it maybe happening – but more of that another time.

So, we have billiard cues, an 18th century large map, some more coins, a book or two, and a vintage typewriter to come.

So, let’s start.

In the corner next to the back door are some poles propped up and among them I spotted something which I thought might be a large and ancient telescope.

Now, dear reader, you might think that I should have looked closely at such a potential treasure but a customer needed serving and I got distracted and anyway it had been there for years and years so wasn’t going anywhere fast.

I mentioned it to the volunteer on the till and then went upstairs to do something, hopefully something important and useful.

A while later, he told me it was a billiard cue and he thought it was Edwardian.

Mmmm, interesting.

Next day, he tells me it is made by Riley so classy stuff and I make a mental note to do some research.

Again, I went upstairs to do something urgent/important/I meant to do last week but ran out of time.

Half an hour later, he buzzed up on the ‘intercom’ to tell me someone had just donated another one.

What? The original cue had been standing there for years and the week we start to look at it, another one comes in….

The other volunteer is now volunteering to take them both to the local snooker club to get some idea of what they are worth. 

I am not sure how we would sell online as how do you send something which is nearly as tall as I am…….

Meanwhile, we have more coins and notes.

There is a rule, at least in our shop, if you put something in the window or on the table you get more of them.

History books, cookery books, jigsaws, military history, paintings etc – and in this case coins and notes.

So, if you are an assiduous reader, you will recall that we have had a money tree in the window and alongside we have had bags of old British coins – farthings, pennies, shillings, florins, half crowns, threepenny bits, silver sixpences.

And they have sold – not least to people who want ‘real’ coins in their Christmas puddings.

Anyway, a large ice-cream box of coins duly arrived.

I went in early to see if I could make up some more bags of coins we could sell then before the table changes theme – and then send the rest off to Guildford Oxfam where they have a numismatist who can value them. 

Though we don’t get the value attributed to our shop.

Yes I know, I know, it is money for Oxfam so who cares which shop it comes from?

Well with a bit of embarrassment at this confession, I do.

So, of course I sent some off to Guildford, but I have kept back the George II and George III coins, the coins with Jewish symbols which look too old to be Israeli, commemorative Victoria coin/medal to celebrate the laying of the first stone of the Birmingham courts building and so on.

I rang our antiquarian expert to ask if he new any coin experts and whilst I was at it, did he want a look at our old map (more of that later) and he said, ‘Well no, but I know a bit about coins, I will come and have a look.’

At this point, I need to tell you he hasn’t been in yet so there is not immediate resolution to this story but I will keep you up-dated.

And likewise with the map and the model railway. But you will get fishcakes.

So the map was found by another volunteer.

I had been clearing out yet another stuffed set of filing trays when she asked me to stop.

OK I thought, she doesn’t feel it is appropriate to clear out the manager’s filing whilst he is away.

But I was wrong.

‘I love clearing out stuff, so can I do it.’

Last week she got round to it and, among the endless stuff to be thrown away, she found a couple of maps and an old guide to London.

One of the maps was a 1907 Post Office issued map of London – but it had come apart into two pieces and is probably worth only about £20 to someone who has a big wall to fill.

The guide is nice but not worth much either.

The other map, however, is as big as our kitchen table, dated 1777, a map of the 25 miles around Windsor, original and a real delight.

Now, and here is another coincidence ( remember the billiard cues?)

I went down onto the shop floor and was talking to the volunteer (the same volunteer who had spotted the cues) and told him about the discovery of the map.

The only customer in the shop was a young man of about 20.

‘I know a bit about maps,’ he said,’ Could I have a look?’

Of course he could.

He said it was not a copy and it was made in a time when turnpike roads were becoming more common and King George III had held a competition to get maps made – and of course, George lived in Windsor.

There was a flurry of map-makers doing their stuff and some were apparently more fast than accurate. 

And indeed, though we have not looked for inaccuracies, it is certainly keen to be nice to the king.

Want to see it?

I will get a better photo when we can lay it out on the floor and get a wide-angled shot from up a ladder, but this will have to do for now.

I am not sure what counts as a remarkable hill…. but clearly the turnpike roads and cross roads were counted as important. 

A similar map is for sale in a posh shop in Curzon Street for £750. Whether ours will be of that value remains to be seen. 

Now to fishcakes.

So, I have finally finished clearing out our stockroom.

It is not big. Think  very small prison cell or reasonably sized pantry.

It has been ‘home’ to a lot of stuff which really needed to be cleared out – a lot.

Getting to the final stretch of clearing out I uncovered a vintage typewriter (but you will have to wait for that story), and a small bin.

In it was some rinse aid, a packet of pegs, some Gaviscon and three tins of pink salmon.

Really?

I presume it was some shopping that someone left behind and the manager put it in the stockroom and then, as with so much other stuff, promptly forgot it and/or ignored it.

I used on for our supper before I took the photo

I bought the cans – still in date I hasten to add.

So, to make fishcakes for you and the neighbours, take a can or two of ‘uncovered’ pink salmon.

Cook and mash ( coarsely) some potatoes with a good ‘dollop’ of butter –  but no milk.

Add them together with some nice capers, finely chopped parsley or coriander if you have that instead, and some dill if you have it – dill is really good.

Make into cakes with your hands – not too big – and put in the fridge for a while/overnight…

Lightly beat and egg ( or two if you are doing lots.)

On a plate put some plain flour or panko breadcrumbs.

Dip each fishcake in egg and then coat with four or breadcrumbs.

Fry in oil on moderate heat and serve with salad and the story of the day to your Best Beloved – and even he was a bit surprised to find Oxfam had provided supper.

Money Grows On Trees

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If you have enough information in your life about the inside workings of the Oxfam bookshop, now is the time to look away. 

This is all about money.

So, I may have mentioned before that our manager (aka as the cat) is away (aka off on long-term sick leave) and we (aka the mice) have been playing – actually not just playing but putting on a full theatre spectacle.

As I also mentioned before, we have been clearing out the boxes of ‘stuff’ which had been shoved under chairs or pricing benches/left/ignored etc.

And the latest (of many) were the two large plastic storage containers labelled  ‘foreign coins’.

They had been there for years and donations were added, and added, and added and nothing was done with them.

Well, us mice had better ideas.

A lovely mouse who had left the shop, came back to sort them out. This was someone who was a former assistant postmistress – so who better to put in charge.

She sorted. Found the UK money and put it through the till. She sorted the the foreign coins into bags to be sent off to Guildford where ( hopefully/presumably) they have a an expert.

She found farthings, pennies, a couple of florins, a few threepenny bits ( pronounced if you are young, or not from here, threpunny – just in case  you needed to know) and much more.

There were also foreign banknotes and I asked that she put them to one side on the basis that they were probably worth less than 2/6d (that is 2 shillings and 6 old pence – which of course if you are old, and British, you will know is a saying which means not much.)

But worthless but attractive notes could be made into a table display of some sort, I thought.

So she and I were looking through bags of farthings (which was 1/4d which means I/4 of an old penny and the name comes from Old English word fēorðing) and pennies which are much larger than current pennies and, and and…

And, I was also looking at the notes she had put aside and they were really interesting.

And here is Fernando Antonio Pessoa who it turns out was a poet, writer, literary critic, translator publisher,  philosopher and one of the most significant Portuguese figures of the 20th century.

When I first saw him, he looked like a unamused  Poirot to me – shows what I know.

Here is a lovely Seychelles note – just so pretty.

There were a lot to look through and I am no, no expert on how to value them but I have been learning a little bit.

Apparently what you want are uncirculated notes as in, in pristine condition. Mmm we don’t have any of those.

I am sure there are notes which even if previously circulated, are still worth a fortune but I am not sure we do.

And another thing, like books, prices you find from America, are not trustworthy, they always try and charge too much.

So, back to the story.

I was musing on how to display these notes and leafing through them whilst my ex-postmistress was painstakingly and cheerfully sorting through the coins and other stuff, when a passing volunteer stopped.

He said, I have one of those metal tree things and I clip notes and stuff that are mementos of my travels and some of them are notes.

I said, we could do with something like that.

And he said, I can make that.

We had a defunct stool ( the cat had said that despite the fact that it was missing a strut and dangerous to sit on, we could not thrown it away because it was Oxfam property. That was about three years ago and it had been sitting there – excuse the pun – and whilst he was away, it was going to the bin) and our volunteer book it up and took the seat as a base.

He also took one of our many donated/left walking sticks, and I got him some wire coat hangers from the local dry cleaners.

And hour or two later he re-appeared with a money tree.

He had drilled holes in the walking stick, bought some pegs, unwound the coat hangers and made us this.

So, I have put aside the notes which I think might have some value and they will go off to Guildford but in the meantime we will display a money tree with the ‘valueless’ notes .

Rarely does it happen that money grows on trees.

But on a good day, us mice are on a roll.

Rabbit Drama

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This will be my last menagerie update as tomorrow we head to Palma for a couple of days of culture and (hopefully) clear PCR tests, before heading back to Deepest Sussex.

There is not much to report on the hens and cock – they burble and he crows though his timing is a bit off now and then. 

When he has missed the early morning or post-siesta call, he rather embarrassedly makes up for it with not one or two crows, but a ten minute repetition.

But all is drama on the rabbit front.

She was in our room when the maid came the other day so I mentioned we had a rabbit under the sofa, and what was she called?

Well, she is called Coco, she said and I thought that was that. I assumed Coco was a regular in the room(s) and was treated with indulgence on that front.

But that night at dinner, Andreas, the hotel owner, mentioned Coco and said she would have to be taken ‘to another farm near here.’

What? Rabbit transportation, early morning rabbit catchers patrolling the grounds – and all because we had inadvertently snitched on her.

We pleaded her cause and said she was no trouble, didn’t cause mess or a fuss, we hadn’t fed her etc etc.

‘But the next guests might not be pleased to see a rabbit in their room,’ he said.

Andreas was polite but firm on the issue. And to be fair as he and his wife are running a hotel which is fully booked next week and she is having twins delivered tomorrow, you can see that they have a lot on their plate.

The Best Beloved spent the evening planning a petition and a social media campaign but of course that came to naught in the light of a day with a bit of swimming planned, and lunch, and a siesta and all sorts.

So for the last couple of days we have woken with trepidation – will Coco be here or has she been bundled to a ‘farm’?

Andreas had assured us this was not a euphemism and there would be no braised rabbit on the menu, but we were anxious rabbit-befrienders.

So, far, all is well and Coco has been there at the door shortly after the cock has crowed and spent her time in and out, under this and that and not looking worried.

But once our backs are turned tomorrow, who knows?

Menagerie News

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In our Mallorcan ex-orange-farm oasis, there is little of drama or wild adventures or day-long mountain hikes, but there are menagerie reports.

So, last time I mentioned the chickens who burble about. There are three of them, with the black one clearly bottom of the pecking order. 

She chases after the other two burbling fast and high, ‘ Wait for me, wait for me, please wait for me….’

We feel sorry for her as the other two clearly treat her with whatever disdain hens can muster, and these two it seems have channelled disdain from a master – they must have seen how Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks of people who can’t afford nannies.

The Best beloved saved a crust of tuna empanada for her to give her a much need treat and boost to her self-confidence, but it was rapidly confiscated…

The cockerel has taken it upon himself to come round to our’s and remind (particularly the BB) there is time to rise in the morning – about 7am – and a point after which siestas should come to an end – apparently that is 3.45 – how very Spanish.

And the rabbit, who had kept its distance, had a change of plan – and it appears, has developed a new, very firm plan.

Being under our sofa or bed is a cool place to be in the heat of the day and that will do fine thank you, is the long and the short of it,

When I got back from the market this morning and Nick was poolside, I was rather surprised to find shortly after putting my basket of provisions down the rabbit was taking a professional interest in its contents.

When I tried to shoo it out, it rather determinedly I thought, turned tail and went under the sofa.

As I wanted to go to the pool and not shut it in our rooms, I tried to get it out. It came out and went under the bed, out from there into the bathroom, out from there under the sofa…..

I tired a trail of cucumber but the rabbit clearly has the same views on cucumber as the BB and Roald Dahl, so the trail went cold.

Whilst I was getting changed, it made the mistake of deciding a breath of air on the terrace might be in order and I shut the door behind it. 

Some time later, as they say, when I got back to prepare our picnic on the terrace the rabbit was waiting.

Getting lunch provisions out of the room and onto the terrace was a woman and rabbit game of me having to bring out one item at a time so I could shut the door behind me.

After lunch it seemed to have disappeared so we could leave the door open.

As I write this I was wondering whether the rabbit had taken itself off to another more promising human location when out of the corner of my eye, I saw it emerge from our room – no doubt being reminded by the cockerel that siesta time was up.

Burbling

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For the second year running we have (hopefully) slipped between Covid clutches to make it abroad.

(I would quite understand if that sentence was enough to make you want to stop reading instantly and indeed there is nothing much to this piece, so feel free.)

Last year it was a last minute trip to Florence and Tuscany after lying in bed one night and hearing on the radio that Forence was ‘deserted’.

It was marvellous but when we arrived at our agri-tourism place in gorgeous sunshine, we listened to the other guests saying how much they were looking forward to a break in the sweltering weather – due the next day. It did.

And, no spoiler alert necessary given our track record, the lovely taxi driver who took us from the airport to our exceptionally lovely hotel, said,’ Well it has been very, very hot and there is a drought – but thankfully the weather changes tomorrow.’

And there is rain and thunder popping up in the forecast all over the show.

Now though it is cloudy and sunny, with a nice breeze and no rain (as yet) and warm enough to be sitting on ‘our’ terrace in a t shirt and shorts ‘talking’ to you.

We are staying in a converted orange farm. (A lot of Majorca has been given over to tourism as you might have expected.) 

We have one of the converted outbuildings which gives us a bedroom, sitting room, bathroom, terrace and our ‘own’ bit of the extensive grounds.

I hear your exasperated sigh at this litany of privilege and luck and the feeling of how unnecessary it is to gloat – and I know.

But with all that, we have more delight. We have chickens and they along with the long-eared rabbit have free rein.

Whilst we have only seen the rabbit on the main terrace (during dinner and breakfast), the chickens and cockerel have been over to make their introductions. 

The hens have a quiet, rather high pitched burble and they burble very pleasantly, pottering around and mentioning they are just a tiny bit peckish (sorry) and the cock decides pragmatically that a ear-splitting cock-a-doodle-do right this minute might be a little tactless.

They get some crumbs from our terrace-picnic and then they wander off, wander back in case another picnic crumb feast is available, and repeat.

Not sure they will bother in the rain……

Oxfam Needs a Green Sofa

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I have an Oxfam plan  – but it may well not work out in practice so I am putting it out to you to imagine – because there will be only one photo. 

(Of course if it works, there will be lots more photos in another blog, or several….)

Assiduous reader, if you are still with me, you may well know that we have a window and table display to sort out.

The window lasts for two weeks but the table needs changing every week – you need books and extra supplies to keep them both filled when pesky customers start buying your display.

But this idea needs only one, or two, or a few books.

So, you walk into the shop and see a slightly battered old green Edwardian sofa.

It would be cleaner than it is now – but still not a pristine sofa.

Now, every week you would see a tableau.

Someone has just got up to make a cup of tea, go to the loo, answer the door, or whatever.

Their ‘life’ is left behind on the the sofa with room for a customer(s) to sit down if they need to.

( Our still-away cat has always refused to have sitting opportunities in the shop – one of the reasons why this might not work  –  but we have a demographic which appreciates the chance to rest while looking at books.)

You need to know that all the books mentioned are open and laid down – the sofa sitter has just put them down when called away.

So, back to your view of the sofa. These area few of the tableaus you might see.

You see some knitting, a cardigan and a pile of 1950s magazines.

There is a dog lead, a winter jacket, a bag of dog treats and a book on dog training.

Some wrapped Christmas presents, some sellotape, some Christmas cards and ’Twas The Night Before Christmas book or Its A Wonderful Life DVD.

And while I am on the festive theme, a dinner jacket and women’s sparkly bolero thrown over the back of the sofa, with her shoes discarded too. You could have a book on hangover cures…

A basket of clothes needing ironing, an iron (we still have four for those of you who have been reading for a while) and a copy of 50 Shades of Grey or The Handmaid’s Tale or The Female Eunuch.

A pair of binoculars, muddy boots on a newspaper sheet, a camera, a notebook and a book on bird-watching.

An Oxfam throw, a mug, packet of lemsip, a hot water bottle and a copy of Cold Comfort Farm.

Another Oxfam throw and some chocolate. DVDs such as when Harry Met Sally, Brief Encounter, or other ‘love’ films, and a copy of Graeme Green’s The End of the Affair.

A pile of old leather-bound books, a pair of slippers and a pipe.

A waistcoat and posh walking stick, maybe a hat, and a copy of a P G Wodehouse.

Laptop, notebook and phone and a novel – should have been working from home but got a bit distracted….

Cookery book, pinafore, shopping list, table plan, some napkins, and a note saying, ‘ You can’t get Yotam Ottolenghi ingredients in Petersfield.’

I think that is enough for now, but I have a longer list. Of course, I do.

We shall see if this ever works but I really hope it does.

Unearthed Treasures

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All gold mines must run out in the end, but we have still got some nuggets found in the dusty nooks and corners of the Oxfam shop’s upstairs rooms.

I could go on about how much this massive clear out is affecting us volunteers – who would have previously heard the sound of hoovering on a Wednesday afternoon? Who would have thought people would been keen to clean down the benches on a Friday afternoon or taken some mugs home to go through the dishwasher – and indeed who would have expected someone to say they were going to source a cafetière to make coffee a more palatable option……?

We mice are on a roll.

Now, to the uninitiated the back rooms of the shop would still look a chaotic mess, but to those of us who have been initiated it looks organised, tidy, under control, managed, purposeful  – and hoovered.

But enough of that, this is about more unearthed treasures.

We have amongst our number, a philatelist and when I unearthed a box of stamps and stamp albums, he was on my speed dial.

He took them home and I heard nothing more about it – though I did find a returned bag of worthless stamps which are now with out decoupage artist. I mentioned her before in case you need to back-track a couple of blogs.

Anyway, today he came in for a shift on the till. I was a bit (just a bit) cock-a-hoop because we have taken £600 on Tuesday and Wednesday (combined, let’s not get carried away) so it means we are again well on (my) target to get more than £1,000 for the week. 

But the takings for this morning were only £86, and I was a bit downbeat. 

‘I have got the money I have raised from selling those other stamps and it will go in the till this afternoon,’ he said.

I decided to wait until tomorrow to see the final total for today, so told him not to tell me how much.

I am pretty sure he thinks I am an idiot, or at the very least and most polite, suffering from a  bout of bizarre behaviour but I am going to wake up tomorrow with a small buzz of anticipation.

So the unearthed stamps have done their job.

Meanwhile as they say, I also unearthed four boxes of old and dated cameras. This is one of them (now dusted.)

And by unearthed, I mean some were under a bench behind yet another box of padded envelopes ( we could create a whole extensive ward of padded cells if needed), more under another bench behind three boxes of clarinet music….

Anyway, another volunteer does corporate filming and so knows his way around cameras.

He also knows about lighting so has fixed the lamps used for photographing the clothes we put online and has sourced some new special bulbs which had previously been declared as ‘too expensive’ to buy – they are £12 each. 

I have ordered two. Yes, me on no authority except that when we are taking £1400 a week, it makes sense to pay £24 to get the photos looking good. And yes, I am an unrepentant mouse.

So, back to the cameras.

He looked them over and knew what he was talking about.

Most were just those small cameras we all had for holiday snaps and are worthless, but some are lovely delights and some are worth putting on the internet.

The ones going in the shop are more attractive artefacts than anything a photographer would want to use, but when they are this lovely who cares?

I think this is a Kodak Junior?

So, we are doing a window on photography with books and the worthless camera stuff, and a table with the pretty delights we can sell. It is not done yet so if you want photos you will have to settle for these for now.

The cine camera works and has its own leather case and is yours for about £25…..

Meanwhile, under a previously mentioned stack of chairs, I found a sealed cardboard box – either never opened or opened and re-taped up.

Either way, inside was a whole collection of the postcards of first day stamp covers.

They are all pristine and absolutely lovely.

We have them out for sale at 5 for £1 and I think that maybe too cheap but hey ho, they will make money for Oxfam which they certainly were not going to do in a sealed cardboard box, under some chairs, upstairs.

When I was trying to corral all the padded envelopes – and do you know I found some in the electricity meter cupboard the other day – I wanted to put them on the top of some shelving.

We use padded envelopes to send out stuff bought online – but not by the box load, so they needed to be labelled, easily found and stored out of the way. Simples you’d have thought….

On the aforementioned top of the shelving, it turned out there were about 20 Oxfam produced cookery books.

They were published in 2010 so part of our new stock for that year, and maybe 2011. And probably not since.

So they could have been up there for a decade…..

But they were fine – if a little dusty – and though their barcode didn’t register on the till, we did not let that deter us.

I put them out on a bench and left a note to offer them to volunteers – a small thank you for all they have been doing – include hoovering.

When everyone who wanted one had taken one, we priced the rest and put them out for sale. They have sold.

Putting The Pieces Together

/ aspinalllucy / Leave a comment

This is a blog I wrote in November 2019 and apparently forgot to post.If you are interested in books, it will keep you going until more news of what is happening at the moment. It is not a bad read – though I say it myself and might well be wrong….

I have before complained about someone buying the very artefact I have built an Oxfam display around.

I know I have to sell it, but sometimes I wish that art gallery practice of just putting a red dot on it until we are ready to dismantle the display could operate – perhaps it could but I have never quite had the nerve.

This week artefact ‘stealing’ happened twice on one day.

Yes, really.

The table was, of course, a display of war and poppies. And recently someone donated a picture frame with a photo of a soldier, a notice of his bravery at Basra in 1917 and a very faded ( you would need a magnifying glass and patience to read it) letter presumably relating to what he had done.

I had piled up books and this picture on the table ready to arrange them into a display and gone out to go to get some milk.

Now, it is a rule that for Oxfam bookshop customers, there is nothing on the carefully arranged shelves as interesting as a haphazard, not yet displayed pile of books and stuff.

So, I was not entirely surprised when I came back to find my brilliant and unflappable colleague reporting that someone wanted to buy the ‘picture.’

Upstairs another good colleague was rootling around on Google to try and find mention of this soldier and therefore any idea if he was a little bit famous.

But nothing – no wikipedia, nothing except a mention in the London Gazette.

We did realise that to anyone from his family doing ancestor research, this would be a valuable item but tracking him down and then members of his extended family doing research would take a lot of time – time we don’t have lying around.

And, there is a bird in the hand argument.

So I went downstairs to talk to my colleague who had the customer’s number and my Best Beloved had called in, and was looking at the image.

Between us, we decided it was not a lot of monetary value but we would try say £9.99 and settle for £5.99 if haggled into it.

But my unflappable and brilliant colleague called him up and ignoring the collective ‘wisdom’, told the customer he could have it as the special price of £15. 

Ten minutes later he had called and collected it.

That afternoon, I was discussing the next window display with a good colleague.

Since our special window display person is currently indisposed, the role has fallen to me – this, it turns out was not a role I had to fight off all comers to take on.

Anyway, trying to maintain her high standards is proving a challenge and the current window was a good idea but not a success.

My colleague suggested using a small table with a half done jigsaw on it and lots of more puzzles on the wall along with puzzle books.

That reminded me that I had an old jigsaw on a shelf somewhere, waiting to be looked at, and how nice would that be half done with its wooden box propped up.

This was a puzzle with the counties of England and Wales on one side and the kings and queens of England on the other ( up to Edward VII if you are interested.)

I took to it my afternoon colleague on the till and asked if he would put it together to see if we had all the pieces.

The pieces were all in the shape of the counties so apart from the straight edges, none of the pieces were traditional jigsaw shapes.

I left him to it and then, needing some rubber gloves to clean silver, more on that some other time, I nipped out.

As I was leaving the shop, a couple of customers were talking to my colleague about the jigsaw.

When I got back, he had finished and all the pieces were there.

The customers had gone, but one of them had asked that when we found out how much it was worth, could he have first refusal.

So, again, I was upstairs Googling about to try and find out the price.

There was one which was the Scotland equivalent and someone was asking £600 for it but I did not think that was going to be realistic.

There was another on ebay for £40 but it had pieces missing – bound to severely affect the price.

Then I found an auction site which was willing to reveal the hammer price. Now, it was a lot with other things involved so I did some calculations and discussed it with my jigsaw-doing colleague and we thought £100.

But, inspired by my morning colleague’s efforts, I called the customer and said, ‘£150.’

He said, ‘£100.’

I said, ‘Cut the difference and £130’

He said, ‘I’ll be round in three minutes.’

And he was.

Of course, the displays will go on but sometimes its a shame not to have the A list stars on show.