Oxfam Medals

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As every second household in Petersfield and the surrounding area seems to have spent the summer clearing their bookshelves, we have had an avalanche (or tsunami depending on your preference for natural disaster metaphors) of books into the shop.

Needless to say they were not all of the highest quality so a lot, a very lot, of sacks have been filled and stay piled up in the back room until the strong young man comes to collect them on a Friday.

But enough of all that – I certainly have had recently.

Donated last week were a couple of medals, one a Women’s Voluntary Service medal from the second world war and, another which says it was presented by the Society of Miniature Rifle Clubs ( a very small clubhouse or a very small gun – who knows?)

And we had a tin cap-badge which had ‘Peninsular’ on it and we thought was from the Peninsular War.

The best beloved did a bit of research into the cap badge and found that the regimental museum was in Winchester – a hop and skip away.

On Saturday we decided in a rather spur of the moment, raffish way, to go to this museum and see what we could find out about the badge.

It is a very nice museum – given that it is all about war – and there is an amazing model of the Battle of Waterloo, but also had on its premises, the curator – which was a real bonus.

So we got to find out that it was not a cap badge from the Peninsular War but a later one and worth not much at all – we hadn’t had big hopes on that score so not a disappointment.

And now we have its history, I am planning to have a display of military history books with the medals and their backgrounds on the shop table.

So, are we Oxfam volunteers so easily delighted.

(Should you be interested in the Rifle medal here is what I found out http://www.rifleman.org.uk/Society_of_Miniature_Rifle_Clubs.htm)

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Bring on Autumn

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I am quite looking forward to Autumn.
I do realise that for most people the idea of the nights drawing in and the weather turning worse does not put a spring in their step – if you will excuse the awful play on words. (It has been a while since I put fingers and brain to keyboard.)
But Autumn and Winter are the seasons I most look forward to.
Now I am a fully-fledged Sussex housewife, I have been keeping a beady eye on the elderberries (ready to be transformed into elderberry vinegar which is surprisingly nice) and the blackberries, and the rejuvenated crabapple tree.
My best beloved keeps talking about ‘nature’s bounty’ but then he is not the one to haul out the jamming pan from the depths of the cellar and make time to make preserves.
Though I have to say, upfront, this is not why I look forward to Autumn.
(Actually all that preserve-making always reminds me this is not the way I foresaw myself using my allotted span.)
I look forward to polo-neck jumpers, going out with a rucksack to gather kindling, seeing the log store full, and, oh yes, oh yes, putting the Aga back on.
Occasional storms that mean power cuts and filling the kitchen with candles, our amazing Rowan tree which every year turns from being a bit of boring number all through Spring and Summer, into a blaze of red berries for ages and encourages the thrushes back.
Snow, of course, is a bonus and one we haven’t had much of for a while but I can live in hope.
I do realise that this is all romantic rubbish and most of the time it is a slog to walk the dog in the mud and rain, there is a point when just because it is going dark at four does not mean it is time to start cooking supper, the grey days are relentless by February and very depressing.
And when we did have snow, I loved it for two or three days of only being able to walk to the village and then I was bored and very pleased to be eventually able to drive to the giddy delights of Petersfield.
But still I look forward to it. And there is still the bottle of Lebanese red wine bought from the very nice Lebanese man who gets it from his family’s Lebanese vineyard (are you sure you understand that this is special Lebanese wine?), which we have been keeping for a couple of years for that night when it is ideally cold and wintry, probably with a snow storm raging , a delicious meal of some sort which I have concocted and am secretly very impressed with and even best beloved says is a great accompaniment to the wine, the log burner going full blast, the dog asleep on her rug, maybe a few candles…..

(I have, in all honesty, to say you might just as well catch us having a bottle of cheap white from Lidl and a risotto and an episode of Lewis, but a girl can dream.)

Seizing Today

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Last night, we went to the pub as is usual on a Friday.

(I realise this might not be the most riveting intro to a blog but if you can bear with me, it might just get a bit better as the paragraphs go on – or at least I might get to the point.)

Anyway, Nick had just got home from being away for a bit just as I was going out of the door to walk down to the local hostelry with my female neighbours and our dogs. Women and dogs walk, men take the cars.

So, we had a nice time, sat outside, dogs running about – our dog has a habit of networking the whole pub garden, offering her business cards to anyone and everyone and offering herself up for adoption, but we get her back in the end.

So, we women later gently weaved home across the fields with the dogs, and some god was in some sort of heaven and all was well. ( Yes, the men went home in the car.)

Then, at home, Nick and I got talking – was we hadn’t had time to catch up – and opened a bottle of wine. Now, it was nice to talk about what he had told the House of Lords committee etc  (as well as the meltdown in the Oxfam shop caused by the introduction of a new till) but it would probably have been better to do it with a cup of tea – but then that is not us.

Suffice it to say, that by the end of the evening we had decided to write a paper together on the comparisons between current Chinese foreign policy and the Mongol empire of the 1200s.

No, of course we won’t. Despite the fact that I love Mongol history and he is really interested in what the Chinese are up to, we could never write a paper together – divorce would be the easy option.

But, to get nearer to the point. We woke up with a hangover, I went to Oxfam and did some stuff and then we went to meet some old friends of his for lunch – well, getting eventually to the point….

So, hangovers akimbo, we went to meet them in a pub halfway between where they live and where we live.

I had organised it in a moment of realising that you don’t have infinite time to catch up with friends, you think you do, but one day you find out you haven’t.

(It happened to me – I had this brilliant, amazing friend and even though she was geographically just over the hill, I didn’t see enough of her  – and now she is gone.)

So, we seized the day and spent it having lunch in a country pub, chatting swapping notes on charity shop shopping, ebay bargains, whether the state has any right to snoop, what to do when you are not working, guns in America, how much we use sailing phrases in everyday language, family news…..

And do you know what? that is enough seizing the day for me.

I am not going to leap out of planes, camp in the Sahara, learn to speak Chinese, run a marathon – all good things, but not for me. I am happy seizing a day with lovely people and a lazy lunch – nothing could be better.

A brief un-banal moment

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There are times when writing banal stuff about an easy life seems not quite to the point.

This week an agreement (of sorts) has been made with the Greeks – and you should listen to Tim Hartford’s More or Less Greece Special on Radio 4 for good stuff about the numbers and allegations. I have to say I feel for the Greek people but definitely not their political class – and if I was Lithuanian or Irish, I would not be that sympathetic to their current government. And I am not. I agree with Guy Verhofstadt and you can see a great video of his arguments on Facebook.

And then, there is an agreement with the Iranians – which will please the Israeli young woman and Iranian young man in my group of international PhDs last week (they were wary of swapping email addresses in case their governments found out) – and which pleases any right minded thinking person, so that won’t apply to the US Congress or Israeli government.

Meanwhile, our government plans to make any trade union member opt in to paying a levy to the Labour Party but does not feel the need to make every shareholder or staff member vote as to whether their big boss should donate to the Tories.

And in a continuing saga of misery, more than three million Syrian refugees are in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq – I understand by February this year we had taken 187. Another six million are internally displaced which is a nice way of saying they are not in any sense at home and safe.

So, I just wanted you to know that even here in Deepest Sussex, we do get the news and we do care about it.

But, as any reader will have gathered by now, we don’t talk about it much.

If you feel that banal stuff about an easy life should not be on the same page as serious issues, don’t worry you can stop here.

I am hoping that you are doing great stuff with refugees or politics and have better things to do, and there is a lot of me that wishes I was too – but I am not, so back to banal.

But for those of us in Deepest Sussex who are not doing anything amazingly useful with our lives, three issues this week – a new laptop, some alarming dog-sitting and the new computer till at Oxfam – you get the point.

So, anyone who has not got better things to do can read on for the next blog in which all will be revealed.

Knee-Deep in PhDs

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I have a week every year when I am knee-seep in PhD students – and it is this week.

They are bright, funny, insecure, knowledgeable, starting out, shy, too loud and all the rest of it – and our job (us tutors at their summer school) is to give them some stuff which might help them get through the arduous business of finishing a PhD and then a few bits and pieces of advice to help them join the rest of us in the big wide world.

Last night some of the group of PhDs decided it would be ideal to sit on the benches outside my bedroom window and get to know each other by chatting, laughing, singing and having a few heated discussions about, among other things, whether war is inevitable and what it means to be racist.

This took from about midnight to about 3am.

In my role as tutor, I was tempted to open the window and say, ‘ OK, let’s just pause for a moment.

‘Its brilliant you care to have such a discussion and the topics are really important – though the rendition of the Canadian national anthem was really not a high point – but here are a few things I need to say to you.

‘You (I would be pointing to the young man with the loudest voice,) need to hone your listening skills and perhaps have a pause before you say instantly what you are thinking.

‘You (pointing to another young man,) need to find another way of saying what you have just been repeating several times.

‘And you, young women, are not getting a hearing. I am guessing that because you are not being listened to, you have decided to leave that discussion and talk amongst yourselves – but that won’t work when you all need to pull together as a team and achieve the tasks we have set you.

‘Now, think on, as my grandmother would have said, and you had better think on in your own beds, you have a busy day tomorrow.’

(The last bit would have been less tutor and more, grousy middle-aged woman mode.)

Of course I didn’t.

But as I was wide awake at 2 am and had finished my current book, I did search of my bedroom for a feedback form for the venue.

(I am a fan of filling in questionnaires and feedback – if anyone asks my opinion, in any format, I have no trouble at all in giving it to them.)

Anyway, I thought I would mention that if you, as conference venue, have a wine list at the bar you should have more than one white wine from the list of five, available to drink.

And if your customer then opts for a rose wine instead, you really should charge the price on the wine list.

I was told that the prices had all gone up but they hadn’t got round to changing the price list – I don’t think that is how it should work!

I might have mentioned one or two other ‘areas for improvement’ seeing as they had asked for my feedback and I am in tutor-speak mode, but of course they hadn’t.

To be fair, I would also have said that the food is fine and the staff are very helpful and friendly.

This has been a short break in my day and now I need to go back and improve my knowledge of the energy sector – and yes indeed, that can be very interesting.

A shed in the hedge

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We have a splendid view from our back gate – all across fields to The Downs, down a field with sheep in it, and up another field to two lovely oak trees.

You can see some of this from the house – not least since Nick cut a semi-circle out of the back hedge so we can see the two landmark trees from the kitchen. (They are the trees you can see on the heading of this site – lovely aren’t they?)

Well, we decided – after a few episodes of George Clark’s Amazing Spaces – to try and build a shed on a platform in the hedge, backing against the large cherry tree.

We wanted space for a desk – something like Dylan Thomas’s writing shed in Laugharne, and you can see that we have been working on this idea for some time – and a fold out bed so we can put up a couple more people now and then.

And to sit there and enjoy the lovely view of an evening.

We, for our (relatively rich) sins, live in a conservation area in a national park, and the village is nothing if not clear about what it approves of and what it doesn’t when it comes to any development.

(I could tell you a long story about the house being built behind the green boards for about two years but it would get very tedious.)

Anyway, it being a small world, we knew someone who could ask informally of the council whether we needed planning permission.

I had previously looked at the planning portal for Chichester and it is a site designed by planning experts for planning experts and not for ‘civillians.’

(And if you search for Chichester planning portal and you see the reassuringly named site: Simple Search Chichester District Council, and if you click on that and see Planning – Simple Search and then see Guidance – you might think you were in with a chance. But click on that and you will get the message, Page Not Found. Now you know you are in trouble.)

We just wanted someone to say if it is such and such size, above such and such height, within such and such distance of the house, yes you need planning permission.

Or indeed, whatever you are thinking of building apart from a hedgehog abode under a hedge, you need planning permission.

This is an extract from the advice we have been given:

If the property benefits from permitted development rights the proposal is determined against Schedule 2 Part 1 Class E of The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 2015 (please see page 22 of the attachment). This shows the range of development permitted and the additional restrictions that apply to Article 2(3) land (conservation areas, areas of outstanding natural beauty, national parks, world heritage sites).

In other circumstances, I might be rather pleased that our little corner of deepest Sussex ranks along with a World Heritage Site, but this is not time to take such crumbs of comfort.

The form we have to fill in to find out if we need planning permission is nine pages long.

This is not a rant to claim the need to relax planning laws.

Neither is it a rant about the conservativism of planning around here – nothing if it’s not built to look like it was there when Jane Austen came trailing through.

Nor I am I about to get on to the issue of the cottage over the road where they got planning permission for an extension and have (hopefully in the in the process of re-building) reduced the cottage to one end wall – the Ypres in 1918 look.

No, it is a rant about un-friendly local authority and government websites.

I do realise they have may lawyers leaning over their necks whilst they are designing them, but really.

Seize The Day

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We were given a poignant reminder this week of the need to seize the day, make the most of your time, do interesting things and stop faffing about in general.

And though faffing about is pleasant – we do a lot of it, so we should know – it is all too easy to see days and even weeks slip past with not much new stuff happening.

The man of the house saves the world by giving all sorts of leaders the benefit of his wisdom whether they want it or not, and I do Oxfam bookshop things.

But, I thought, this weekend we will go somewhere and do something.

Unaccustomed as we are at doing this, and being a woman who feels the wisdom of crowds is always a good thing, I took the issue to the pub crowd. (Well, when I say crowd there were eight of us, and three dogs who didn’t play much part in the discussion.)

(It was very nice to sit around in the pub garden and drink wine, eat chips and generally enjoy the Friday evening.)

Now, one of the benefits of being us is that we can do things in the week and out of school holidays but being a woman of instant enthusiasms and no power to defer any gratification, I said we had to do something tomorrow – Saturday.

Our friends reminded us that the plans we had to go to Romsey – never been there, sounds interesting, indeed go to anywhere which involved the A27 (a lot of Sussex), was bad news on a nice June Saturday.

Likewise, a long deferred plan to go to the V&A as I haven’t been there in a while, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

I was up at 5am, listening to the ever amazing dawn chorus in our garden – if I knew how to embed a sound clip in this blog, I would let you hear it – and I found that in the Test Valley there are guided tours around the place where they make Bombay Sapphire gin and apparently it is really interesting.

The man, woken up at 6am with the exciting news that he could go to a gin distillery that morning, was less enthusiastic.

Not that he balks at a nice G&T but thinking about it at 6am didn’t seem to work.

OK, I said, we can go to the craft and design fair at West Dean and in a desperate bid to avoid anything so horrendous as shopping, he declared he wanted to go for a long walk and a pub lunch.

(Though we are knee-deep in nice country pubs round here, we never do that.)

So, I said yes and then we set off – after a quick trip into the local auction house to see what was available to re-upholster but that is another story.

The man planned a walk which involved a nice route through the quiet country lanes to car park from which you could climb up a part of the South Downs, do a circular round and then head back down for lunch in a nearby pub.

Not exactly seizing the day in terms of planning to sell up and drive to Katmandu or give up a nice life in deepest Sussex to teach English in rural Chad, or even go to New York for the weekend, but still…

Remember the quiet, lovely Sussex lanes? Well in about six miles of such lanes we met say 25 on-coming cars, each requiring a stop and back up – not least because our car is nowhere near as nice as all those on-coming 4x4s or Audis or BMWs and therefore had to tug its forelock and throw itself into the ditch.

Several miles of this was really quite wearing and we ended up rather snappish towards the on-coming vehicles. We thought there must have been something going on to cause that much traffic but we had no idea what.

That was until we got to the main road and set off to the car park.

There were all these people around and as I turned right into what turned out to be a farm track rather than the entrance to the car park, we realised we had joined the South Downs Marathon.

I had to drive up this track to find somewhere to turn round. I crept up it. I was not going to bully someone who was running 26 miles up hill and down dale into moving over for my (not even posh) car.

Then I had to turn round and drive back, and I am pretty sure that if the people who were having to get to the side of the track had the energy to waste on irritation, they would have been pretty irritated.

The man was meanwhile scanning the map looking for an alternative and he found one, so we drove on and parked in a nice local village and set off on what he said would be a shorter walk but there was a pub so we could still do what we had planned.

About 100 metres from the car, we hit a field full of large and interested looking bullocks.

Call me a wimp, but I was not walking through that field with a dog.

Back we went, and he found another (yet another,) walk and we drove a bit and parked and set off.

Levin Down it is called, should you want to go there, and it was managed by Sussex Wildlife Trust and was lovely with all sorts of wildflowers.

All going well and dog was bounding about, until we got to the point where there was yet another field of bullocks.

Admittedly, they looked placid enough but I am not that easily convinced.

So we undid the two rusty gates to allow us to walk the other side of the barbed wire crested fence and hoped we could re-join the path later on.

Actually, the path sign said we should be on that side of the fence but the farmer had other ideas.

At the end of the field, there were the signs that other people had been facing the same dilemma as us and had made (who knows how successfully) efforts to get over the barbed wire and head on.

The man and dog were more gung ho than me.

We went back.

So, we went to the local pub and had a reasonably nice lunch, came home and I did the ironing and the man mowed the lawn.

We didn’t so much seize the day as limply shook its hand, but it is a start.

Boxes

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We have an old table in the front of the bookshop, and each week I change the display.

When we first had it, we just used it to show off particularly nice books but then I got it into my mind that we should have a theme.

My volunteer colleague does a fab job with the window – all sorts of displays and props but you would be surprised how many books it takes to do a good window display.

We don’t usually have enough books (well, good looking books,) to do the same table and window theme.

So, I started doing collections of books for the table.

Now the upstairs of the shop is scattered with random boxes of my collections. ‘Lucy’s boxes’ as they are known – when they are not being moved or cursed for being a trip hazard, in the way of getting to the clothes shelves……

The most popular books are good art books.

Once, and stop me if I have told this story before, we got a call from someone saying she was clearing out her parents’ home and there were a lot of art books which her parents had specified were to go to Oxfam. Could she get them delivered the next day?

They came in about 20 large black sacks and my heart sank. Black sacks usually denote books which (sadly) get moved from black sacks into our white re-cycling sacks. (We did get them gift-aided in any case.)

But no, one peer into the sacks and you could see these were just lovely, expensive, coffee table, and unusual art books.

We did very well indeed in sales from the table that week.

But most of our collections are gradually built after one or two books will spark an idea.

Of course, there was the First World War box which was slowly filled over nearly a year to get a really good display on the anniversary of the break out of war.

Then there was the rather obscure box of farming books that started with a donation from some gentleman farmer of certain years.

Included in that was a book on the history of the Ivel tractor. Yesterday, I took a call from a man who asked if we still had it because he had seen it and not bought it, been kicking himself ever since and now would come hot foot to buy it.

It had gone. And that is the way with charity shops, see it and buy it because if you don’t, it might never come in again.

We had a box for National Women’s Day – but I got the date wrong on the notices, thinking that it was the same day every year and infact it was three days later….

Last winter, we did a collection of ghost stories and you could buy a mug for 50p with every ghost story you bought.

We’ve currently got a box on the go about Time that started with a several books on clocks and The Time Traveller’s Wife, and is slowly building up nicely.

There is one on philosophy (not sure that is going to be a big seller,) and another on poetry (you can’t tell with poetry, sometimes it sells well and other times the books can sit there, looking sad, for ages.)

There is a box on landscape and maps. Maps, especially old and local ones are always popular and we had a donation of old London underground maps and an old book on routes across England with little contour maps, so I started a box.

And I’ve got two boxes of ‘old and interesting’ books that are all priced at £1. It turns the shop into a jumble sale for a few days but people love getting a bit of history for £1.

On the table as I write, is a collection of music books. The Annie Liebovitz coffee table book of photographs of musicians sold as I was just putting it out.

And the lovely Peter Rabbit Music Book, (that I found at the bottom of a pile of piano books for grades one to six dating from the 1980s and destined for a white sack, sorry), is worth about £20 and hopefully will be sold before I’m next in the shop on Monday.

I have an idea for a box on Speed – racing cars, steam engines, Jamie’s Meals in 15 minutes……

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Snapshots of an Oxfam Bookshop

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Today I was doing a full day in the bookshop – mostly you do mornings or afternoons – but today it was a full day, and I had plans.

Upstairs (the behind-the-scenes bit,) I intended to sort out the history shelves, sort out my boxes of specialist books – but more of that later – cull and re-stock the old and interesting, all sorts of things – and then in the afternoon I was downstairs in the shop.

Downstairs, you can do all sorts of stuff whilst the book-buying public has better things to do than be in your shop.

You can put gift aid stickers on books (with gift aid the government gives us an extra 25%) and price them so that they can go upstairs and some fellow book-elf can put them on the upstairs shelves ready and waiting to be called into the bookshop proper.

You can price some books and put them straight into the shop without them ever having to stay, waiting, upstairs.

You can look at the mess that is the literature shelves and get them standing upright, in order and smiling at the world.

And, and this is my real campaign at the moment, you can do something interesting with the front-facing books.

For those of you who don’t know what that means (and neither did I,) it is those books that are propped up and facing you.

Sometimes, I chose those that are red and so the shop has books with (largely) red covers facing front; sometimes I chose faces so that every category has a face looking out at you – from biography to animals to literature to children’s’ books. (It is a lot harder with old and interesting which rarely have any interesting cover at all, and as for humour you are on a looser.)

And then when the ‘public’ come in, you can find them something they are looking for, or just listen to their stories of why they are delighted to find that particular book.

But the book-donating public of Petersfield changes all your plans because you have to deal with what they bring in.

A nice older person rang this morning and said she wanted to donate a few boxes of books – about four boxes she said.

So I spent the morning clearing the other donations to make sure that we had room to take these boxes and that I would manage to sort them so that tomorrow – when there are no book sorters in the shop – it would be clear.

In the meantime, I had persuaded my (very) nice new friend who helped me so much with the bookstall for the village festivities, to think about being an Oxfam bookshop volunteer and managed to get him in for a look around.

“It’s not rocket science,” I said, as I whizzed him around the vaguely organized chaos. My fingers were so crossed he would say yes and he would understand that it was an interesting place to work and not, please god, not get appalled by the chaos we work in.

He didn’t seem appalled and I hope he will be as interested as I am.

So, back to the day.

We have an endless supply (as in donations of books on various aspects of the countryside) from bird books to flowers to every aspect of the natural world.

A woman came in asking for a simple guide to wildflowers and I confidently said, ‘Yes, of course.’ Leading her to the relevant section, I knew we would have lots of books on wildflowers, but we didn’t.

Startled, I rang upstairs and asked my fellow volunteer for wildflower books waiting upstairs to be given their moment on the shelves downstairs.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘We will have lots.’

But we didn’t.

I asked her to give me her phone number and we would keep an eye out but she said not to worry she would pop in – and look elsewhere.

And then, when I was sorting out the children’s non-fiction, there was this lovely book on wildflowers.

Blow me, as they say, an hour later another woman asked if we had any books on identifying flowers.

That has never happened before. No one ever asks for wildflower books when we are knee deep in them.

So, I was pleased to be able to march her over and show her this book.

But she said,’ No I want something not so simple.’

I have her number.

So, do you remember the person who rang saying she had four boxes?

She had her fiend/neighbour/relative bring them in and she had a lot more than four boxes.

I said to the neighbour/friend/relative,’ I though there were four boxes.’ ‘Only if they were four body big boxes,’ he said.

I am sorry to say that most of those books needed putting in re-cycling sacks.

They were brown, they were Guinness Book of Records 1996, you may think I was being heartless, but I know what we can sell and what we can’t.

Ten minutes later someone else donated, and wanted their bags back, so seven large bags of books had to be put into other boxes. Three other people brought in books, and so on and so on.

This is now 4.30 and we shut at 5pm – and by now I have, among the other things I have done today, filled 30 re-cycling sacks.

I am sure that today I sacked for re-cycling a book about which someone   would say,’ Hey don’t throw that away, it is great.’

And, if you have got this far, I will tell you about the boxes next time.

The Garden Show

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I got involved in The Garden Show about five years ago when my lovely friend (who set it up 21 years ago with her friend,) inveigled me into it.

She and I had met in Brussels and become friends, and then we both ended up back in the UK (we were in this part of the world thanks to her.)

Anyway, she invited me to her house and we sat and nattered and solved a few of the world’s problems over a glass of wine and then she asked if I would like to come and help.

Yes, I said, of course.

Then she poured me another glass of wine and told me about this event which is part elbow-sharpened gardeners fighting for the particular plant they have been looking for all year, part lovely day out for all the family, part shopper’s paradise for those looking for something unique and made by a local craftsperson, and more.

Then she poured me another glass of wine ( or, if I am honest, a couple of glasses) and said I would be the Health & Safety person.

Yes, I said, of course.

Now, part of that response was her, I would have done anything she asked, and of course, part of that was the wine.

Anyone who knows me (slapdash and bodge are my middle names, and an eye for detail is not anywhere on my radar,) would have strained their corsets laughing at the choice of me as a H&S person.

But here I am five years on, and I do it.

This year was the show’s 21st birthday, as I said, and a great show it was. Thousands of people came, the weather was brilliant.

Behind the scenes, there is a ‘family’ of staff and I have never worked anywhere where the ‘we are a team’ is more manifest.

Health and Safety has a loose definition in the team so I can find myself on my hands and knees (oh those knees can make it hard to get up after a while,) taping down rucks in the marquee flooring, getting a tired car parker, with no money on him, a sausage sandwich, trying to talk intelligently to the Trading Standards Officer after a long day…..

Lost children, heat stroke, smoothing the ruffled feathers of annoyed exhibitors, telling an endless series of people where the toilets are….

And juggling birds and arrows.

We have some birds of prey which come (with handlers, I hasten to add,) and they do flying exhibitions.

This year we also had, for the first time, a man who let off white doves at weddings and who wanted to let them off to show his ‘wares.’

Also for the first time we had, an archery ‘stall’ where you could go and see if you could hit a target.

This was quite near the birds of prey.

The white doves apparently circle the area before they set of home.

You can see where this was all leading.

With a bit of negotiation we got the birds of prey in their large cages whilst the doves were released – the archery stopped whilst the falcons were flying – and all was well.

H&S Garden Show style.

My lovely friend and I – during a very busy three days – always found a bit of time to wander about, and she would take photos because she was a great photographer, and I would tell her the tales of ‘H&S’ issues and then one of us would be radioed to collect money or sort out a complaining stallholder – and it would be back to work.

This year she wasn’t there and will never be there again.

So, there is this fantastic event going on in the sunshine, created by her vision, charm and practicality, and there are a lot of people – staff, friends, exhibitors – who cannot really believe she won’t be here again.

We were crying, and telling each other stories of her, hugging – and getting on with the show.

I’m sure she was pleased to know the show was going well.

I know she would have laughed at the juggling of doves, falcons and arrows.