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.

Parallels

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There are some surprising parallels between our village life and world politics.

A friend of mine is involved in a village society where the leadership is not in its first flush of youth – but then most of us aren’t.

Anyway, they are looking for the next generation of leadership and my friend, who may be in the running for a (small) leadership role, said it was like being groomed by ISIS.

You are contacted, flattered, people keep in touch with you, you are told that the rewards are great and that you will be doing this for a great cause – and of course you are vetted.

As far as I know you don’t have to travel to Syria or take up arms and very little is done via any form of social media – and the people involved do not wear masks – at least not yet.

I hesitate to say you have to bring cakes – preferably baked by yourself – but for all I know, ISIS has the same rules.

And then there is the coup.

In our case, the leadership of a village institution was said to be rather undemocratic.

(Please bear with me on this rather vague stuff about who is who and what is what, but rather to my surprise some people in the village are reading this blog so I have to be careful or there will be people on my back step with angry faces – remind me to tell you sometime of my best- beloved angering Israel and then Mosad arriving on the back step – though I am not drawing parallels of course.)

Anyway, the village institution was said to be rather undemocratic and ‘things needed to be done!’

The leader was told that ‘things’ were afoot and he graciously stood aside.

On the night, a member of the institution was briefed to nominate a person as second in command, the vice-chair or president or whatever it was.

Unfortunately that person had a senior moment and instead of nominating the person waiting the in the wings to take over, she nominated someone with a vaguely similar name who was shocked and surprised to find himself carried aloft to his new role.

Now he is rather harassed by the previous incumbent’s emails on what he should and shouldn’t do.

I will bet there is many a vice-president of a small African nation who finds himself in a not too dissimilar position.

Finally, a rant, though this is pure village stuff and has no parallels.

As, dear reader, you will recall, we ran the village Festivities bookshop with a few great people and a round up of locals from the pub.

(I’m not sure I mentioned it, but I will now. By the weekend of the Festivities we had got 91 banana boxes to one place in the village but they had to be moved to the final destination. I was not sure we would have enough muscle so on our usual Friday evening visit to the pub, I went round everyone who looked ‘likely’ and asked if they would come the next morning to shift a load of books. One great person got her Dad’s large trolley and other people carried boxes and all were shifted in just over an hour – thank you!)

Well, in a recent parish magazine, there was a severe complaint from a person who is quite practiced at severe complaints, about the fact there were not enough people stepping up to the plate on village committees.

Now, though I don’t get involved, I hear that this really means, “ We people of certain standing want some of you lot to come and get on with the drudge stuff (and bake cakes) whilst we, people of a certain standing, make the decisions. And one day, one day mind you, you can take over as long as you are groomed and listen attentively to how it should be done.’

I’m minded to put a bit in the parish magazine reminding the severe woman that not only did the bookstall – with no committee – raise £1,000 but that the vibrant, fun and very successful Choir Called Dave runs without any vice-anythings or a committee of any sort.

Strange Fruit

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I was listening to a great Radio 4 programme the other day called Soul Music.

The series takes a piece of music and finds people (god only knows how they do the research) who can talk about why it means something significant to them.

Anyway, this was about Strange Fruit sung by Billie Holliday.

I was sitting at my kitchen table but it took me straight back to driving up the A1 on a sunny evening, watching hot air balloons fly over the crops.

There is something about some music that just takes you back to where, and it has to be where, you heard it last or it made an impression on you.

If you don’t know it, Strange Fruit is about lynching in America.

Yes, it’s shocking.

You should listen to it, great programme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03jb1w1

It got me fiddling around on Google and Wikipedia as you do when the risotto does not need your immediate attention…..

In 1916 in Waco – a city then thought to be progressive but since well known for anything but progressiveness – a young black man called Jessie Washington pleaded guilty to the rape of a white woman.

He was quickly sentenced to death in a courtroom full of furious locals.

He was straight away dragged from the courtroom and lynched in front of the town hall.

10,000 people watched including local officials, police, children and people on their lunch-break.

A professional photographer was there and it was his images which helped change views on lynching.

See the images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington

Some five years later in 1921 Leonadis C Dyer from St Louis sponsored an anti-lynching bill which was passed by the House of Representatives, but a Senate filibuster by white Democrats blocked it and defeated it.

As they did for several years to come.

Meanwhile there were many lynchings of young black men.

In 1964, three Mississippi civil rights workers were abducted and lynched.

But the murder, including hanging from a tree, by two Klu Klux Klan members, of Michael Donald is though to be the last recorded lynching.

It was in 1981.

God knows we Brits have a lot to answer for but at least we don’t claim we are the Land of the Free.

This all got me thinking about one of the best books I have ever read.

It is called Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene.

It is about a civil rights ‘campaign’ (and I put that in quotation marks because it was a local action rather than a big campaign.)

Here is the blurb from the back of the book,

‘Set in the Deep South of the 1970s, this superb book tells the true story of the political awakening of a tiny black community. Here the people of McIntosh County, Georgia tell of their own experiences – stories that are outrageous, funny, eloquent and touching – in a historic struggle for civil equality.’

I remember reading it for the first time, years ago, and having to remind myself that this was in the 70s.

Not in the 20s or 30s or even 40s – but in the 70s when I was listening to Rod Stewart.

( Of course, I had leant my copy – and several later-bought copies – and couldn’t find one so I had to buy it again…)

I think it is now out of print but you can get it via www.bookfinder.com and I urge you to read it.

It is brilliant and moving.

We were in Crete recently

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We were in Crete recently.

I do realise that bragging about your many, varied and frequent holidays is not attractive but otherwise you, dear reader, get more on books, so here we go.

I have bored half the village about the lovely place in which we stayed so I will refrain from that – but then again I can’t really believe you wouldn’t want to hear about the swimming pool in the olive trees, the terrace overlooking the whole valley, the great food… no? Ok, then if you insist, I will desist.

But if you are willing to read on, I will mention a few bits and pieces.

Crete has a population of 500,000 and thank god not many of them are on the road at any one time.

They are not mad drivers but they do have a lot of roads which are very winding and mostly attached, rather precariously, to a mountainside.

Being an extremely wimpish passenger, I prefer to be the driver and anyway my husband is a very good map-reader (most of the time.)

Well, he wanted to go to the south (leaving our lovely place with its terrace, did I mention that?) to go to see where he was last in Crete – 40 or so years ago at the end of his finals with two mates (or as he says, ‘chums’ and he is probably the last person in the world to say that and not ironically.)

So we set off to Paleochora which had indeed changed in the last 40 years – who would have thought it? It was OK, not helped by a howling gale, but OK.

From there we were supposed to get a ferry to Soughia but I am less keen on being on a ferry in a howling gale than I am driving a ‘country mountain’ road up over the mountains and down the other side and then up over the mountains and…..

It was hot and we had the windows down. I felt my one arm getting a lot more sun than the other.

It reminded me of when I was young and worked for a union in London which was having its annual conference in Brighton and I was asked to drive down with some publicity materials or something.

It was hot and I arrived with one burnt red arm and one pale, pasty arm. ‘Never mind,’ I said breezily, ‘ I can get the other one brown on the way back.’ It took me a long time to live that one down.

Soughia was a place which had also changed in the last 40 years – from one tavern to about 10 and some rooms to rent.

But there were still people camping under the trees by the beach and it had a rather hippy feel.

Usually, when we need to find somewhere to stay, I leave Nick drinking coffee and go and sort it out myself.

But this time, I went and re-parked the car and by the time I got back (all of five minutes, it was that sort of place,) he had earmarked somewhere.

The room was fine and had a full sized fridge which was fine if you were there for a week and needed to store food, and did just as well for the bottle of wine and water we had.

But it was not ‘our place’ with the terrace and the lovely bed and the delightful food – did I mention how nice the place we were staying was?

Well, I need to end this otherwise it really is, what I did on my holidays which I know, I know, is really boring but suffice it to say, we had a lovely meal in a restaurant with a roaring log fire and very welcome it was – not often you get to say that about a holiday in Crete in May.

Interesting People

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I used to be paid to meet interesting people as part of my job – someone who ran a prison, someone in charge of the re-development of the South Bank in London, someone who was employed as a thinker for IBM, a professor of bee studies, a Taliban defector…..

Now I don’t get paid, and I have to find my interesting people more locally.

And I do, and here are a few.

First person:

I was buying a lottery ticket – which I do from time to time in order to enjoy an hour of fantasizing about what I will do with the money – and the nice, cheery man who sold it to me said, ‘Do you want a winning ticket or just any old ticket? A winning one it is then. There you go’ he said,’ If it wins that’ll keep you out of mischief for the weekend – or maybe in it!’

We chatted a bit and I was talking about what I would do with the winnings and he said, ‘ And you will have friends you didn’t even know you had.’

It turned out that he had won the lottery and the last remark was heartfelt. He and his wife had put money towards charities they had some connection with.

‘And why,’ I wanted to ask, ‘are you here in a small supermarket selling me a ticket?’ But a few people had joined the queue so I left.

Second person:

I was at the dentist and sitting in the waiting room reading some (very) old magazine as you do, when two women walked in.

They were not together but sat down and started to chat.

There was a young woman who was heavily and interestingly tattooed the other was older and what used to be described as ‘motherly looking.’ I am loathe to use that phrase, but have no other to hand.

Anyway, I am not sure how, but a conversation got going between us and it was about tattoos. The ‘motherly’ woman commented on the tattoos and soon all three of us were talking and looking at tattoos.

The young woman explained how many hours it took to do each tattoo and how she now worked in a local tattoo parlour and what people were interested in getting, what fashions in tattoos were evolving.

And then she turned to the ‘motherly’ woman and said, ‘ I know I work with needles and the work on me has taken hours and hours, but I am so scared I will have to have an injection with the dentist will you just keep talking to me until I have to go in.’

Third person:

I was in the Oxfam shop the other day and talking to my two colleagues about what display to put on the table and in the window, when a man came in.

He was browsing, so we carried on talking.

Then he turned to me and said, ‘ You have a lovely voice. I could wander round this shop and listen to your voice all day. Were you a university lecturer on philosophy? No? Were you a spy? No? Were you an animal trainer? No? Well, my dear you just carry on talking and I will look at your lovely, lovely books and listen to you and that will make my day.’

It made my day too.

Fourth person:

We have a lovely butchers in our town.

I don’t buy that much meat but what I do comes from them, and I always ask them about cooking it.

The older man who runs the shop always has the advice just at his finger-tips.

So, between people coming in for their rack of lamb (we don’t buy lamb at the moment because our back field is full of them and I can’t bring myself to ….) or their belly pork, I squeeze myself and buy something and ask for advice.

I was buying liver because the best beloved likes a bit of liver and onion gravy and so I was asking whether what my grandmother said was true, you should soak liver in milk.

The older man told me that the milk would break down the enzymes so I would have to cut my cooking time in half and that was just silly as it needed only a few minutes anyway.

But what I needed to really know was that this liver was best with fennel mash and he proceeded to give me the recipe.

This is not the first recipe he has given me and this is a man who knows his meat. ( Remind me to tell you one day about the Irish butcher in Brussels who got caught selling fois bra under the counter when he set up shop opposite Harrods.)

Anyway it was, and I did, and I will be back there for his next recipe.

The fifth person:

I was walking to the pub on Friday across the fields with my two friends who also walk their dogs to the pub – the men come in cars and prop up the bar until we get there – when we came across a man looking like he was preparing to fly a model aircraft.

The others walked on and I stopped to talk to him because it looked like a helicopter with four blades – one at each square corner.

It was a drone.

I had never seen a drone before and was rather surprised to see one in a Sussex field.

Was he working for Google Maps, looking (rather in vain) for an Afghan wedding party to bomb?

No, it turns out he was going ‘On holiday with a bit of travelling. In Canada and North America and I thought it might be nice to have aerial photos of where we have been.’

Blimey – this kit was packed in a case about 500 cm x 500cm and not what you would describe as pocket-sized.

I imagined his wife sorting out her packing and trying to rationalize what she was taking, and him coming back and saying he was taking one pair of trousers , three shorts, 20 pairs of knickers and a drone….

The Pop-Up Festivities Bookstore

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I may have mentioned before that I was volunteered by my best beloved to run the bookstall for the village festivities. Here I want to say that a) the ‘bookstall’ is a function room at the Legion hall, b) I spend, as you know, a lot of time sorting books at Oxfam so to come home and do it again for the village…..c) my best beloved who avowed his unstinting support, has been very busy on rehearsing for the (bloody) Pirates of Penzance.

So, having got the whinges out of the way, I am actually rather excited about tomorrow.

Thanks to very nice friends with a large dry barn, we had somewhere to put the books to get sorted. ( I am not sure anyone would have wanted to buy the 2002 edition of Who’s Who so along with quite a few others, it got sent to the recycling.)

My bee palace new friend was a star and spent many a (happy?) hour putting books into categories, and his wife was a font of all wisdom – having done it before.

I bribed and tarted around various local supermarket staff to get the requisite number of banana boxes in which to display the books and all was well.

Then we took them all – with helping hands – to a village hall to await their move to the Legion. (I am tempted to go on a riff about how surprised the French Foreign Legion in deepest Algeria, or somewhere, would be if they got the two boxes of old cricket books and the complete set of Penny Vincenzi hard back novels, but I won’t.)

At this point I had thought there would be a phalanx of young men to move them onwards. But it looked otherwise. And worried that a few middle-aged people would have to carry endless boxes of books around the corner and up the lane, I got worried.

So, in the pub on Friday, I asked any likely person ( as in under the age of 75) if they were free the following morning and could they? Would they? Etc etc.

And do you know what, we had those books moved in an hour. Hannah, who I had never met before, turned up with her dad’s wheel truck and, with Harry, the son of someone we know from the pub, moved a mountain of books. …..

I was expecting to be there all day so imagine my surprise when we were all done by noon.

And, I would like to say at this point, there were 91 banana boxes of books.

Then I made Sarah, the font of all wisdom, stay behind and help me count the boxes (for the record) and, and this is where I have to confess, to make a display of red-covered fiction books along the front of the stage.

In my defence, it makes it all look rather good.

Tomorrow we shall see whether all this adds up to a good sale.

Things into perspective

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I thought it might be nice to have the (very) few neighbours we have who don’t vote Tory around for supper and to watch the exit polls which were going to say that it was a hung parliament, and we would go to bed, and find out that it was indeed a hung parliament.

So, we did, and it wasn’t like that.

Staying up until 2.30 and then getting up at 7 to get to Oxfam and sell books wasn’t the best plan, but the only one available.

The (few) people who came into the shop this morning were usually tactfully vague about the result – including those with a Telegraph under their arm – but one man came in and said, ‘ Well, they have won, but the next fight, to stay in Europe is much more important.’

If I had the energy, I would have hugged him.

Prioritie a droite

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This is a bonkers rule which allows traffic in France and Belgium to come from your right, from a tiny little road and onto a main road without stopping or even looking left!

It can make driving a tense business to say the least.

In Brussels, there is a relatively steep hill near where we lived and I used to take the 71 bus up and down it quite a lot.

There are also numerous side roads off to the right and it made for a sometimes entertaining trip as the bus careered down the hill, only to skid to a halt sending passengers falling backwards like dominoes whilst a little car sailed breezily out of the right with nary a backward glance.

There was a theory expounded by one Belgian we knew, who said, in all seriousness, that the prioritie a droite meant all Belgians were very careful drivers and there were fewer accidents…..

At least in Brussels the rule is religiously followed and so you know the deal.

In France, there are a plethora of masonic-like road signs which tell you whether there is prioritie a droite or not. You have to be inculcated into French culture to even see them, leave alone know what they mean.

A yellow diamond means there is no prioritie a droite whilst even more confusingly, a yellow diamond with a cross through it means there is prioritie a droite.

Oh yes, my friend, it is true.

Whilst on the topic of driving, I got done for speeding the other day. I was doing 35 mph as I entered a 30 mph zone on the outskirts of Swansea – caught on camera.

I thought briefly of naming my best beloved as the driver but it was a short-lived Chris and Vicky moment which I dismissed.

But I was a bit miffed as I am a very boring driver who is usually safe, stodgy and smug.

Anyway, I mentioned this is upholstery class the other day and was amazed to find that every other woman there – apart from one – had been done for speeding and taken the speed awareness course option.

Who would have thought those middle aged women patiently tacking their hessian to the seat of grandma’s old nursing chair were secret speed freaks……