charity shopping

Planning In Advance – do you have revolver?

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We start thinking the unthinkable very early on in the Oxfam bookshop – we think about Christmas from August onwards.

Yes, I can imagine your rolling eyes, and indeed the rolling eyes of professional shop designers who obviously start thinking about Christmas in January.

But bear with me, if you can.

So, long-time readers may know that from August (maybe even July) we start putting aside books which are in such lovely condition a customer could buy them and give them to someone who would never know they were second hand. ( And we can get a bit more money for them.)

Mind you, I have to say that most of our customers say they are on a mission to buy from charity shops, or they have a family contract to buy second hand books to ‘indulge’ in the Icelandic tradition of having Christmas Eve when everyone in the house eats and reads a book.

Or they are looking for ‘table presents’ – ‘do you have a book which will interest my godson who is really into physics, and my niece who is into jewellery-making, and my friend who loves ghost stories?’ etc etc  

That was a fun hunt last Christmas Eve, and the lovely customer-couple bough £50 worth of books.

But the primary issue is making the window look good. Really good.

And that is the primary job of my great colleague who, I may tell you, made Narnia in our window last year.

She does the window displays and I do the table displays (which is also in the window but requires a lot less effort.)

So, what to do this year.

Now, my Best Beloved will say that I have lots of bright ideas but few ever make it into reality unless there is someone picking them up and doing what is needed.

And, that is (sadly) true – lots of my good ideas have thus fallen by the wayside.

But my idea for the Christmas window seems to have got traction.

Want to know what it is?

Oh, go on then.

So we have decided to do a Cluedo window.

There will be the dead Mr Black slumped over a desk in the ‘library’ in the window.

And the nod to Christmas will be a fake window in the real window ‘looking through’ to snow.

There will be lots of books about murder mysteries on his ‘library’ bookshelves.

And, thanks to the BB suggestion, we will have clues around the shop.

For those of you who don’t know the Cluedo board game – are there any such people? – we are going with the early version.

( Here in case you need it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cluedo_characters )

So, Mrs White was the cook so there will be old-fashioned ladles hanging from the cookery book section and a book in that section with a cover (we will have made) called Mrs White’s Country House Recipes.

I have arranged to borrow a vicar’s collar from ( not entirely surprisingly, a vicar I know) and it will be in our religious books section with a bible ‘owned’ by the Rev Green.

Miss Scarlett is proving a challenge so far because although we take clothes donations and sell them online, not many people associate us with a clothes shop so my hunt for a bright red evening dress is proving a bit difficult. 

Do let me know if you have one to spare.

Colonel Mustard will be a pot of Colman’s mustard in the section of military history and somewhere/somehow we will make/find a suitable moustache to go alongside.

Mrs Peacock is going to be peacock feathers around the shop. But again, if anyone has a peacock model/trinket/statue/garden adornment they don’t need, I would love to borrow.

For Professor Plum, we will have a mortar board and (maybe) a gown alongside a pile of academic books.

And then we are on to the weapons.

We need a dagger – well the BB has one (actually several) so that is covered but we are not supposed to have those in the shop so that will need some ‘display finessing’.

A candlestick – we have at least several we can lend to the shop.

Lead piping – well, we will make something which looks like that but that can’t actually injure a volunteer or customer.

Rope is easy-peasy but again, we will try and ensure that no volunteer is injured/murdered in the making of this Christmas display……

What is proving really hard is finding a fake revolver – today’s parents don’t like their children playing with guns these days.

In my part of Deepest Sussex there is a man whose business is making posh shooting weapons but I am not sure that Oxfam will wear me borrowing a beautifully designed real thing…..

Now, just as a PS, we have had no end of Cluedo sets donated to the shop in the past.

Do we have one now, no of course not.

But a quick WhatsApp messages to my village has turned one up. Of course it did.

There are times when I really like being a Reluctant Sussex Housewife.

A Day of Reuniting

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If you want a good Oxfam story, this is one of my better ones. 

But dear reader, there is what we called as journalists, a long dropped intro.

Which means you have to wade through some stuff before you get to the nub of the story.

Here are a few things I have said before and all of them happened today:

1)If you wait long enough there will be every printed thing/book/pamphlet turn up in your Oxfam shop – there is something printed on every topic you could ever imagine.

2)There is a good home for some special books – places they belong.

3) It is a such a buzz to pick out something dusty and strange and make 2) happen and get some money for Oxfam, and make people happy.

Well, of course not every printed item turned up today, but at the bottom of a book of not very interesting books, something really unusual turned up. 

How it turned up in an Oxfam shop in Petersfield, I will never know and sometimes as a book sorter, I really wish I could hear the story of the donation. But we very rarely do – and I mean very rarely. 

After all, someone comes in with a few boxes of books and if we are lucky we can ask them to Gift Aid them ( if they do we get 25% extra from the government on every book we sell), and they are on their way. 

Often they are bringing in books from aged/dead/going-into-a-care-home parents and really haven’t looked at what there is.

Anyway, enough delay, let me tell you what I found:

This is the particulars for a major estate sale in 1926.

Now, I couldn’t find another one for sale – which needless to say dear reader, means it is rare and a rather interesting read.

A bit of research, thanks Wikipedia, meant that I found out the estate was bought by Colonel Edward Clayton from the Wills family – indeed should that be ringing a vague bell, they were the founders of Imperial Tobacco Company and ‘in 1966 was the family with the largest number of millionaires in the British Isles, with 14 members having left fortunes in excess of one million pounds since 1910.’

In 1994 Edward’s son sold it on to Ralph and Suzanne Nicolson who now run the house as what looks like a very nice indeed holiday let. 

Clearly, a phone call needed to be made.

It turns out the family had tried to buy the a copy of the particulars but weren’t successful so they are said ‘Yes please’ to buying our donation.

Now, that is what I call a good day’s reuniting.