Oxfam

Phrase, Fable and Proverbs

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One of my favourite books for dipping into is Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

My best Beloved introduced me to it and if you too have not come across it, nip into your local Oxfam bookshop and they will have a copy (or several), trust me.

So, it was originally published in 1870 and compiled by the delightfully named and bearded Ebenezer Cobham Brewer.

It is described as a reference book containing definitions and explanations of many famous phrases, allusions, and figures, whether historical or mythical.

The delight is not just the juxtaposition of unrelated phrases, people, sayings etc only brought together by the alphabetical order, but how often you are referred somewhere else when you look up something….

I am not sure why ‘night on the tiles’ gets its explanation and we are not sent off to ‘see  tiles’.

Mind you, a page that is Nightingale, followed by Nightmare, followed by Nihilism, followed by Nike ( who, by the way, is the Greek winged goddess of victory – not a trainer.)

I have the edition published in 2001 so it contains some entries I am sure Ebenezer would not have included:

Nicknames of drugs for example. Not being an expert, I am not sure which are still valid but I am pretty sure Brewer would not have recognised Charlie, coke, crack, dust, flake, freebase, leaf, nose, rock, snow.

However, he might have felt more at home with the entry for Niminy-Piminy.

(An explanation to which you are referred should you look up prunes and prism – which of course you might well have been tempted to do.)

There is Pantisocracy, followed by Pantomime, followed by Pants. Ants in one’s pants see under Ants, Hot Pants see under Hot.

Salts of lemon see under misnomers.

And when you get to misnomers, you find that salts of lemon are ‘in reality potassium acid oxalate.’

And that comes before ‘Slow-worm: neither slow nor a worm.’

As you can see, some of the entries are rather sharp and short whilst others are rather more obscure, detailed and lengthier than they might be – for example, four paragraphs on Mise:

“ A word to denote a payment or disbursement, and in particular the payment made by County Palantine of Chester to a new Earl….’ and so on and so on.

When you look up Poison – a word you would think could fairly well use up a few paragraphs of its own – you are referred to Mithridate.

And the entry tells you:

Meanwhile, back to poison, you get definitions of Poison-pen letter, Poisoned Chalice, Poison Pill but then you get to One man’s meat is another man’s poison and you get told to go and look under ‘one.’

For ‘what’s your poison’ you have to thumb through until you get to the entry ‘What.’

Of course you do. 

Anyway, I could happily spend hours going backwards and forwards to entries. 

But what sparked all this was the appearance in our Oxfam bookshop of a niche little book.

( Yet again proving, if you wait long enough, you will see a book on every subject under the sun.)

Compared to the weighty tome which is my Brewers, John M Senaveratna has produced a very slim volume indeed.

Perhaps he had less to work with, though you might think that a list of subject matter which includes everything from adages to folk tales might have provided more. 

Anyway, to make things even more interesting he has included a rather odd bookmark – at least I suppose it is a bookmark. 

The forward is by the Governor Sir R E Stubbs, who my researches tell me was the British Governor of what was then Ceylon and is now Sri Lanka, from 1933 to 1937.

And he had had a similar role in Jamaica, no doubt explaining his knowledge of cats and prickly pears.

John, ( I am going to call him that as typing out his surname all the time might well become tedious) starts on a very Brewers note with his first entry:

‘Abode.The bat visiting another bat’s abode – see Bat.’

There are plenty of other such referrals: 

There are four pages of referrals on Like.

Quite a lot is rather obscure, unclear or downright baffling, even with the explanation:

‘The swelling of a finger must be proportioned to its size’ which apparently means ‘cultivate a sense of proportion.’

‘For those who cried standing we should cry standing; for those who cried sitting, we should cry sitting.’ 

Quite a few of them under Sinner:

‘The sinner will not take up a book, but will carry a load.’

‘What sago congee for sinners?’

‘Wherever the sinner goes there is a hailstorm.’ A variant is apparently, ‘ There is a certain to be a hailstorm when the unlucky man gets his head shaved.’

Some of them are what we might describe as culturally specific:

Slave ‘Better to be born a slave than the youngest in the family.’

‘Mother: Like placing blocks of wood before mothers ( who have borne children.) 

( I have no idea, and there is no explanation from John.)

‘Mad: Like the mad woman’s bag of herbs’.

‘Death: When a man with projecting teeth dies, you feel doubtful of his demise.’

Country: In one country you cannot yawn, in another you cannot clear your throat.’

Clearly, some needing a more detailed explanation:

And some just seem to be stating the obvious:

‘Hip Bone. Boxing cannot cure a dislocated hip. see Boxing’

( Mind you if you do go back to Boxing, you find ‘ Can boxing cure a dislocated hip?’ mmm)

Or

‘Horoscope:What is the use of consulting the horoscope when the man is dead.’

Well on that note, and if you have got this far, I hope you be able to impress your friends with a nonchalant dropping in of a Sinhalese proverb or two.

See under ‘dropping’.

Books and their private lives

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As everyone knows you can’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes covers are really rather more interesting than the contents.

Having skimmed through the contents – Washington Irving was put up in the Governor’s apartments of the Alhambra, lucky him – and spent some of his time writing a rather flowery account of his time in the palace and surroundings.

Flowery prose is not my fave.

“The inn to which he conducted us was called the Corona, or Crown, and we found it quite in keeping with the character of the place, the inhabitants of which seem still to retain the bold, fiery spirit of olden time, The hostess was a young and handsome Andalusian widow, whose trim basquina of black silk, fringed with bugles, set off the play of graceful form and round plaint limbs. Her step was firm and elastic; her dark eye was full of fire and the coquetry of her air and varied ornaments of her person, showed she was accustomed to being admired.”

I rest my case, and there are another 435 pages in the same vein.

But, luckily, I am not here to read it, I am here to see if it is worth something and we can sell it.

Inside though was a bookplate which was rather interesting and more decorative than usual.

It turns out that ‘Foy Pour Devoir’ is the motto used by the Seymour family dating back to 1547 and 

‘The present dukedom is unique, in that the first holder of the title created it for himself in his capacity of Lord Protector of the England, using a power granted in the will of his brother-in-law, Henry VIII

I don’t have the time, inclination or access to try and track down where May’s branch of the family started life in America. That’s not on my to do list.

And I have no idea who Mike was:

But I did find out that May Seymour studied library science and she was one of 20 students in Melvil Dewey’s first librarian class at Columbia College.

(I am not sure if my May Seymour is the same May Seymour, but if so, I am sure her bookplate will add to the value…… just saying.)

Dewey was appointed New York State librarian and he took his library school with him from Columbia to. May Seymour was one of the five instructors who moved with it. She also worked at the New York State Library, where she was in charge of classification.

Seymour collaborated closely with Dewey on the development of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and the preparation of the 1904 American Library Association (ALA) catalog, which listed over 8,000 books essential for libraries.[4] In the 1890s, Seymour and Florence Woodworth boarded with the Deweys. (wikipedia)

However, in 1906 the ALA censured Dewey for his behaviour towards women which included ‘unwanted kissing and hugging’. 

And also in 1906, Seymour was fired from the New York State Library. Seymour moved to Dewey’s Lake Placid Club, where she worked on editing the fourth through eleventh editions of the DDC.

I don’t know why she was fired (and, an admittedly cursory, search on Google didn’t help).

This club was set up by Dewey and his wife:

They chose this site as a place where they could establish contact with nature, find relief from their allergies, and to foster a model community that would provide for recreation and rest for professional people, specifically, educators and librarians. Dewey and his wife felt that occupations involving “brain work put people at higher risk of nervous prostration that, if not checked, would lead to fatigue and even death”

You can read more about this in an article https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2020/12/dewey-lake-placid.html.

I found it interesting but I can quite understand if you don’t have time.

Dewey as well as his behaviour towards women, may well not have endeared himself by banning any black people or Jews.

A club pamphlet read: “No one shall be received as a member or guest, against whom there is physical, moral, social or race objection. … It is found impracticable to make exceptions to Jews or others excluded, even when of unusual personal qualifications.”

Dewey was sacked, also in 1906, when the pamphlet became public. 

In 1927 he hired a stenographer but Aafter he hugged and kissed her in public, she threatened to file charges and ended up settling with Dewey for $2,147.66. 

Dewey was apparently upset with the settlement not because he had been reprimanded for anything improper, but because he worried the stenographer might spread rumors that “she got $2,000 for no work.”

In 2019 The ALA removed Dewey’s name from their leadership award.

Anyway, it would appear that May clearly didn’t object to public unwanted caresses or racism….. oh May, I would have hoped for better of you.

She died in Lake Placid on June 14, 1921. (wikipedia)

Meanwhile, as they say, Joseph Pennell is the illustrator of our copy of the Alhambra.

In 1880, Pennell was involved in the violent expulsion of African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, a fellow student, from the academy. Tanner had suffered bullying at the academy since his entry earlier that year, which culminated when a group of students, including Pennell, seized Tanner and his easel and dragged them out onto Broad Street. The students tied Tanner to his easel in a mock-crucifixion, and left him struggling to free himself. Pennell apparently did not regret this action; many years later, when Tanner was already renowned in Europe and beginning to gain repute in the United States, Pennell recounted the attack as “The Advent of the Nigger,” writing that there had never been “a great Negro or a great Jew artist.” (wikipedia)

It does rather seem as if this little book has some tenuous but unpleasant connections.

( Just say Washington Irving seems not to have been, at least publicly racist or sexist, so perhaps I should have stuck to reading the text.)

A Few More Oddities

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A few more bookshop delights and surprises….

Some (actually quite a few if I’m honest) books come into the shop in such bad condition they can’t be sold. Most end up in re-cycling but a few have such lovely plates (pictures) that the Best Beloved can make something of them.

Because we get quite a few donations of paintings – yes I don’t know why they are given to a bookshop either – we have an art sale about twice a year and we will add in these little delights.

And, we also get picture frames donated so the BB had these three to play with…

They are from the 1905 edition of The Water Babies and are the work of Katharine Cameron. And it is true that images of naked children were more innocent in those days.

Anyway, you may be interested to know that Katharine Cameron (1874-1965) ‘studied at the Glasgow School of Art where she became part of a group of artist-friends known as ‘The Immortals’, which included sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. She later attended the Académie Colarossi’s in Paris and made frequent study trips to Italy. She is best known for her sensitive flower and landscape paintings, etchings and book illustrations. Katharine was a member of the Royal Scottish Watercolour Society.’ (National Galleries of Scotland).

She is second on the right of the middle row of this photo of The Immortals.

The next oddity is from lives a lot less rarified than the Scottish artists.

Judging by the stationer’s imprint and the name and address at the back of the book, this was a log of Sheffield workers’ hours and payments kept by a Mr Hunt who lived at 302 Staniforth Road, Attercliffe, Sheffield. This was not a difficult deduction.

It begins in July 1914, and finishes when the book is full in August 1917.

I assumed they were all men and worked in a protected industry which could well have been a related to steel in some way or another, it being Sheffield.

And then I thought, of course I could be wrong and it could be a workforce of women taking over jobs ‘left’ by men fighting in the war.

I liked that idea and conjured up all sorts of mental images of feisty women and their stories, but a more detailed look (by the Best Beloved) ‘unearthed’ this at the back of the book and more references to furnacemen at the front.

Interestingly, as I say at least to me, there is a knife-making company called Samuel Staniforth making knives who say they were established in 1864. I am temped to contact them and see if they are interested in this part of their history. https://www.s-staniforth.co.uk

There are some handy wages tables at the back ‘calculated to the nearest fraction of a farthing’ and in terms of hours, go up to 57 hours a week.

Whoever C Wise was, he is present from the beginning to the end. (But W Wise, makes only one entry right at the beginning. 

I am speculating of course, but could be father and son….)

In 1914 he was earning £2 and two shillings, but by 1917 was on £3/19/6d.

Interestingly, at least to me, is that although there are smatterings of records advance in wages throughout the book, many of the men took at advance in June 1915, August 1916 and April 1917.

I was thinking that this coincided with Wakes Weeks. A particularly northern tradition which started in the Industrial Revolution and was when the factory/works was closed for a week, quite often for maintenance work.

And they were, certainly originally, unpaid weeks so you would need an advance if you were going anywhere.

As a child I remember Wakes Weeks in the cotton mills in the Lancashire town where I was born – and the tradition was to go to Blackpool.

So popular was it that in the peak of Wakes Weeks in the 1860s (and no, I don’t remember that ) 23,000 holidaymakers left the town of Oldham alone, and headed to Blackpool.

Or, if you were better off, Morecambe Bay.

Wakes Week in Blackpool with the tower in the background

Should you want to know more https://northernlifemagazine.co.uk/wonderful-wakes-week/

There were some wage advances recorded in the book in the run up to Christmas but were for a lot less money than the holiday demand.

Except, that was my theory until I checked the dates and, no, the factory/works was not closed for the following week, and the same men were recorded as working and for much the same number of hours.

So, it remains a mystery.

Another Oxfam mystery, however, was solved by a very nice auctioneer who helps us out with some of our oddities.

These were donated by a friend and some have ended up in an auction, but one of them was locked.

The nice man brought down his box of keys acquired over the years and I spent a pleasant but fruitless couple of hours trying to find one that worked. ( And indeed, watching the Brummie Lockpicker on YouTube.)

The nice man had said he thought it was a carte de visit holder and took it away to try and sell it for us.

He realised ( as probably I should have) that it wasn’t a lock as such and you could get it open.

And here is what he found:

Apparently,

‘It is a ladies etui case still containing a few of the original implements. 
Ivory writing tablet
Pencil
Combined ear scoop and toothpick.

When looking at it under a glass it was evident that the lock does not require a key. The centre pin is on a spring and just needs pushing down to open.’

Rootling around in the bottom of capacious shoulder bags over the years, I’ve all sorts of forgotten things – and indeed notebooks and pencils – but never a, presumably ever-useful, ear scoop and toothpick

A Few Oddities

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Like most jobs the work of an Oxfam volunteer has a lot of routine stuff in it – but oddities, strange things, little gems and surprises make it all worthwhile – well most of it anyway.

So rather than bore you with an account of the routine, but necessary, stuff that needs to be done to keep the shop alive – though I could tell you about the alphabetical ordering of paperback fiction, the donations of souvenir books of people’s travels ( and indeed who in Petersfield will buy a glossy book of photos of Nebraska ) – I will instead delight you with some of the oddities.

First up, and an exception to the rule as above, a little paperback survivor of book on Lucerne and its surroundings.

I looked up Polytechnic Conducted Tours and found this:

The Polytechnic Touring Association was a travel agency which emerged from the efforts of the Regent Street Polytechnic (now University of Westminster) to arrange UK and foreign holidays for students and members of that institution.[1] The PTA became an independent company – though still with close links to the Polytechnic – in 1911. Later it changed its name to Poly Travel, before being acquired in 1962 along with the firm Sir Henry Lunn Ltd. A few years later, the two firms were merged and eventually rebranded as Lunn Poly (and later on as Thomson Holidays). The PTA was one of a number of British travel agencies formed in the latter part of the 19th century, following on from the pioneering efforts of Thomas Cook. ( Wikipedia)

Next up is another little book which I think falls into the categories of ‘there is a book out there on any subject under the sun and if you wait long enough, it will come into the Petersfield Oxfam bookshop. Along with people have unusual passions, and find the time to write a book about it. (This latter category includes, by way of example, a book on post boxes in Devon, and a book on fishing with bamboo rods.)

And this one….

Anyway, where was I. Apparently wandering around the graveyards, or ‘God’s Acres’ of the country.

Where, according to Horatio Edward Norfolk, ‘ the mind of of even the most careless man should be directed into a train of serious and healthy reflection’.

He does pontificate rather:

And here are some samples of what he found:

Ouch
and ouch again
May she indeed! I am assuming/hoping some of those 24 children were ‘inherited’ from a previous wife….
No name for the genteel lady on a small income – the story of her life

couldn’t miss a book person
and some of them a heartbreaking

Presumably, as this was found in an Oxfordshire churchyard and not London, it was the plague outbreak of that year which killed them all, rather than the Great Fire of London.

I have a few more oddities to tell you about but in the interest of bite-sized pieces, I will leave them until next time.

An Afternoon Shooting Books

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As I have said many times before, working in the Oxfam shop is a mixed bag, indeed box.

Sometimes you have boxes and indeed bags of books which are just not saleable. They have been stored in a garage for years, they are what is politely called well-read and in fact means they have been trashed – by children.

They are a collection of books about royal weddings – long divorced. They are dated cookery books with no charm, they are guide books printed in the 1990s and whilst the monuments may not have changed, all the restaurants, hotels, bus timetables will have.

But of course, and it is the thing that keeps us book sorters happy, are the treat and novelties.

We don’t have time or indeed the patience to go through every book but there is usually a general check that it is not written in, scrawled in, has the first few pages missing ( all rather depressingly regular).

But after that we are busy processing the next batch.

So, a colleague was on the till the other day when a customer approached and said he had been looking through the book he fancied buying and found a £50 not sandwich between two pages. 

He handed it over to the rather surprised volunteer, bought the book and went home.

We have no idea who it was who donated the book so all I can say is that I hope they would have been pleased we got an extra £50 for their donation.

And then I spent an afternoon in the company of many, many books on hunting, shooting and indeed one or two on trapping and snaring.

This came about because someone I know locally has an auction company and is an antiques collector.

And he has been really helpful with old coins we have had for example, and lately he has agreed to sell a Victoria century carte de visit holder. (In case you were unaware, in those days, people dropped a card in with your manservant to say you had called and would be delighted to invite you for a cup of tea, game of cards, etc etc.)

Whilst we were talking he said he was having a clear out of books. Now for him, a clear out of books is not a couple of Waitrose bags but a good few very large packing boxes.

I took one  for now – bearing in mind we don’t have a lot of space and certainly not that much.

It turns out this was part of a library he had bought from someone and it was his collection of all things hunting and shooting.

I have to say it was a very strange time, spending a whole afternoon on my own upstairs in the shop valuing all these books about killing wildlife.

As some of them were old, and some valuable, I had to look through them all.

To the sensibilities of most people in this day and age, the thing that is striking is the fascination with nature along side the fascination with how to kill it on a one to one basis.

Some of these books were illustrated with great engravings and images.

But then you read what Ian Niall has to say about the hare:

Lovely lyrical description of the countryside and then explains you need to be a really cunning poacher to make sure you trap its legs so it can’t get free. How does that fit?

And you get this:

Followed by this:

Yes it is the same delightful bird and coveted shooting trophy.

Luckily and by sheer coincidence, as I was taking a break from killing, I found this is a nearby box of donations.

Yes it is a bit twee, but have to say it made me feel a lot better.

When I nipped downstairs to take the till volunteer a cup of tea, I bumped into a regular customer who I know because he drew up our wills.

‘Have you got anything on fishing?’ he asked.

‘Ahh, I thought, hunting shooting, and now fishing.’

As it happens I found him a rare-ish book on making fishing rods out of bamboo. He is apparently delighted.

Tailor of Gloucester – again

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First of all my apologies for bringing you a bit of Christmas long past the time when it should be well and over.

So, if like me, you are very happy to be in the cool zen-like calm of January, then please don’t read on, it is not a short one.

Otherwise:

The Oxfam bookshop.

You will, probably, have read the preview for this. The Tailor of Gloucester. If you haven’t, you will catch up – at length.

As you may know, we have to start planning Christmas way back in the late summer – if you live and survive on donations, you have to hope that things come into the shop which you can use to make something special.

And like all retailers, we rely on Christmas to make our money.

So, the window and table display are well thought about.

This last Christmas my colleague did The Old Curiosity Shop in the window and on the table, I did the Tailor of Gloucester.

For those of you who don’t know, it’s one of Beatrix Potter’s stories. It is about the poor tailor who is commissioned to make the mayor’s Christmas wedding outfit. 

He lives with his cat Simpkins, always on the outlook for a mouse-snack in the tailor’s house.

The tailor sends the cat out for milk, bread and some thread to sew the outfit, and whilst he is out the tailor frees the mice who have been trapped by the dastardly cat under the tea cups on his dresser.

But the tailor gets ill and the grateful mice go to his workshop and make the outfit, but are short of a final bit of thread for the last buttonhole – Simpkins had hid it.

They leave a note saying ‘ no more twist’ but a guilty Simpkins gives it to the tailor, so all is well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tailor_of_Gloucester

Nice Christmas story you may think. And indeed it is. But to bring it to our display table took some waving of my hands and asking for help. More of that later.

We have a lot of donations of Beatrix Potter books but they rarely sell except to grandmothers……

So it was easy to collect them. Though I did have every book sorter on high alert for copies of the Tailor Of Gloucester – rarer than you would think.

Oddly enough, we don’t get mice in any shape or form donated. Nor waistcoats. And, although bizarrely for a bookshop, we do get crockery, we didn’t have any between August and December – I had to buy some from another charity shop. 

But when I explained what I needed it for, I got it on loan.

So, now I needed mice and a waistcoat. 

And so I flapped my hands and asked for help. A skill I seem to have perfected over the years.

A very clever local sewer made me a waistcoat small enough to look the right size on the table – lined and perfect, leaving me only to cover the button holes with cherry coloured ‘twist’ and pin a note in ‘tiny mouse writing’ saying ‘no more twist’ to the last buttonhole.

Our manager’s mother knitted some mice but she ran out of time, so there were not enough.

A friend leant me some of her collection of resin mice, another friend bought me some and donated them to the shop, a local shop owner who also had a display of mice, gave me a couple, I bought a few from the local pet shop (cat toys) and finally the sweet shop gave me some sugar mice.

We had enough mice.

It worked – actually better than the image looks, but again hey ho.

A Winter’s Tailor

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In the Oxfam bookshop Petersfield, there are a few of us who take Christmas very seriously from August onwards.

Yes it is depressing to see Christmas cards for sale from then – and yes indeed they are – but as for the display planning, August is not too early at all.

After all, we have a tiny budget, actually no budget.

We have to reply on what appears in the shop and with amazing frequency that happens.

We have a window displays to plan, and planning we do.

Last year we did a Cluedo window so there was a desk with a decanter and knocked over glass, and old fashioned telephone, a bookcase ( of course, we are a bookshop).

There was a row of pegs with a scarlet cloak, a cook’s apron, some Coleman’s mustard, some peacock feathers, there was a fake dagger, gun, piece of lead piping.

You get the idea – or at least you do if you know the traditional Cluedo. 

This year the theme is The Old Curiosity Shop.

So, we have been looking out for appropriate baubles, stuff, things, knickknacks etc. 

We are working on how to make the plastic display shelves look like Victorian wooden ones.

How to hang a battered red velvet curtain.

And on the fairly firm basis we are not expecting a Victorian till to be donated, my window colleague said she thought an old ledger would work.

Now, I wasn’t expecting that we would get one of those either – in amongst battered Jilly Coopers and John Grishams, ledgers don’t appear.

But hey ho, look what was donated.

Whilst of course leaving room to display books after all bookselling is what we are there for.

This is the domain of my colleague/friend and I am around to help and tootle through our cupboards for stuff.

More my domain is the display table which is a rather nicely battered square one dating back 100 years I would say.

This year, I want to have a display on it based on the Beatrix Potter’s Tailor of Gloucester.

So, if you don’t know the story, the gist of it is that the tailor is commissioned by the Mayor of Gloucester to make his outfit, including a waistcoat, for his Christmas Day wedding.

The tailor has a cat who is mean to the house mice, but they hide under cups, and bowls and Simpkin can’t find them.

Simpkin is sent out to buy some twist ( thread) so the tailor can sew all the button holes but he hides it in a teapot.

The tailor gets sick and whilst he is in bed, the mice got to his workroom and sew, and sew, and they finish everything.

Except one buttonhole and they pin a note to it saying ‘no more twist.’

Actually, it is a short book, you should go read it because it is a rather charming Christmas story.

So, our manager’s mother is knitting small mice to hide in cups, I have collected some old thimbles and cotton reels from other charity shops.

We have a shop cat ( fake obviously) who will take on the role of Simpkin.

The story will be printed out and run around the four sides of the table.

And a kind and excellent needlewoman I know has offered to make a child’s size waistcoat because we don’t have the room for a big one.

All a bit twee? Maybe, but don’t tell me that because I have been invested in this since August.

Strange Ships

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I don’t regularly work a Saturday afternoon in our Oxfam bookshop, and it is a rare ( but a very nice time) when a book is united with someone who really wanted/needed/appreciated it.

Mostly instead it is nice customers who have been recommended a good paperback fiction book by a friend or a sister, or who has read one of the author’s books and wants to read more – or indeed never tells me why they are buying the book.

But this afternoon was a bit different.

We have a glass cabinet ( I have to say rather thrust upon us by a previous area manager) into which we put ‘specially attractive books.’

I put books in there that I really hope will sell because they are delightful/interesting/unusual – but often the book-buying public of Petersfield finds them less so…..

Anyway, the one I put in a few days before my Saturday shift was not really a book.

It was a photograph album of ships.

It was donated by who knows who. 

It had no name of the ‘author.’

Every page was completed and every page had a tissue guard – that, just in case you didn’t know, means a bit of photographic tissue paper to protect the photographs.

Except, I am not sure they were photos – some were the size of old-fashioned cigarette cards, some the size of postcards, some bigger.

Most of the images, it seemed to me, with a relatively cursory look, were merchant shipping vessels and at the end of the book was an image of the merchant navy victory parade at the end of World War II.

I had looked at this and wondered who as the person who put it together?

But assiduous readers of this blog ( and that must be just me ) will remember I disappeared down a rabbit hole of naval mutinies a while ago and so I decided not to take on any research into this album.

I steeled my heart, as the best beloved would say, picked a figure out of the air and put it in the cabinet for £20.

So, there I am on a busy Saturday afternoon and someone asks if he might take it out and have a look at it.

Of course. And just then the shop was not too busy so we started talking about it.

Then customers started wanting to pay for books, asking for books we might have not on display, wanting to know whether the book they had seen ‘about two weeks ago and it was about, well I am not really sure but something to do with… have you still got it?’

So I left the man and his wife leafing through the album until the shop went a bit quieter again, and he said something along the lines of:

‘I am going to buy this and try and find out who he was. There must be ways of finding out the crew on all these ships and if there is a name which appears on all of them or at least some of them.’

A man after my own heart.

I asked him if he would let me know what he found out, if he ever does. 

I have given him my name and phone number and one of these fine days I might find out what he has found out.

‘It is amazing and rather sad,’ he said, ‘that a family have let this history go.’

But he doesn’t work in an Oxfam shop where you get all sorts of donations and think why did you let that go?

But, as someone donating the other day said, ‘ I hope you can find someone who likes old stuff because we don’t.’

Queer Proverbs

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There are books with titles which would probably not be used today.

But in 1886, things were a bit different.

Anyway, Edwin Hodder writing as ‘Old Merry’ had indeed some rather odd proverbs as well as some still very familiar – and his discourses are nothing if not a little idiosyncratic.

You know how some sayings get embedded in your family?

Well, the one I remember from my mother was, “ What the eye doesn’t see gathers no moss.’

I am not sure exactly what she meant by eliding those two proverbs but generally, I think she used it when she wanted to sidestep something awkward, and get away with it.

Anyway back to Old Merry.

‘The cat in gloves catches no mice’ 

And there is a picture.

As well as a moral ‘sermon’ to children from the ‘pulpit.’

I won’t bore you with the several pages of Victorian ‘humour’ and moralising on all the proverbs. 

‘Phew,’ I hear you cry – and in the hope I can detain you just a little longer, here are just a few more snippets.

Jack and Jill

Interestingly, though he says later, addressing the rapt Victorian children I assume, there are two lessons, only No 1 seems to be identified. 

Perhaps he needs the same proverb as I do – something about attention to detail.

The Best Beloved says I need to be followed around by a tame pedant.

And, he says, my life is like an impressionist painting, all looking good from a distance but up close, it is a mess of random dots.

As for attention to detail ‘proverb’, I am going with “ Look after the (non-financial) pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.’ 

Doesn’t trip off the tongue I know, but will work on it.

I also like the quote:

‘Success in any endeavour requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration.’

Willie Sutton (aka, “Slick Willie, the famous bank robber)

Well, back to Old Merry and 

‘Every ass likes to hear himself bray.’

Is it too cheap a shot to want to have that projected onto the walls of parliament?

Old Merry however, makes no such comments, instead he writes five pages in defence of the donkey and says,

‘I confess I have respect for donkeys and should like to join a crusade for the vindication of their rights.’

‘ Costermongers are now the greatest donkey holders in the land, and we have not to walk far to see how brutally the poor things are used, what cruel work they have to do, and what horrid society they have to mix with.’

So, here are a few more Old Merry’s to leave you with:

‘It is not the cowl that makes the monk.’

‘He that is afraid of wagging feathers must keep from among the wildfowl.’ No, I have not much idea either though I gather it is a Scottish proverb, so all Scottish ideas welcome. 

‘ Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them.’ As a happy cook, I rather resent this one. And I am not sure Old Merry clears up the meaning of this proverb as he witters on about the difference between a simple person and ‘ a simpleton’. Just saying

‘Keeping from falling down is better than helping up.’ 

And finally from Old Merry

‘Merry Christmas.’ 

Now that to me is not a proverb, and reading through Old Merry’s take on this I feel that he might just have read Pickwick Papers published in 1837.

No Scrooge as a repenting ‘sinner’ but a contrast between idyllic Victorian Christmas full of joy and candles and good food, and Nelly trying to read to her parents by the light of a meagre fire, the dead son Tom…..

But to make things a bit lighter I give you some modern proverbs:

If at first you don’t succeed, try turning it off and on again. Neil Whyte. ( One I put into action all the time – remember me to tell you about the BB’s heart monitor sometime.)

You Brexit, you fixit.” Alistair May

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. Warren Buffet

The problem is between the keyboard and the chair. ( no attribuation)

One ought to try everything once except incest and folk dancing. Arnold Bax

Never wrestle a pig; you will both get dirty, and the pig likes it. Richard Calhoun

A boat hunt

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Something rather nasty happened in our Oxfam bookshop the other day.

And that is not a sentence I would have imagined having to write.

I had been charged with decorating the window and had amassed a lot of books on water, the shipping forecast, books on the sea, how to make model sailing boats, you get the idea.

Well, I decided to boost the attractiveness of the window by using a Dufy print which I remember as a child and therefore dates back to the 60s.

And I decided to include the lovely little model metal boat we bought in Corfu town a few years ago.

‘I wouldn’t,’ said the Best Beloved, ‘ It will get nicked.’

But I didn’t listen. I carefully made sure it had a not for sale sign on it as over enthusiastic volunteers have been known to sell unpriced things for less than they are worth or indeed, are on loan to the shop and not for sale.

It was stolen and I was gutted.

The BB, I have to say was gracious about it given that it was really his boat and he had of course warned me.

But in my defence, we have never had anything like that happen before. I am sure a few paperbacks have been slipped into bags, but nothing stolen from the window.

We bought it from a jewellery shop in old Corfu town during a dark thunderstorm with torrential rain.

I had seen a pair of earrings I really liked whilst out on a wander earlier in the day and the lovely BB said he would buy them for me and I said he should come and see the amazing model boats.

We sheltered from the storm, quite literally and bought both earrings and out boat.

So last Saturday I Googled about looking for jewellery shops that would fit the bill of my memory.

( I did by way of a sidetrack, think how i would have gone about this search in the days of my youth when Google was not so much as a software glimmer in Larry Page’s eye.

( Well I would have found the expat and therefore English language newspaper/magazine and asked them for help. It is not a big town so I would be willing to bet it would be an easy hunt for them and they could get a story out of it.

Or called the tourist office, or called one of the hotels in the town. I towels have been more of a treasure hunt but possible.)

Anyway, I found one with a phone number and called it. I asked the man on the other end about the boats and he said though it wasn’t his shop we had visited, he did know the boat maker who had retired but he thought he might have a few left.

I sent Kostas a picture of my boat and explained it had been stolen and I wanted to replace it.

But that was Saturday and this is now Wednesday, and I haven’t heard anything back.

Meanwhile though I thought I would take a picture of the earrings to illustrate the blog and surprisingly for me, I had kept them in their little box. 

Lo and behold, there was the phone number of the shop on the side of the box.

As I sit here, I am plucking the courage to ring them and I am keeping everything crossed that the shop is still there, the boat maker is to be found, that he does indeed have a few boats left, and if so, I can afford to buy one and get it shipped over to me.

It seems to me that is a lot of ifs, and I know I am prevaricating on the basis that I don’t want to be disappointed.

I will be living in hope for a few hours yet – and I will let you know.