winchester

Labels and Bras

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The other day I went to Winchester and saw a photo of myself on a price label in the Oxfam clothes shop there.

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(There was a saga about being asked to go to an Oxfam photo shoot and being told I was going to feature in the front of a group of volunteers on a poster and then getting a sight of it to see not only wasn’t I in the front, but not there at all.

Should you, dear reader, be an insomniac, you can read about it on the blog archive somewhere – but for the rest of us, we can move on.)

It was a bit startling, but I was hardly being pressed for autographs and even the volunteer on the till at the Winchester shop didn’t recognise me, looking bemused as my friend insisted on taking a photo of the real me and the label.

(While I am mentioning previous blogs – and really, I don’t expect you to read them all – I did do one about mutton dressing as lamb and the phrase the Germans have about someone looking young from behind and old from the front.

Anyway, a lovely German friend told the me right phrase – Lyceum from the back and Museum front – isn’t that brilliant!)

My amazing friend who I was wandering around the shops with, has a plan to create a festival of kindness.

We were talking about how to do that and make it feisty not saccharine, make it interesting, who would you get involved, what would you do, how would you take over London’s South Bank or do a ‘real’ festival, how would you get those young people involved?

Then it started raining heavily so we went into Marks and Spencers.

Only this amazing friend could talk about a kindness festival whilst collecting a tub of mascarpone for that night’s dessert and mooching ( diligently) round the bras.

If anyone can make a brilliant festival of kindness, she can – and she knows her bras.

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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