Category: Snippets from an Autobiography

I even tried my hand at farming once. Because of this I am not afraid of all things countryside. I do not hold my nose overtly as the bus drives past a field in which the muck has just been spread. They all hold their noses as if to say, ‘It wasn’t me!’. I’m sure this leaves me as the culprit every time.

I gained a lot of first-hand knowledge from my love of the countryside. I can tell you that there is no point in campaigning about banning hunting. They will continue to do it anyway and if you are not careful they will bring all their animals to London and start chasing you too.

I’m also privileged to know that milk comes from the udder of a cow, not actually from a bottle in Tesco. You wouldn’t believe how many youngsters I have come across that have never stopped to question the origin of many of their foods. I doubt they’d ever eat an egg again if they discovered that it came out of a chicken’s backside. I have to admit, I found it difficult to eat chicken or eggs again after I actually observed a couple of these pre-historic creatures in the field, and witnessed them digging up and consuming the guts of their acquaintances and swallowing their own feathers.

Anyone who has worked on a sheep farm will know that where there’s a sheep, there’s a way to kill yourself. They seem to instinctively know when the hay stack is about to collapse, and go and stand under it. I don’t think I could record the potential hazards within my lifetime. Luckily we do not have to fill in health and safety files for sheep.

I remember witnessing one ewe give birth to her lambs on the edge of a cliff face. After she had plopped them out and straight over the edge, she looked around in confusion, wondering if she was having what us humans call a ‘senior moment’. The fact that she had 35 acres to choose from didn’t seem to make a blind bit of difference to her choice of birthing location. Don’t worry, the lambs were okay.

Despite that the industry is the industry, there is not a person I know of who is not softened to the dearness of a newly born lamb. It is hard to imagine the little blighter on your dinner plate six months later. However, by the third week of lambing it is very easy to imagine them on your dinner plate and almost impossible to see them in any other light.

It is not just livestock farming I have encountered. I spent hours trailing around oat fields in the scorching midday sunshine, my task being to pull wild oats. Yes that’s right, to pick out wild oats, from a field full of oats. Because of this, I am not stuck-up toffee nose. I know what hardship is. I should have been on the burger bap section of the televised series, ‘Blood, Sweat, and Takeaways’.

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard a crow scarer. These are the modern version of the good old fashioned scarecrow. The crows soon worked out that the man in the field, as scary as he may have looked wearing his straw filled pellet sack, couldn’t move, and even the ones who did move never seemed to fly after them. The sound of a gunshot going off at three minute intervals is much more intimidating. And I know, because I have been wild oat picking, unaware that one was in the row next to me. I can tell you that my reaction to that as I momentarily thought that I’d been directed to the wrong field and someone was taking a pot shot at me was enough to keep the crows away for 2 months.

Let me introduce you to Hilda. Really, Hilda is a hoot in small doses. She has the mentality of a 6 year old, and yet is 40-odd. She will do a job, if you explain thoroughly enough, and when she has done it she will come to you and say, ‘Finished!’ while you have to then spare your time to go and find something else to occupy her. I’m not sure how she has been brought up but I do know that it was not entirely the same as the rest of us. Both Jess and myself have had a flash of either her bust or her buttock as she has lifted her top and pulled down her trousers to show us her new bruise that she acquired today.

I once told her to Hoover the shop, and reminded her to keep an eye on the lead and warn any customers that looked as though they were about to trip over it. She leapt into this task with an enormous burst of enthusiasm as she ran around the shop tapping each customer on the shoulder and informing them, ‘Excuse me, mind the lead’, even if they were quietly minding their own business at the complete opposite end of the shop to the Hoover. When I came out into the shop floor she announced loudly so that all of these customers could hear, ‘I did what you said Belinda, I’ve been minding people of the lead’.

‘Well done Hilda,’ I said, as I saw the other customers smile and shake their heads. Perhaps I should get Hilda to permanently guard the step. That could be rather effective actually…

Her odd behaviour comes as no surprise when you meet the family. Hilda collects thimbles, her mother collects dolphin ornaments and her father collects spoons. She once asked Jess if she collected anything, to which she replied ‘no’, and it was at this moment that we found out that her brother collects porn movies. She must have seen Jess’ reaction, as she asked her, ‘That alright isn’t it?’

I must say that working with a mixture of ages and abilities provides many more laughs than working with an office full of bitching women of your own age and character. Yesterday, Hilda made us all a nice cup of tea, I glanced at it as she put it down and thought, ‘That looks good, I’ll wait for it to cool and drink it in a minute.’ Then I heard Hilda scream from the kitchen, ‘Urgh!’ and a few moments later, ‘This kettle doesn’t boil very well does it!’ I stopped for a moment as I thought, well a kettle either boils or it doesn’t, and in my experience, that one does, before I then heard her exclaim, ‘Oh, I forgot to switch the plug on’. A few more moments passed, as you could almost hear the cogs turning in her brain, then she rushed out to gather up our cups and said, ‘Yours might be cold too’ before scuttling off to make us some new ones. I creased over with laughter. On her return, I asked her, ‘How did you get the tea out of the bag?’ to which she replied, ‘I squeezed it’ and then I sniggered even more as I developed a mental image of her slogging over the cups for ages mashing the tea bags. I said to her, ‘You must have been there for hours!’ and she said, ‘Not hours, but it did take a long time.’

We get our stock from in store donations, van door-to-door bag drops and excess stock from other stores in the West Country. The only problem with this is that some of the stock gets lost in transit. I know this because of the amount of single shoes that materialise from the bags. At first, I assumed that the shoes had been donated singularly, perhaps from a person with one leg, but now that shoes without partners are such a regular occurrence, I have decided that there is either a shoe monster lurking in the bag pens or there must be another store somewhere in the West Country with the other shoe; and someone there trying it on thinking, ‘dammit’, just like me. We had a total of three spare shoes today. I am thinking of suggesting a mating service upon our bulletin board. Perhaps we could have a list, starting with Barnstaple: Size 4 Green Stiletto, etc., and ending in Wellington, size 6 black court, and so on and so forth. I loved the brand-new single shoe I found today so much, and it was such a perfect fit that the thought of having one did cross my mind, only briefly, as I tried to think of ways of getting around the problem. I considered hopping, and wearing odd ones, or cutting one leg off before eventually coming to my senses. I am thinking about putting it out for sale, as it is brand new, and if a customer asks where the other one is I will inform them that there isn’t another one, keeping an entirely straight face.

I can tell that my customers have ever only been shoppers. The nice ones make comments when you are trying to close such as, ‘Ooh I’ll let you get closed dear, I bet you’re wanting to get home’. One day I will have to ask them whether or not they think that new tills can actually cash themselves up. I may tell them, ‘Yes, I am, we have special carpets in here which magically absorb the dirt that you mucky lot have trodden into it and then turn it into air freshener’. The nasty ones huff because they expect you to stand there all evening and then make dinner for them. They make sarcastic comments when you turn the lights down and start to rattle your keys. ‘Excuse me! I think your lights have gone in here..!’

Once I remember turning all the lights and music off, and displaying a large sign on the door, stating: ‘CLOSED FOR LUNCH 12.30-1.00’. I had managed to remove everybody from the shop and only left the door unlocked so that Gloria could get back in after popping to the bakery. I nipped to the toilet, and came back to find the shop completely full of people, shopping in near total darkness. I overheard a couple of them commenting, ‘bit dark in here in’it Wend…’

I have even made a special sign for the door for the end of day closing. Locking the doors and turning out the lights simply isn’t effective enough. People just knock. I suppose this supports the theory that we stock the shelves over night. I wonder how many people just stand there bashing on the door long after we’ve gone home, assuming that if they shout for long enough someone will eventually appear from the backroom carrying an oil lamp. The sign for this purpose states; ‘WE ARE CLOSED. IF YOU COME IN NOW YOU WILL HAVE TO STAY ALL NIGHT’.

I am nearly out of reasonable ideas to ensure the shop appears closed, short from boarding up the windows and chaining the door shut.

It appears to be a charity shop thing, so if you have not yet worked in retail and feel that now you do not want to, do not be put off. I have never encountered any of this type of behaviour in any other retail outlet. I suppose it all comes down to those dirt gobbling self cleaning carpets that we have. If one does not get in quick, the stock may have completely disappeared by morning.

I have tried my hand at the old wheeling and dealing, and market stalling. At least, my wheeling and dealing involved wheeling, not so much dealing, and I made it to my first car boot sale just the other day. This was okay, as I had gathered up rubbish for years. As some say ‘speculate to accumulate’, my motto is ‘accumulate to procrastinate’. I had decided it was time it just went, but it was such good fun that I may have to gather a limitless supply of the junk. I think this is what lots of people do. They probably end up out of pocket.

Not I however. I have discovered the true way to make money. A while back I went to Instow beach (this was once a desirable holiday destination in the 1920s but because where we live one has the choice of about five of the most beautiful beaches in the country, Instow is rather regarded as the dump). While I was there, I gathered drift wood. For no particular reason, just my natural stowing instinct I suppose. When I returned home, I tipped out my findings to realise I had absolutely no use for them whatsoever. I suggested to my mother that we could sell ‘em on’ car boot sale to gullible grockles (that’s Devon for holiday makers) displaying a large sign stating: ‘REAL DEVON DRIFTWOOD – £1 A STICK’.

I chuckled to myself wildly as I envisaged myself pointing out the wonderful pattern on one particular piece, and saying to the tourist, ‘Yes, it’s wonderful isn’t it,’ then under my breath,’ probably sewage..’ followed by, ‘okay, you’ll have that one? That’s £1 then please.’

I chuckled to myself even more wildly when somebody actually bought it on Sunday. I had made a bracelet holder out of two of the pieces, in an attempt to make some use of it. It was a pretty shoddy attempt, and was leaning horribly to one side while laden with jewellery on my stall. I was just trying to stop it from self destructing altogether when one lady asked me, ‘How much do you want for the stand?’ I looked up in utter disbelief and answered, ‘You actually want to buy it?’

‘Yes, how much is it?’ she replied.

I said, ‘Well, I dunno, 20p?’ as I even explained to her that it was ‘probably rotten’.

She gave me 50p in the end, as I bundled the whole thing into her bag, in pieces, just simply a pile of pieces, of real Devon driftwood.

I am still trying to imagine what she has actually done with it. I’m on for next week. I feel like Africa when they realised they had diamonds. I’m sitting on a fortune.

Now I’m going to touch upon health and safety. This relatively new phenomenon has provided approximately 40,000 new jobs across the UK. Whether these people do actually believe that you are at risk from climbing onto a 9 inch footstall or whether they are just doing it for the money I suppose we will never know.

At work, we have a ‘health and safety’ file. We have a health and safety poster, which must bear the signature of everyone who steps into the dangers of ‘the backroom’. We have health and safety meetings, health and safety briefings, monthly health and safety leaflets (this is when they have discovered something new and dangerous every month which was not previously recorded in the 7 inch thick health and safety file). We even a have health and safety inspector, and lastly we have an ‘incident and accident and every time someone coughs’ book, which due to latest reviews must include daily written accounts of ‘potential dangers’ as well as actual incidents.

Here is where I admit my downfalls as a manager. After the 36^th day of arriving at work to write about the ‘danger of the step’ before I did anything else, I’m afraid the book was slung to one side as never used again. That is until Gloria joined all of our other customers and promptly fell down the step and broke her wrist. I think this got a mention.

The step. This, to our shop, is like a man-trap placed right across the centre of the room. It catches at least one person a day. And to think our ancestors had to invent such things as gin-traps.

Our customers fall up, or down it constantly. We have a large ‘please mind the step’ sign, yellow and black tape, flashing hazard warning lights and crash barriers guiding people to the danger. We even put up a fold away ramp, but people would fly off the side of this one backwards, usually landing on across the counter, and this proved much more hazardous than the original straight up or down ‘step’ fall.

One woman even tried to pursue legal action against us, a charity which helps people with debilitating disabilities.

After completing an incident booklet especially for the step, I managed to persuade the inspector at our recent health and safety visit to provide funding for a permanent slope. After announcing the good news to one of our struggling customers, I was greeted with an earful on how slopes are ok for ‘you young and fit’ but have I ever ‘put your back out launching yourself onto a slope that you didn’t know was there’. I can’t win.

When I applied for the job as manager of a charity shop, I imagined tea, biscuits, looking after the elderly and standing behind the till with a change pot under the counter repeating, ‘That’s 10p dear’ all day long.

I was in for a shock. The elderly are demanding. They demand tea, coffee, and biscuits constantly, and it is my duty, as shop manager to provide. No sooner as I spend out of coffee, the loo roll runs out. I am putting on a jolly smile while fretting about how to keep expenses under a reasonable maximum.

The customers are demanding. They simply can’t understand why you do not have what they want. You try to explain to them that you are a charity shop, and that you can only stock what comes in, but they continue to dodge you as they try to take a peep into the hidden wonders of the ‘backroom’, convinced that you are hiding something from them.

We have some wonderful, and valued, regular customers. I would like to take the opportunity to thank them. However I must point out, that as much as we like to work for charity, we do not stay all night. I see so many customers waiting longingly outside the door first thing, waiting to see the new stock, which we put out over night while we dress as nocturnal animals.

I must admit that there is a certain allure to the mystery of the ‘backroom’. Whenever I have been a customer myself, I have often caught a glimpse of some wonderful article, which is not yet on sale. But I can assure everyone that this is simply not the case. When you pick out that fabulous fabric from the rail, it is probably some hideous costume outfit that has not even been used in stage performances since the turn of the last century.

The remaining articles most likely consist of wedding dresses, with half of the bride’s dinner down the front where they couldn’t afford the dry cleaning as they had already spent their entire life savings prior to the wedding, or any other article that has yet to sell on the shop floor, hence not allowing room for fill ups.

Where we get our stock from is of no question. People kindly wash and launder their unwanted clothes, then kindly bring them into us or leave them out for our bag collector. I can remember one couple parking their car outside and literally scooping out armfuls of screwed up items. They nearly dumped them on the serving counter, before I urgently redirected them to the wonders of the ’backroom’. Lucky them. They threw each armful down on to the sorting table, absent of even one black bag, before admitting, ‘We were going to take it to the dump but of course it’s closed today isn’t it’.

Some of the bags we collect from our bag drop are so poor that it often makes me wonder if they put out the wrong bag. I feel sorry as imagine all the worn-once Monsoon dresses going into landfill. Either that or there are some people who do indeed find uses for empty yogurt pots. Perhaps they think we are so desperate that we may appreciate the teaspoonful that is yet to scrape out if we so tried.

I opened a bag recently that contained a canvass shopping bag bearing the images of cats, with quotes underneath each picture. I thought to myself, ‘Oh no, this one’s a cat-lover…’ One quote, apparently by Ellen Perry Berkley read, ‘What every cat owner knows is that no one owns a cat’

What every cat owner doesn’t know is that they stink of cat. I picked out the best from the bag, stood back and sprayed from a safe distance. Thank you Fabreeze.

Cat people are particularly peculiar. We had a lady who came in a while back, and I served her while I was on my own, ears half alert to her mumbling life story. She started to tell me why she had not been in to buy her skirt first thing this morning as she had to get to Sainsbury’s as they had a wonderful offer on the cat food. Now, I could have sworn to God that she said that it was ‘lovely in sandwiches’.

My ears pricked at this bizarre statement and I started to wonder if I was going quite off my rocker. I said, ‘Really?’ and she replied, ‘No, no it is’. This alone was not quite enough to confirm whether or not it was her or me that was completely barking. Or should I say mewing. So I asked her, ‘Do you have cats do you?’

‘Yes’ she said, ‘I have 9 cats’. Yep. It is definitely her.

We’ve a wonderful old lady called Gloria who works very hard indeed for us. There’s only one problem, well a couple of problems actually, the first being her lack of fashion expertise. She holds up a pre-faded ‘Fat Face’ hoodie and wrinkles up her nose in disgust. I over-hear her muttering, ‘such a shame’ as I catch a glimpse of the £85.00 price tag as she lobs it in the rag bag. I also caught her with a Topshop sequined vest top which I only noticed because I’m sure I’d only seen it in Topshop a few days earlier. She mumbled, ‘old fashioned’ to herself as this invariably was thrown to the same fate.

Her second habit becomes apparent as we have strict guidelines on what we are and are not allowed to legally sell in our shop due to health and safety. Talking about health and safety, no, I’ll go onto that later. Gloria can’t bear to throw the little cuddly toys away that do not bear the relevant CE label. (Or should that be that she can’t bear to thrown away the bears that do not bear the relevant CE label.) She hugs them close to her heart and rubs her nose in their nylon fur. I often hear her say, ‘Oh but looook, how could you’. I go for a good hunt around at the end of the day and find them stashed in all sorts of unlikely places. When I’m tidying by myself after dark in the depths of the winter months, the little glassy eyed monsters leap out at me from under the kitchen sink.

We have another dear lady called Betty, and watching the two of them together is really quite charming and amusing. The fashion for uneven hem lines on baggy vest tops baffled Betty completely. She said, ‘Oh my word, this looks ever so tatty and out of shape.’ She held up the hem and exclaimed, ‘what on earth has happed? Got caught in the wash I imagine’.

The winning bag so far has to be the sex-o-mania bag. This one opened up to reveal a pair of nipple clamps, four explicit videos, lots of saucy undies and two rampant rabbits. Gloria started out of habit, to rummage around for her little battery box that she keeps under the table, before I stopped her and reminded her that it was irrelevant whether they worked or not, we were not putting them out.

I have become accustomed slowly to nearly all things second hand, but there are some things that I draw the line at. Vibrators being one of them. Knickers being another. I also bear a slight suspicion towards towels, toothbrushes and mattresses.

You’ll be amazed at what people buy however. When I had to serve a young couple the ‘Make you sex life work for you’ book, which incidentally came from the same bag, I’m not sure who it was more embarrassing for. When they asked for a bag I told them that it was charity policy not to supply bags and I was afraid that they would have to just walk down the street carrying it. It’s good to have a laugh sometimes. You can’t have a job where you cannot laugh.