9am confession

I want to make a confession. I don’t throw Bibles away. It’s funny people who don’t believe in god in times of hardship and despair call upon the Bible. I’m not saying we are going to give away free bibles with every purchase but I do think it’s something we can’t always put a price on. We often receive donations of high interest and age a few months ago I blogged about a 200 year old Bible, how do you put a price on religion and faith?

This large plaque of Jesus Christ nailed to a cross was donated to one of our volunteers this morning as she was waiting outside, she is a very keen lady and has once or twice been spotted waiting at 8:30am - we don’t open until 9 so I have advised her to stay in bed a little longer but she say’s she likes to wait..wait? wait for what? Armageddon? A train? The new argos catalogue? I still don’t know what she’s waiting for, she actually looks like one of the Queens Guard/Secret Agent she stands very upright and firm and with dark glasses, she appears quite imposing and there is always donations beside her. I’m sure if she stood there all day people would just pile donations on her and she wouldn’t move, which suggests the rest of the week they are stolen so I try to get there earlier now.

Back to my original story we have put Jesus in the window and I hope he goes to a very happy home. Do you know some people call their children or even more surprisingly animals Jesus...Oh lord.

Back in my day....

You hear a lot of people saying “oh back in my day we didn’t have new clothes we had to “make do and mend” and we didn’t have charity shops, look at this Edith it’s hardly been worn its lovely” I used to roll my eyes, this has changed.

Since visiting Eden Camp Museum in Malton I spent a good few hours there and learnt a copious amount about how back during World War 2 people lived and feared for their lives and more importantly how they survived. After this experience, I have a new found respect and interest that maybe I didn’t have before and it proves that its ignorance why many people maybe don’t respect the past.

Whilst walking around I kept noticing items that sometimes pass through our hands at the charity shop, jugs, singer sewing machines, hats, tools, old wooden toys, medicine bottles etc all the sorts of things your Mums, Dads Granddads and Grandmas would have used and played with and maybe kept after the war as a “souvenir” and it amazed me how much history and rarity can pass through the paths of charity shops. I was definitely surprised and a little annoyed we hadn’t kept hold of these artefacts. We are becoming more savvy and learning more about these almost other worldly goods as we should, we have a duty to Autism Plus to make sure these are sold at the correct and fair values as people who donate the items want as much for them as possible or else they wouldn’t donate to charity.

I saw medicine bottles for ailments such as “purifying the blood” & “boils and spots” and “feeling under the weather” imagine a bottle for curing under the weather! Brilliant! Just imagine if people could buy these now. I have included a photo I took of some of the bottles in the museum...

If you look in the photo of the bottles you will notice a Boots product, Boots back in 1940! I think it might be a lung purifier or something to do with having bronchitis I will definitely keep a look out for this in the future! I just hope they have cleaned it first! I must reiterate most of the bottles we have donated into our shop have been emptied and cleaned. (we always wash items before they go out for sale regardless)
Anyway to end this long blog nicely here are some photos of some of my favourite donations today:

A nice ethnic patchwork rug. I’ve seen one very similar in a store called “Collard Manson” , we are very modern aren’t we :)

Also featured is a nice floral cream jug, saucer and sandwich plate beautiful for afternoon tea on the veranda.

custard, bag pipes and money

Strangest things we have had donated: 

·       A tin of custard

·       A fur coat made out of squirrels (with the heads and tails still attached)

·       Ornaments from Amsterdam full of whisky (see earlier blogs)

·       A cabinet full of cat hair and rabbit droppings

·       Homemade CD albums

·       Empty cardboard boxes

·       200 year old bibles

·       Out of date pack of ginger nuts

·       Underwear (from people you would not expect)

·       Exasperatingly large clothes

·       DVD’s with the adult movies still in the machine drawer (apparently Japanese “actors”)

·       Bag pipes

·       Guns with bullets (mainly decorative) in primark carrier bags

·       Swords (blunt)

·       Bags of rubbish quite literally

·       Adult toys

·       Leather jackets with various random items still in the pockets

·       Lipsticks with the head bitten off

·       Foreign money

Most (if not all!) cannot be sold in the shops and must either be disposed or sent to the authorities but does supply us with endless entertainment. Thank you all for your donations.

To be continued…..

I see you everywhere I go Mr Customer

Poor Steve, the Van Driver. The man who puts out endless bags and loyally follows them up a few days later in his little white van trawling the streets for goodies so we have something nice to sell in our shops. People used to give more but now rogue van collections are about, unauthorised (and not registered charities) following up the trail of charities like us and collecting the bags before we can do so. It’s frustrating and it’s wrong. Plain Jayne and Simple.  So Steve and Mike work together as a team week in week out trying to get us that stock. They don’t only do that, they also move stock between shops (stock rotation, usually stock that hasn’t sold in a shop after having it on the rails for a few weeks), moving furniture between our units and generally heavy lifting stuff. Today along with a volunteer they have been to collect some private donations from a farm, including a nice table and chairs and a leather sofa. So it’s not true what they say about white van men some of them do good!

One thing I must record for prosperity: there is a customer that I see everywhere. He rides a bike and is always drunk. I see him at work when he comes into the shop (fair enough you may think) but I then see him cycling down the road near where I live (30+ miles away) I see him sat on random benches in and around areas around the city, garden centres, parks etc EVERYWHERE. I parked under a bridge the other day in a town I grew up in and it was raining heavily and I was having a heated discussion with one of my friends and there he was strolling by, bike in hand. I almost believed I was stalking him, a series of unfortunate events actually. He once asked me if I was an exotic dancer, well if he sees me now he won’t think that because I’m hastily piling on the pounds and I have a wedding to go to soon. Maybe hes God? Who knows, although that is blasphemy as God is definitely never drunk. Except when he made Cliff Richard.