what I find in Oxfam books

Whilst I am on an animal theme…. Sometimes on holiday, animals have featured. Memorably in Majorca, a lovely rabbit called Coco who used to frequent our apartment and was eventually ‘sent to the family farm’ because she had burrowed – unbeknownst to us until our last morning – into the bottom of our mattress. And, some years ago in Portugal it was a dog called Graham. Last year it was…

This is an obituary dog-blog so if you are not a dog-lover or think that someone wittering on about their dog when obviously your own dog is the epitome of dogs, or you think such a things sentimental nonsense then feel free to walk away- indeed I encourage you to. It is mostly for me and Best Beloved and few friends anyway, so don’t feel too bad. The Best Beloved fell hook, line and sinker in…

I do like an auction and despite the upheavals of recent months, I managed to find the time to be at two of them in the same week recently. So, the first one was a not-to-far-away country auction where I have found upholstery projects relying on the fact that despite rumours to the contrary, brown furniture has not come back into fashion ver much. If you are not an auction familiar, here are a…

So, after two years of trying, we are now the owners of a house in the great metropolis of Petersfield and will leave our country living behind. No more watching the deer with a backdrop of The Downs from my shower, for example. Swapping that for the future-proofing ability to walk, not have to drive, into the town centre. No more crab apple crop, amazing apple crop from a damaged tree which…

I wrote the piece below in 2007 whilst living in Brussels and having the bright idea of setting up a website which looked for the best design for people getting older/old. It was a good idea but, like many I have had, I didn’t follow it through – I’m not good at doing projects alone and though I contacted a then friend who ran a design company and he loved the idea, the ‘children’ who worked for…

Before I start, I would just like to make it clear that we are very lucky people to be able to have a holiday on a very lovely Greek island. Having got the disclaimer out of the way, I will start on travelling with the Best Beloved and his disability. He can’t balance well or walk well. Just so you know. Passenger assistance at Gatwick is great and we are well used to how it works and that…

The Best Beloved took on the daunting (in my view) role of being an independent visitor to someone in care. He was ‘given’ a Vietnamese ‘boy’, I can’t quite remember but I think he was 14. He was lucky in that he had got fostered by a lovely couple.  The role of an independent visitor is to be an adult outside the home/fostering system to provide an outlet for the young person. Bao, needless…

We are selling our house.  The idea is to move from the countryside into the giddy bright lights of Petersfield. It will be a wrench but it will, hopefully, give the Best Beloved a new lease on life, you can’t use a mobility vehicle across muddy fields. Anyway, we have had to make the house viewer-friendly instead of presenting an eclectic choice of furniture and general stuff – gone are the…

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…

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…

At the risk of spinning out holiday stories well beyond their sell-by date, this is somewhat different. It is about accessibility, public money and management speak.  ( You can switch off now if the above is all rather alarming.) As a happy-to-admit-it-leftie, I am not convinced that all things public are bad, wasteful, lazy, and all things private are fast-moving, clever, better value for…

I can feel you are getting a bit bored with Oxfam surprise donations, but I am going to chance my arm with just three more….. and there are more pictures than text, if that helps. But even so, I do warn you,, I am cramming in, so it’s a long read. Firstly, the humour and interest in alphabetising. Not a sentence you hear every day, I do know that. This made me laugh and I had to turn to the…

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…

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…

Whilst we were in Malta, it was the celebration of  the extended holiday on the island of St Paul who, perhaps unsurprisingly, became their patron saint. Apparently he got shipwrecked there in a February though it is not entirely clear which one( As I said before, we probably should have checked the weather before we booked a February trip – shipwrecking month). He was there, so it is said, for…

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…

A while ago we went back to Hawes ( in a lovely part of North Yorkshire in case you didn’t know). Years ago, we had ended up staying there in a last minute booking in a pub which took dogs.  When we came downstairs ( after that delicious moment when you take your boots off after a good day’s walking) we found the bar was fully carpeted in dogs. Bigs ones, little ones, working ones, mutts,…