Jumble sale etiquette

Stage one Sorting

• Never put your hand into a bin/carrier bag of clothes, ALWAYS empty out onto the floor. There could be anything in that bag. Nobody wants to handle second hand undies
• Always check biscuit/cake tins for contents and no matter how edible the contents may look do not consume
• Never judge a box by it’s cover
• If it's sticky use protection
• If it a good quality coat which you wouldn't mind secretly putting to one side and donating a fiver for...it belongs to another helper

Stage two Setting out the Display

It is crucial to ensure all the spouts of the novelty teapots which have been donated, are aligned pointing away from the door, or is that elephants always need to be pointed towards the door? All chips and cracks face the back or obscure by taller object.  Vases can be used to display the ever present fake flowers, I'm sure we saw them last year.

Stage three Selling

Have the float in the middle, start high, ask the purchaser their best offer, end up accepting 20p because you know you need to get rid of as much stuff as possible at the end of the day. Do not critisise the merchandise or peoples decision to buy broken crockery under any circumstances. 

Example One

 “Elderly woman struggles in with a donated stool for us the sell. Stool has three legs, when it should have four. Missing leg is attached by string. Woman suggests it would be a lovely project to re-attach the as it’s a lovely antique stool. Unfortunately hundreds of wood worm agreed the stool was desirable.  Anyway, we accept the donation, left it on the floor in front of the display. Some time later, guide leader approaches and says what’s with this stool? I start a sentence with “some old lady came in” stop sentence immediately as she is still stood in front of our table considering chipped novelty ornaments. Co-bric-a-brac attendant is waiving arms around pointing to lady, indicating it may be inappropriate to be disparaging about the goods we have for sale. Guide leader however continues and says, well I suppose we can take it round the back for burning! Eventually I manage to convey “Stop talking” using the art of mime and identify woman as donator. The woman was, fortunately for us, completely oblivious. Guide leader has the luxury of being able to walk away and piss herself laughing. Our penance was to be trapped behind the counter faced will selling very nearly offended donator of broken stool some broken crockery for 50 p. We have learnt our lesson.”

Stage four Bagging Up

When bagging up, when the guy will only take clothing it is important to learn the art of secreting non clothing objects in the bags to ensure he will take as much away as possible. Also be very flexible of the definition clothing, for example lamp shade could be clothing because you can wear them on your head right?

Count up the takings and relax, jumble had been redistributed around the village for another year, children have increased their immune systems and the rag and bone man is now the proud owner of a couple of jigsaws and a photo album. 

Dances with Squirrels

Quiz night at work - a fundraiser for Macmillan Cancer Support charity is an annual event which, until now I’ve not been able to attend. (a spin off from the Water bombing fundraising event). How hard can it be to sit at a table with work mates, answer a few questions and partake of the buffet. It appears I completely underestimated the complexity and organisation which goes into such an evening.

We arrive and have drinks at the bar (At the Leopald Hotel in Sheffield - a bit posh), all good so far. We trundle into the room for the quiz, laid out with big tables - 10 per table - novelty hats and balloons on the tables. That’s all OK, quite within my capabilities to try on the hat in a comedy manner and bash the balloons around.

There were however, quiz sheets on the table...loads of them. It was like attending an exam - except there was wine. beer, chatting and did I mention balloons. The only question I could answer was related to the Sound of Music. One of the series of questions was ‘name the missing animal form the film title’. It turns out, there doesn't seem to be any films with squirrel in the title, which was unfortunately the only animal that I could think of. It’s a shame because the film “The Squirrel Pit” is just shouting out to be made - I’ll write a letter,  maybe Peter Jackson would be interested.

The room was also wired up with projector, screen, pc and we had interactive clicker things for answering questions. Our allocated team name was scrubbers - with a picture of the tv show Scrubs, could have been worse I guess. 

We had a bit of a quiz, used our clicker and waited our turn for the buffet. As we were furthest away form the door to the food, we did need to take matters into our own hands and perhaps go out of turn to get our food. Unfortunately by the time we got to the buffet there were no sausages left...aaaarg what no sausages. Prawns and chicken and chips had to satisfy. After replenishing our brain cells with carbs and protein, there was a rumour that more sausages were arriving, so we hung around in the buffet room in anticipation, like you do. There was a bit of a tussle but - yes, sausages were acquired for our team. Nobody mentioned the quiz would be exactly like the Hunger Games!

Back to work. More quizzing, a bizarre game of heads and tails which involved pretending to be rabbits and aardvarks, a ‘live’ hook up to Hull football club to hear the results of the picture round, a game of playing card bingo, more questions, the raffle and that was all...phew. Now the only question remains is - what do I do with the bottle of Peach Schnapps I won in the raffle?

A great evening, excellent organisation, challenging questions (we just missed out on the win) and over £1000 raised for an excellent charity. Up next - water bombing...water bombing squirrels? I hope not!

Here's the link for Waterbombing We are Macmillan. Cancer Support.