A large, smiling stranger stood at the front door: ‘Hello! I’m collecting up any odds and ends you may have for our jumble sale.’ ‘You’ve come at just the right moment’, I cried, dragging him out to the garage, where stacks of dusty magazines and comics leaned heavily against cartons of old handbags, lampshades, hearthrugs and out-grown toys.
‘Super’, he said, quite bravely under the circumstances, and he still managed to look cheerful as he staggered out to his shooting brake with the fifth and final armful of our spring cast-aways.
‘I wonder why it is that one family’s old junk is someone else’s ideal home?’ I was thinking as I went back indoors. The house looked strangely bare and spacious, but I knew that it wouldn’t last. At the very first opportunity, I’d be down at the church hall with all the other jumble sale enthusiasts, buying up a fresh selection of old junk at bargain prices.
I love jumble sales. Some are overcrowded and smelly; some overpriced and ladylike; some are run by harassed PTA dads in school playgrounds. At a memorable Girl Guide one, held under spreading chestnut trees by the side of a village street, we bought our last vacuum cleaner. It was bequeathed by the local lady-up-at-the-manor, ‘no offer over £1 refused’. So, for a pound and sixpence, we took a chance on it working, which it did quite adequately. For many a year, I beat as I swept as I cleaned, and was reminded of that sunny summer’s day in the process.
There is a feeling of real adventure as we follow signs saying, ‘To the Jumble Sale’, down strange alleyways and up rickety scout-hut steps. Will it be packed to the door with treasure trove? Or just with other people, faded petticoats and curled-up old shoes?
‘Quick, over here!’ we cry, as we thread our way towards the White Elephant stall. ‘Look, there’s quite a nice blue and white soup tureen’, we chatter excitedly, ‘Oh dear! It’s rather badly chipped. What a pity!’
Bemused husbands drift past, clutching padded satin coat hangers and little frilly lavender bags. A triumphant young trendy is making for the door, loaded to the gunwales with art deco. Several people are considering bartering for ‘Stag at Bay’, because the frame looks as if it might have possibilities, and many of the younger children present will shortly be spending a completely silent and absorbed evening reading someone else’s old comics – a cheap price for silence at 2p a bundle, often reduced to ½p as the sale draws to its tattered conclusion. ‘Can we go home soon?’ mutter older sons and daughters, who would really love to dive in among the books and clutter, but fear the whole scene is a bit beneath their dignity. Jolly, extrovert husbands are holding old nighties across their tums and saying, ‘Ooh, just what I’ve always wanted! But is it really me?’ Thin, introvert wives are muttering: ‘Put it down, Arthur. Everybody’s looking.’
If the sale is taking place in or near one of the big cities, then some of the youngish customers are already wearing a fair amount of jumble. Tall, thin, bespectacled girls in old black granny gear are looking very seriously indeed at shapeless black felt granny hats. This is giving rise to a certain amount of hilarity among a nearby group of shapeless old grannies.
If the sale is in the country, the cake stall is generally worth heading for, and the laden plant counter smells freshly of moist earth. We track down a newspaper-wrapped clump of miniature campanulas – just what we need for the rockery and ‘Will 5p be all right?’ asks the shy, green-fingered lady in charge.
I once picked up an elderly iron cooking pot for a few pence. It looked full of character, but was really full of rust, so I stood it on a windowsill and filled it with potted plants.
‘Er, I wonder if I might ask rather a big favour of you?’ stammered a lady who lived nearby. ‘We’re having my husband’s boss to dinner at the weekend, and I thought I’d try my hand at jugged hare. And, er, well actually’, she said, all of a rush, ‘that black pot in your window would be just what I need. You wouldn’t consider lending it to me, would you? I’d take great care of it.’
I explained to her that its looks were deceiving, and that it was full of rust. ‘Oh, never mind about that’, she said gleefully, scuttling off with it tucked under her arm. I often wonder how things turned out at that dinner party.
Since then, we’ve trundled home with many an ancient bargain. But perhaps the very best jumble sale I’ve come across was the private one held recently by several families, including friends of ours, who share a large house in the country. Their wide range of sons and daughters decided to turn a communal basement room into their own disco, and the jumble sale was to help them raise funds for a record player. For weeks, the children stitched away at cushions and aprons, dressed Teddy bears, painted jewellery, baked cookies and collected each other’s discarded toys and clothing, plus any old family heirlooms their parents could spare.
The entrance fee was tuppence, and for this you got a cup of fruit punch, ‘to put you in a spending mood’. My word, how we staggered home that day – not so much from the effects of the fruit punch as beneath the weight of fivepenny Indian bedspreads, penny purple dinner mats, threepenny dolls and cars, comics galore and a fantastic stuffed thing – known in our household as the White Elephant – which is not quite a floor cushion and not quite a sag-bag, but which, whatever it is supposed to be, is just right for flopping down on to watch the television.
This spring, I don’t doubt, we shall lead our White Elephant out into the garage, where he will come to rest on the latest stack of books and toys and outgrown anoraks. There will be another knock on our front door, and the whole lovely jumble sale cycle will be set in motion again.