*Yesteryear Happy Memories*

Yesteryear Happy Memories

What a difference a few decades makes when your buying and selling.

When we started out over three decades ago, before the markets, we tried to make ago of party plan.

We would turn up with a rail of stock and hope the hostess had bothered to invite someone. Matt absolutely hated it and would wait in the van, I on the other hand loved it, chatting to grannies and neighbours I was in my element.

We had a borrowed van, courtesy of Matts old football manager and his wife, Gerald and Gerry Jones. To whom we will be eternally grateful ❤️

God that van was ugly though, I actually made curtains for it!

The rust was so bad that if you lifted the floor mats up you could count the hedgehogs in the road underneath lol.

This came in handy when it rained heavy though because the windscreen leaked so bad, we had to stuff it with tissue, which I would then wring out through the holes in the floor whilst going along, so that Matt could actually see where we were going!

We needed windscreen wipers on the inside too!

Both windows didn’t have any handles only a spanner, they were either fully open in summer or permanently shut in the winter?

I loved that little van though and I named her Wilma out the Flintstones and having just passed my driving test, I rounded her off nicely lol.

I would drive down the middle of the road so as not to hit anything, it put the fear of god up any passengers and pedestrians.

Anyway, my poor mum and dad , they truly had the patience of saints.

We had an office in their loft – as that was the only space left unoccupied in their house.

We couldn’t afford to insure the stock in the van making it too risky to leave outside so, we would have to unload it every single night!!!

Up their stairs, we would crash and bang then pass it up through the loft hatch, basically letting all the heat out the front door on route.

Thankfully we didn’t have much stock then!

We didn’t mind as my mum and dad were so strict that even though Matt lived with us (he had a z-bed in the dining room) he wasn’t allowed up stairs unless my little brother was with us.

This drove us nuts, we would close the loft hatch and pretend we couldn’t hear him calling to come up because we was having a meeting lol!

We had a street map pinned to the roof and we would colour the streets in as we canvassed them for parties, door knocking .

Oh how we hated door knocking

Looking back, after a days work, the last thing you want is to get up to someone knocking on your door selling clothes parties!

How thankful we were to the kind ones that were pleasant, the ones that didn’t swear at us, threaten to set their dogs on us if we didn’t get off their property in 5,4,3,2,1 seconds lol we used to run and laugh.

I tripped walking down someones front garden though and they were all sitting in the front room watching me, Matt ran but I had to knock as they were all looking at me, they declined having a clothes rail delivered and then laughed so loud I could hear them as I walked back up their path with mud up my back and leaves in my hair!

One door we knocked I got the absolute giggles because someone answered the door and I said,

” Hello is there a lady about the house I can talk to?”

they replied, “Yes, me!” I thought she was he!

Instead of just carrying on with the sales pitch in a nice professional manor I proceeded to dig myself in a little deeper “Oh, Im sorry it’s the lighting I thought you had a beard going on!” ….she didn’t want a party either?!?

To be continued………….

Reggie’s 20th Birthday

When I asked Reggie what she would like for her birthday, she said some time with me so maybe a day out at Broadstairs.

Everyone came to visit last week when I was away with my mum in Broadstairs but poor old Reg because she was just so busy with work.

So off we went back down to the coast for the day.