Web Page No 2726

 

24^th October 2020

 

1^st Picture: Typical Jumble Sale

2^nd Picture: Cub Pack 1969

3rd Picture: Opening new hall 1932

4^th Picture: The Troop 2016

 

 

Sales at Farlington Scout Hut

 

When I was a youngster in the 1950’s, my mother was very involved with raising money for the local scout group in Farlington, There were three main ways that this support group employed, all of which have seemed to have disappeared since the advent of car boot sales and charity shops.  These three methods were Sales of Work, Jumble Sales and Rummage Sales. The first seems to have disappeared completely and that last two eventually combined and became the same thing before disappearing. My mother was involved with all three events and so, by default, was I.

The Sales of Work were very straight forward events with the local ladies producing hand made products, for sale. These invariably included tea cosy’s, place mats, table cloths, serviettes, gloves and scarves, plus toilet roll covers, embroidered handkerchiefs and aprons. Then there were the stalls of paper goods such as celebration cards and calendars, local home-grown seedlings and plants, plus the jams, pickles, cakes and buns that all seemed to be in abundance. The Sale of Work was easy to staff but the Jumble or Rummage sale was a real nightmare. 

The sale involved at least two days work. Once all the jumble had been collected and deposited in the scout hut during the week then the real work started all the tables were set up, the items labelled and, hopefully, priced and placed on the tables ready to sell. Most of the items were handleable but the second hand clothes and shoes area always seemed to comprise of vast mountains of things to sell that reached well above where I could reach in the early days as a small child.

The sale would be advertised in small ads in The Evening News and we could always guarantee that at least half an hour before the doors were opened there would be a group of about a dozen dealers, who came up from Portsmouth by bus, forming a queue outside and eventually banging on the door to be let it, hopefully early. This never happened!

Opening time at 2.00pm was terrible, when the doors opened these dealers, all women, would rush in and start stuffing clothes and other items into the very large bags they had brought with them. Some money seemed  to change hands but I tend to think that more items were taken than were paid for. After about twenty minutes things quietened down a bit, the lady dealers that had rushed in and bought up all the quality good stuff and were, within half an hour, back on their buses returning to the centre of Portsmouth. I got the impression that these ladies would travel all over the town on a Saturday taking in two or three sales each day. To me, as a youngster, these ladies all looked the same, they all seemed to wear long overcoats, carried large bags, most of them appeared to have no teeth and they all smoked!

After these dealers had gone things then progressed quite quietly until 4.00pm when the sale closed, the money counted and the hall tidied up. Then a man would arrive with a flatbed lorry and agree a price to take away all that was left , whatever it was, and the sale was over for another year.

But these sales were gold mines for enterprising young boys as all sorts of things could be found on the white elephant or bric-a-brac stalls and often, I managed to acquire odd items for my own use. These items were many and various; for example, I remember coming away with a gas mask and a sword stick, an old naval officers’ dress sword, binoculars and all sorts of ex WW2 items. But my favourite were the old radios. I would often buy them, or remote speakers, and take them home and try to repair them, normally successfully. It must have been in the blood as my father started off life as a radio engineer doing his apprentice time in Martins the electrical and fishing shop next to Cosham crossing gates, then moving onto HMV in Newbury before joining the civil service. However, during the period that I was fiddling around with radios he was away working in Ceylon so I was entirely self-taught. The pinnacle of my radio career was when I re-built an old radiogram that only played 78’s to, a then modern, Hi-Fi system. But interest eventually waned with the introduction of the transistor, valves were fine by me but transistors were complete puzzlement.

Now all this has gone, I cannot remember the last time I saw a Jumble Sale advertised but occasionally you see that some club is running a ‘table top sale’ which, I suppose, is all that is left of the once popular Jumble Sale!

Something else I remember are the Garden Parties held by the local Conservative club and held in Mr Gammon’s  large garden at East Court on the corner of the Havant Road and Court Lane opposite The Goodwyns, much to the annoyance of his household staff. But that is another story.

     Stay in touch

 

Peter

 

gsseditor@gmail.com

 

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On this day 24^th  October 1960 – 1965

 

 

On 24/10/1960 the number one single was Tell Laura I Love Her - Ricky Valance and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 24/10/1961 the number one single was Michael - The Highwaymen and the number one album was The Shadows - Shadows. The top rated TV show was Sunday Night at the London Palladium and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25.

 

On 24/10/1962 the number one single was Telstar - The Tornadoes and the number one album was Best of Ball Barber & Bilk. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 24/10/1963 the number one single was Do You Love Me? - Brian Poole & the Tremoloes and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64. Lord Home, relinquished his titles to become Sir Alec Douglas-Home, became Prime Minister following Harold Macmillans resignation

 

On 24/10/1964 the number one single was Oh Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

 

On 24/10/1965 the number one single was Tears - Ken Dodd and the number one album was The Sound of Music Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.