This is my mam’s 55-year-old vintage coat. Her Aunt Teresa brought it home to her from England in the late 1960’s. I didn’t know until a few days ago that she still had it. She probably kept it because it’s red; her favourite colour.
Well, it’s mine now and it fits me just fine. Thanks Mammy; I love it! I’m looking forward to wearing it next winter!
A couple of buttons got lost along the way so I just need to find new ones.
“I probably took them off to put them on something else,” Mam said.
I excused Lucy from drawing today. She’s busy making jewellery for charity.
The jumble sales in the early 80’s, as I remember them, were the equivalent of a trip to Mr Price or Penny’s today. There was something about a jumble sale that you just don’t get at a car boot sale or from browsing in a charity shop—or Mr Price and Penny’s.
A jumble sale took place only once or twice a year, so it was exciting, especially for children. It was a chance to have new things that didn’t cost half of your father’s wages. It was mostly second-hand goods on sale, but some things were brand new costing a fraction of their shop price. The proceeds would go to the church or a local charity.
The earliest ones I remember were held in the hall behind the Church of Ireland. I particularly remember the Christmas ones. They would be advertised for a couple of weeks beforehand; on posters in shop windows and in the local newspaper, The Celt.
We’d be gathering our pennies in anticipation for the big spend. Doing jobs around the house to earn extra.
We’d arrive at the hall to join the queue that would have started to form. You had to be early if you wanted to get anything worthwhile. People hopped from foot to foot to keep warm, even though they would’ve been well wrapped up in their winter coats and hats & scarves. The mammies would chatter among themselves, about Christmas and the foreseeable bargains at the jumble sale. Their puffs of breath forming little clouds in the frosty air. We, the children, would play around in the dark, scaring each other with ghost stories about the nearby graveyard in the ruins of the old church; Lord Lisgar and the headless horseman, banshees and werewolves.
As soon as the doors would open everyone would rush in and scurry to their favourite stall. The mammies would usually aim for the wardrobe section; the children for the toys and bric-a-brac. There was something appealing about the scent of old books and the musty whiff of clothes and shoes that smelt like they’d been retrieved from the attic.
Part of our Christmas shopping was done at these jumble sales. An ornament for Mammy, a book or a game for Daddy, which was really for us.
Sometimes we’d have money left to buy a bun at the cake stand or a slice of homemade bread covered with gooseberry or plum jam. Sometimes we’d just walk slowly past the cakes, looking at them, our mouths watering with the smell of icing sugar. The Christmas bakes hummed with nutmeg and cinnamon. Some of the kinder ladies behind the stand would sell a bun for a penny, if that’s all you had left.
Things sold quite quickly at the jumble sales, with very little left behind.
The things I remember buying at a jumble sale: old annuals—Judy, Mandy, Bunty, Twinkle. Any I didn’t already have. Enid Blyton books, Black Beauty, The Little Match Girl, a white sparkly belt, a hat, handbags, half-empty bottles of nail polish and perfume, dolls, nice pens, crayons, colouring books with just a few pages coloured in, playing cards.
I remember buying things like fancy little boxes or pots, just to put stuff in. Mam would say, “Oh that’s lovely”… when really she meant, “Where are you going with that oul thing?”
The popularity of charity shops did away with jumble sales. I hear about cake sales now and again, but they’re not a patch on the old-style jumble sales. Or is it because we look at things differently through our childhood eyes?
Did you have a babby house when you were a child? Do you know what I mean when I say babby house? It’s what we called our outdoor playhouse. The boys played in a fort and the girls played in a babby house. (Is this only in Ireland?) Occasionally the girls were allowed into the fort and very occasionally the boys were allowed into the babby house—and only certain boys at that!
Here’s the babby house I remember.
It’s built from planks of woods around the bottom of a big chestnut tree in the corner of a field. The roof is a sheet of rusty galvanise. There is one window, made from a panel of tough transparent plastic. The door is a sturdy rectangular flap, also made from hard plastic, hardly big enough for an adult to pass through.
There is a little shuck between the field and the big chestnut tree. A plank of wood forms a bridge for access to the babby house.
The hollows in the tree are shelves, to store old food tins and jars filled with shiny red and green haws. A broken clock hangs on the stub of a branch, and two rusty enamel mugs sit on their stove which is made of four red bricks stacked into a square.
The babby house is well-equipped with chipped plates, warped saucepans with no handles, bent spoons, and empty bottles.
Moldy dolls sleep on a layer of withered rushes that line the bottom of a wooden crate. Dinner is cooked in one of the bent saucepans; cabbage, peas, and potatoes (dandelion leaves, green haws, all sprinkled with white clover petals). Stones are used for potatoes and eggs.
Spiders dangling from cobwebs and creepy crawlies inhabit the babby house and get brushed out regularly only to return in the middle of the night. It’s cold in the wintertime and smells of damp soil. It’s balmy in the summertime and smells of fresh moss and chestnuts.
The babby house was our foxhole, a place for self-expression, a place to unleash our imaginations.
Tell me, did you play in a babby house? If you had, what was it called?
