Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air

What a day Flo and I have had today. We travelled together down to St Ives in Cornwall to watch their annual hurling the silver ball contest. It wasn’t as cold as it has been of late but I took no chances and wore my lighthouse fleece. I had tried to persuade Flo to wear hers but she opted instead for a rather unflattering khaki windcheater.

It was an early start, my Goblin started vibrating at 5:30am. It’s only a hundred miles but it takes almost four hours by train, with one change at St Erth, all of which meant we didn’t get into St Ives until 10:55am by which time the festivities had already begun.

The taxi driver probably cursed us as we asked to be transported the five hundred yards from the taxi rank to the seafront but he could see that my legs weren’t up to it. He was a miserable so-and-so anyway so I didn’t feel too sorry for him; ex-fisherman I reckon.

The harbourside was teaming with people, and quite a lot of children who should probably have been in school. Flo and I moved through the crowds like Exocet missiles, homing in on the Sloop Inn. An hour later we were sat enjoying spicy potato wedges with a sweet chilli dip in very agreeable surroundings.

We never leave St Ives without partaking in a Cornish pasty. After my Christmas vegetarian epiphany I chose cheese and onion while Flo went up-market with a chicken curry pasty. We then duped another salty taxi driver into taking us back to the railway station as we left behind a snowstorm of pastry flakes on the upholstery for his troubles. And so back to Exeter St David where we caught an executive coach back to Cheriton Bishop where Flo’s daughter Kirsty was waiting to drive us the short distance to Appleton Marsh.

I must remember to reset the teasmade before I go to sleep tonight.

Equapoise

When I eventually shuffle off this mortal coil here are five things I shall definitely not miss, in no particular order:

1. toothache
2. spiders
3. puce
4. any county north of Somerset
5. Wednesdays

Here are 5 things I shall miss:

1. friends that qualify for a glittery Christmas card
2. a warm bath
3. sunshine
4. biscuits
5. Brasso

Of course I would like to depart with a little more style, more panache. When the time comes I’d like to sashay, to glide or even to quick-step out, but I’m not fooling myself. I already shuffle. In fact, even calling it a shuffle is to be generous, implying an agility which has long deserted me.

Newfangled gadgets

When those eggheads at the British Vacuum Cleaner and Engineering Company invented the Goblin Teasmade, I thought I’d seen it all. Of course I hadn’t.

Over the next half century I found myself being tempted by all manner of newfangled gadgets. Some I could resist and some, being a lady of independent means, I couldn’t. Of those I couldn’t resist, some I still have, some I don’t. Of those I couldn’t resist and which I still have, some work and some don’t work. And of those I couldn’t resist and which I still have and which still work, some I still use. And when it comes to those I couldn’t resist and which I still have and which still work and which I still use, my Echo Hostess trolley is,without doubt, my favourite.

For these past forty years it has been my faithful friend, warming baby carrots, runner beans, sprouts, sometimes gravy and, on one special occasion, asparagus. If it wasn’t for the inferior quality castors you’d be fooled into believing this was a family heirloom. Its traditional teak veneer gives no indication of the cutting-edge technology that lies beneath its hinged wings. Stainless steel lids and smokey brown glass Pyrex tureens nestle in little incubators… a design classic.

So which other gadgets would be awarded the Doris Brazil quality kite mark? I do like my home wine-making kit and Flo still talks about Chateau Brazil 2009. And judging by the look of my TV, with its legs and dials, I don’t imagine it’s HD ready but I like it just the way it is and I expect it will see me out.

A touch of swine flu

That’s the expression Flo used in the shop today.

“I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather,” she said. “I think I’ve had a touch of swine flu.”

“I’m sure you’d know if you’d had swine flu,” I said, meaning to reassure my friend.

“I’ve had a dry throat these last few days,” she said, as if the evidence was overwhelming.

“Anything else?” I asked, then added, “apart from the dry throat?”

She thought about it.

“No. Just a dry throat,” she answered.

I didn’t have the energy to argue with her

Fashion Yin and Yang

Did stone age man wear animal furs to keep him warm or because they looked nice? Flo and I have debated this on many occasions and of course we’ll never know the answer, but it does highlight one of the constant challenges we in the fashion industry face. Every new season I have to ask myself, do my customers want stylish clothing or do they want practical clothing? I call it fashion yin and yang.

Just as yin and yang are complimentary opposites within a greater whole so it is possible, in theory, for clothing to be both practical and stylish. Not many manage to pull it off. There are more misses than hits on the High Street and even I, with all my experience, have had had my fair share of horrors. So it’s especially gratifying when you do judge the yin and the yang just right. One example that springs to mind is pictured here, the lighthouse fleece. I sold over hundred of these a couple of winters ago and I swear, not one of them has left Appleton Marsh. If you go down to the market on market day you’ll count at least forty of them out and about. In fact Flo and I were so impressed that we each bought one at the time using our 5% Doris Brazil staff discount and I mention this because I’m half-minded to wear mine to St Ives next Monday. If I can persuade Flo to do the same then I think we’ll cut quite a dash on the seafront, and we’ll be easy to spot in The Sloop Inn should any readers decide to join us for that drink.

Hurling the silver ball

Next Monday Flo and I will shut up shop, as we do every year on the first Monday after February 3rd, and head down to St Ives in Cornwall. The St Ives’ Feast marks the anniversary of the consecration of the Parish Church of St Eia in 1434.

In a tradition dating back hundreds of years, the residents chase a silver ball around the beach and the streets of the picturesque seaside town. The person who is in possession of the silver ball at midday takes it to the Mayor and collects five shillings (not quite enough for a Kit Kat). The Mayor and his councillors then throw pennies down from the balcony of the Guildhall for the children to collect. It’s a sight to behold, the look on their little faces.

For us it’s an excuse to let our hair down. We take the train, we don’t drive, because we tend to spend most of the day in the Sloop Inn on the quayside, in part because it can be so bitterly cold outside but also because neither Flo or myself are interested in the antics of the townsfolk and their children.

So if you’re in the area why not pop along to the Sloop and say hello to us, and you can get in a round of drinks!

Life in the fast lane

Ask anyone in Appleton Marsh and they’ll all tell you the same thing: “Doris Brazil is a lady in a hurry.”

I was in Fearn’s Apothecary this morning to collect my repeat prescription. There was a small queue and the dispenser behind the counter told me to expect a twenty minute wait. I should have guessed; ahead of me was Frank Boyd, a living testament to the pharmaceuticals industry.

“Twenty minutes!” I incredulated, if there is such a word. I proceeded to shoot the white uniformed messenger.

“Just because I’m a pensioner, don’t assume I have a lot of have time on my hands. It’s quite the reverse,” I said. “I am running out of time. Time is a precious commodity. You are looking at a lady in a hurry.”

The girl suppressed a smirk. I could tell exactly what she was thinking; it was written right across her face.

“When you’re my age,” I rebuked her, “you won’t move so fast either!”

She managed to smirk while simultaneously looking defiant. Try it yourself, it’s not easy.

“How old do you think I am?” I challenged her.

“Eighty?” she speculated.

“I’m seventy seven,” I said, deflated.

The wind had gone from my sales, my stuffing had been knocked out of me, my end was done in. I obediently waited my turn in the queue. Twenty precious minutes slipped through my fingers.

There was one moment of light relief though.

The dispenser shouted out Frank Boyd’s name and placed a large carrier bag of pills, suppositories and ointments and the like onto the counter-top.

“Are you well Mister Boyd?,” she asked in an excruciatingly patronising voice.

“Am I well?,” he snarled, snatching the carrier bag. “Does it bloody look like I’m bloody well?!”

It was my turn to smirk.

The fickle finger of fate

Back in 1925, if a certain tea delivery man (and it seems wrong that I can’t name him given that I owe him my life) hadn’t taken to his bed with the flu, then a young John Leadbetter wouldn’t have stepped in that day to take on his ‘round’. And, if John Leadbetter hadn’t stepped in, he wouldn’t have gone to Sevenoaks on that day, the day he spotted my mother outside a greengrocer’s shop. But fate was at its most fickle on that day because it was first, the last, the only time that my mother had ever visited Sevenoaks. So the story goes, she was there on a mission for her Aunt Amelia (although as stories go it’s a short one and nobody knows what the mission was). John Leadbetter spotted Mary Johnson across a crowded street, their eyes met and they fell hopelessly in love; so I like to think. Seven years later Doris Leadbetter was born.

The union of Laurence ‘Brazzy’ Brazil and Emily Smith was just as unlikely. Introduced by friends who had only met themselves because of a shared interest in poetry, their first date almost didn’t happen after Brazzy missed his bus and Emily turned up at the wrong cinema. He caught another number bus which took a different route and, as incredible as it seems, he spotted Emily stood there, outside the other cinema, as he rode past; but only because he was sat on the upper deck, facing the right side to see her.

Two particular sequence of events, each, in its own way, as rare as a string of DNA, had resulted in Joe ‘Brazzy’ Brazil and Doris Leadbetter entering the world. And it would take another set of equally improbable events (involving, along the way, a sheet of course sandpaper, a tin of condensed milk and a wooden pie mould) for Joe and Doris to meet some twenty four years later.

Finkle finger fate.

When Joe Brazil used his two front teeth to bite the cap off a beer bottle he didn’t intend to break those teeth nor did he expect to add injury to injury by gouging his gums in the same incident, setting off a year of nasty infections. If he hadn’t had to have his two front teeth removed he would never have met the dentist’s young and voluptuous assistant (I can picture the scene, the dentist dropping what remained of Joe’s pegs onto her steel tray as the pair of them look longingly into each other’s eyes) and perhaps if the treatments hadn’t continued, as they fought to contain the infections from claiming Joe’s other teeth (a battle they lost), then the relationship might never have blossomed. But it did, and in 1955 Joe left me for her.

Fickle finger fate.

Comings and goings

I was thinking last night about comings and goings, specifically on trains.

Over a year I imagine that half the train journeys are undertaken by people traveling away from home, for whatever reason, but then they all come home eventually which means that half the train journeys are also made by people traveling towards their homes. That’s over the course of a year and I expect the same holds true over the course of a month or even a week. But, on any given day it’s unlikely to be case because many people aren’t day-trippers. You could choose any train and, if you did a headcount,  find that it contained many more people going than coming, or vice versa. I expect on a Monday more people are going, and on a Friday the opposite applies, with a lot more people coming. So what’s happening on a Wednesday I wonder? Is it even stevens? It will differ by time of day as well. That’s another variable in the comings and goings equation.

Flo has an opinion on everything and transport management will be no exception. I’m exactly the same. I’ll ask her about this on Monday and no doubt we’ll end up bickering about it and by lunchtime we’ll have dug-in our heels and there’ll be an atmosphere but it won’t last for long. We’re usually reunited by indignation over something or other before too long.

Update on the 2010 Doris Brazil Internship

It’s fair to say that I’ve not had much response to the card in my window advertising the 2010 Doris Brazil Ladies Wear (DBLW) Internship.

So far only one reply. A lady from Shirley in the West Midlands, who goes by the name of Shirley. No, I’m not sure whether or not to believe it. Well, Shirley from Shirley is either playing mind games with me or else she thinks she’s entered one of those slogan competitions.

Her unlikely application goes as follows:

Where in the West Country will you discover unbridled passion?
And which ladies wear shop in Devon is at the leading edge of fashion?
Who would you think of if you want to dress to kill?
The answer’s always the same, it’s Doris Brazil.

Where will you find clothes for the fuller figure;
Where changing rooms are cleaned with Vim and vigour?
Who owns the shop that enjoys so much goodwill;
The answer’s always the same, it’s Doris Brazil.

I just don’t know what to make of it. At first I thought it was another one of Flo’s elaborate hoaxes, like that time we had the drug’s raid; the policemen were of the plain clothes variety, which threw me, and the sniffer dog looked like an overweight family dog which was exactly what it turned out to be, but for a while she had me sweating, especially when they discovered fifty rocks of crack cocaine at the back of the stockings drawer (turned out to be bicarb of soda but, at the time, I thought I was done for).

If it is genuine then Shirley clearly has not grasped what’s going on, and the last thing I need in the organisation right now is someone else slow on the uptake. Actually, my understanding is that Prada’s Internship scheme is open for months, not weeks, which suggests they’re also having difficulty attracting talent. I might point Shirley in their direction; being a larger concern altogether Prada won’t give her the hands-on experience she would have got with DBLW but at least she gets her foot onto the first rung of the fashion ladder. Everybody has to start somewhere.