Weekending...

It's been a stressful weekend in more ways than one.

In the midst of chaos, stress and worrying news I found a moment to make some bread. Wholemeal bread. The stuff of our childhood complaints. I love it now of course. This recipe does come out rather dense but it tastes so good warm that it's worth making just for the first few slices. A little bit of honey was a nice sweet treat too.

I've resisted chocolate for four weeks now but I keep reading that a little dark chocolate now and then is a good thing, so I had two squares of that yesterday and immediately got a whopping headache. Still, in the interests of health I shall persevere and have another square in a couple of days time.

I haven't talked as much about the charity shop volunteering as I expected. It's partly because there has been a lot of 'office politics' but also because it's hard to talk about the customers without sounding, well, rude. Mind you, when we get plainly rude customers in, then it's no holds barred. This Friday and Saturday we had plenty.

A woman held up a pair of John Rocha jeans and asked me how much jeans are. I tell her they are £3. She shouts across the shop, 'Three pounds, are you joking me? That's so expensive! Charity shops are such a rip off these days!' Yes the bad grammar grates on my nerves but I smiled and said that if she shopped in any of the town centre charity shops, or outlying towns she would find that £3 for jeans was actually the cheapest anywhere. She huffed and puffed and left the shop. Good luck finding jeans for less than £3!

Then there's the stuff we find in the pockets. I always wear latex gloves for pockets... condoms (thankfully still in the packet), coins, dirty tissues, sticky half sucked sweets, chewing gum, apple cores... you get the idea.

One woman came in yesterday and with no please's or thank you's, let alone a smile, she wanted me to check all the bags to see if any of them had a long strap as well as a shorter one. She mumbled so it took two goes to ascertain what she actually wanted, by which time she was in an even more foul mood. I did as asked and she huffed and tutted and sighed angrily when I said that none had a longer strap but I would ask the staff out back if they could check the stock out there. She just grunted so I took that as a 'yes please, that would be splendid, thank you'. The answer from the back room was no so she tutted and grunted some more. Honestly, people seem to think we are some kind of department store who can magically produce everything they ask for right down to the last detail.

I've had people come in and ask for 'forks with green handles'. Er no, sorry, not at the moment. Purple candles? No sorry, we did have some last week but we've sold out! (a total lie just for the fun of it). Do you have any spare parts for my Black and Decker lawn mower? Funnily enough, no we haven't. Do you have any crystal chandeliers? Yes, we have four, they came from Buckingham Palace when they were having a clear out! Have you got any socks with 18 written on them? Just go away please.

What breaks my heart is when a lovely old lady with the best of intentions has lugged three carrier bags of modern, desirable novels, all the way to the shop in her shopping trolley and we have to dump the lot because she smokes 100 cigarettes a day. Well, they smell like she smokes 100 a day. It's just not fair to sell them to unsuspecting people who might not think to pass them under their nose. I once bought a second hand book through amazon and left a comment that I was disappointed it and arrived smelling of cigarettes and the seller said, so what?

I've finished the little baby waistcoat. The pattern was a bit tricky so I winged the edging. It swapped between 3mm and 4mm hooks which was a bit of a pain and for little gain I thought. I just need to sew on a couple of buttons and take a quick pic.