Too Many Cooks
Four’s company, five’s a crowd
Oh, if only Dame Barbara Cartland were still with us. She should really be writing this week’s exciting episode. Or if she were busy, Mr Mills could probably have run something up with the able assistance of his chum Mr Boon.
As you have probably guessed, you should prepare yourself for fluttering hearts that beat as one. You should be braced for swooning, for stolen kisses, for walks in the moonlight, and all that stuff. Mrs Beasley, you see, is properly smitten.
If you are new to Woman’s Weekly, you should know that Mrs B is the manager of our charity shop. Reaching for a Thomas Hardy novel in a bookshop recently, she glanced against the hand of a man called Michael, who invited her for coffee on the grounds that they shared the same taste in reading matter. To cut a long story short: They got on rather well.
They are now an item.
She has recruited him to work in the shop. They pass romantic evenings together reading Far from the Madding Crowd to each other.
Some people just live for pleasure, right? Anyway, we, the humble serving folk of the charity shop, are very pleased for Mrs B because she’s not had it easy since getting a divorce from Mr B, and Michael is just lovely. If I were Mrs B’s mother and she brought Michael home, I’d be booking the wedding reception before she had the chance to change her mind.
For a start, he looks like an older version of the actor James Fleet, complete with flopping fringe. He has worn well for a man in his middle 60s. He is slightly shy and self-deprecating, but with a twinkle in his eye. He is thoughtful, makes us lots of cups of tea and – a big plus, in my opinion – he arrived on his first day at the shop with a packet of biscuits.
There are just two downsides to all this. For a start, Mrs B emerges from the stockroom from time to time and just watches him at work (see fluttering hearts and swooning, above). She doesn’t say anything, she just looks. For anybody who happens to be standing next to Michael, this can be rather unsettling.
But the main problem is, well, we weren’t exactly short-handed before he arrived. Now he’s joined the team, we are, let me see, how can I put this politely? Well, if we were making broth on MasterChef, it would be so spoiled by the over-availability of cooks that poor Gregg Wallace would go red in the face and explode with gastronomic rage.
Take this morning, for example. Heavy rain is beating against the window. Mrs B and Ben are in the stockroom, attempting to look busy. Wendy, Michael and I are standing by the counter looking at the rain.
‘What a foul day,’ says Wendy, for the third time.
‘Foul,’ says Michael.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And it looks set in for the rest of the day.’
I mention this exchange so you can be impressed by the range and depth and, indeed, sparkle of our conversation. Honestly, sometimes it’s like being at one of those political salons that Edwardian duchesses used to arrange…
‘My, but ain’t this fog shockin’, Lady Chippenham?’
There is nothing like heavy rain to guarantee a slow day in the shop
‘You said it, Lord Rotherham. It’s a right pea souper and no mistake.’
‘Yet, according to Viscount Kettley, there will be clear patches later in the day with a chance of scattered showers comin’ in from the north.’
‘Oh, and the north has been so generous in the past with its scattered showers. Should we ring for more tea?’
There is nothing like heavy rain to guarantee a slow day in the charity-shop world. For some reason, there are very few people who glance out of the window in the morning at torrents of rain and say to themselves, ‘What an absolutely perfect day for lugging four heavy cardboard boxes of books, three sacks of old clothes, and those toys we cleared out from the loft to the car and then driving through heavy rain to the charity shop, which is about 100 yards from the car park.’
That means, in the shop itself, we are five volunteers in search of a job. When a poor, unsuspecting old lady comes for a browse through the racks, she is surrounded. When she said that she was really just looking, you could have heard the sigh of disappointment in every town for a 40-mile radius.
We would tidy the bookshelves, but never have they been tidier. Michael has even been along the spines with a duster. The clothes on the rack are now arranged by colour. Dora, the plastic lady who is currently modelling a tweed suit in the window, even though it’s not really her colour, has been moved a foot to the left by me, only to be moved six inches to the right again by Wendy. We have had three cups of tea, and eaten our way through half a packet of chocolate digestives.
We are halfway through yet another chat about the rain when Mrs B appears and wonders how we are all getting on. ‘To be honest,’ says Michael, ‘it’s rather quiet and I’m feeling a bit like a spare part. If you don’t mind, how about I go home and get my toolbox, and I can fix that shelf that’s come down in the stock room?’
With that, he was gone.
‘Oh,’ says Mrs
B. ‘Isn’t he just wonderful?’
Answers on a postcard, please.