Sunday Groaner
On the delights of the parish jumble sale
            The Rectory
            St. James the Least
My dear Nephew Darren
    The estimate for re-hanging the bells in our church tower came as something of a shock. The church council discussed fund-raising at length. Someone suggested selling part of the Rectory garden for building, another for getting 200 parishioners to loan £1,000 each, interest-free. Mrs Ffrench suggested holding a jumble sale. The jumble sale won - mainly because it gives everyone an opportunity to see what their neighbours think of as junk.
    Expensive articles are brought with an ostentatious show of modesty when everyone is together, sorting donations. Genuine rubbish, such as black and white televisions that broke 20 years ago and cardigans with holes at the elbows are left at the church hall doors in the dead of night.
    Before the doors opened, all the helpers were assembled behind piles of clothing, which had they collapsed would have smothered half the congregation. I was unable to see little Miss Faversham, who rarely misses these opportunities to kit herself out with another year's wardrobe. Someone pointed to one table and told me she was in men's clothing. I always had my suspicions.    Once the doors were opened and customers poured in, I got a better appreciation of how the Italians must have felt when they saw Hannibal with his elephants pouring down the sides of the Alps. That is when the mettle of our ladies really shows, haggling over whether something worth £10 goes for 10 or 11p. Those used to riding with hounds seem best able to control the crowds - even if they occasionally tend to regard the customers as the fox.
    As it happened, the youth club were going pot-holing that day, so most of the teenagers bought complete sets of clothing for 10p which could then be discarded afterwards. I wondered what their caving instructor would think of teenagers arriving dressed in dinner jackets and tweed skirts.
    Two days of preparation leads to a battle that is over in less than an hour and we emerge bloodied but unbowed, home for a bath, in the knowledge that the first step to saving the bells has been taken. Only another 2,500 jumble sales and we shall have reached our target. The day was slightly marred when I crossed the church hall car park to see a note stuck on to my car: "Sold - to be collected later".
Your loving uncle,
Eustace
How to make your wife more efficient
An efficiency expert was delivering a seminar on time management for a company's junior executives. He concluded the session with a disclaimer: "But whatever you do, do NOT attempt these task-organizing tips at home," he said.
"Why not?" he was asked.
"Well, I did a study of my wife's routine of fixing breakfast," he replied, a little embarrassed. "I noticed she made a lot of trips between the refrigerator and the stove, the table and the cabinets, each time carrying only
one item. So I told her: “Darling you are making too many trips back and forth carrying one item at a time. If you would only try carrying several things at once you would be much more efficient.'" He paused.
"Did that save time?" one of the executives asked.
"Actually, yes," the expert answered, "It used to take her 20 minutes to fix my breakfast. Now I get my own in seven minutes."
The Parish Pump and the Benefice entry to the South Derbyshire Churchman can now be found on the internet at: http://churchbroughtonchurch.blog.co.uk/