Well, July has been rather on the hot side. Heatwave followed heatwave, and ice cubes and ice creams flew out of the shop as soon as they came in. It was difficult to keep up with demand, and we had to resort to borrowing space in volunteers’ freezers to store it all! Thank you so much. One thing that customers frequently asked for was dog ice cream. I am very pleased to announce that we now stock it: ‘Strawberry, Apple & Banana’ flavour to be precise. I would have thought dogs would prefer sausage or bone flavour myself, or, if your dog is anything like mine, fox poo flavour would go down a treat!
We couldn’t avoid noticing that there were some important events going on last month, customers stocking up with all sorts of things they wouldn’t normally buy. Two young lads bought a number of packets of biscuits, announcing: “There’s a big game on tonight.” I just hope it wasn’t one of the ones starting at 10pm or even 1am!
July was obviously a month for youngsters demonstrating their spending power. Two other young lads came in with loads of 2ps. Helen, our deputy manager, patiently showed them how to count them into £1 bags, and they spent a considerable time carefully rehearsing their numeracy skills. The 2ps eventually amounted to the princely sum of over £2, which was then spent on sweets! Well, I guess they’d earned them after all their effort.
The lottery. Very popular amongst our customers, not so popular amongst our volunteers. There are so many different ways of doing the lottery: scratch cards (eight varieties), lottery tickets, slips of paper on which the customers choose their numbers, or a ‘Fast Pay’ card, which isn’t quite so fast if you can’t work out how to scan it! And then customers can either win a ‘Free Play’ or cash, again different for scratch cards or lottery tickets. Phew! Well, the good news, is that there’s now a new lottery to play: ‘Powerball’, from America. Which means that you won’t find out whether you’ve won until the early hours of the morning after the draw day! If you can get your head around that! The big jackpot could apparently hit a mere £1 billion. How many noughts would that be?
August can be a nerve-racking month for our young people waiting for exam results. “Will I get into my first choice of university?” or, “Can I do the A-levels I want to do?” We’re all rooting for you, hoping you get the results you’ve worked so hard for. Well, we’re all anticipating wonderful things, and, to celebrate, we have congrats cards, along with ‘Good luck for University’ ones. And, of course, we stock chocolates, fancy biscuits, and all sorts of drinks. Good luck, all of you!
Jean Burden