Voluntary work in charity shop (3)

The third time I did work in the charity, both my mother and sister accompanied me. 

First, like usual we checked for clothes hangers. 

Afterwards, I priced some of the new books. For that, as well as deciding the price and writing it down, I had to write my initials, the year and the month. The reason being that it is important to know how long books have been up on the shelves if they haven't been sold, and also if one of the people working there is pricing thing a little too high or too low, one of the managers can have a word with them on how to adjust their prices.

Shelves can easily get messy, but most of the time, they can easily get tidied; my mother and rearranged one of the shelves, and I stuffed the boots on it with plastic bags so that they stood up and looked nicer.

Another thing I did was put the scarves so that they could be more easily seen. While I was doing that, a lady walked in with a really cute little dog. My sister and I stroked it and it was so soft! I hope it comes again one of the days I'm there. That reminds me that I might be doing work in the shop on some Fridays. 

Voluntary work in charity shop, second week (2)

On my second week of doing voluntary work in a charity shop, I looked for more hangers on the rails, and my mother and I tidied up the bookshelf. We threw out the really boring books, and changed prices of things. We also put the books on different parts of the shelves according to what kind of book they were, and I tidied up the 50p basket while my mother put more books into it. There were some new books that had come in, and we put those up on the shelves and priced them. It took longer than I thought, but it was still fun doing it. Also, while I was tidying one of the shelves, I came across two American magazines from the year 1965. They were called "Woman's day" and had some adverts inside for products that you don't get very much these days. Mum bought them both for me, and I'm going to photocopy them for my art journal.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to going to the charity shop again next Monday (Not just because I want to get more old magazines). I really like helping out there because the lady is nice to chat to, and because it's really satisfying when I finish a job and everything's tidy. 

Apple picking

Because we missed blackberry picking season, I asked my dad whether we could go apple picking in a secret location that I can't mention in my blog because other people will go there and pick the apples before us. Anyway, we all went, taking a broom and some of those plastic bags that it's really un-cool to walk around with.

It didn't look very apple-ish at first. There were a few on the ground, rotting and worm-eaten, and we didn't really feel like eating those, so we carried on walking. We saw some trees that still had apples on them, but they were diseased, and we didn't really feel like eating those either. So we walked on.

Green apple trees are not too hard to find, which I guess, is why we found one at the "Secret location". It had lots of juicy-looking fruit on it, but we couldn't reach the high-up ones, and neither could our broom, so one of the people with us decided to throw some rotten apples up into the tree, and they knocked down some good apples, which weren't so good by the time they hit the ground, but were still better than the rest.

Later on my mother spotted another tree, but it had red apples on it, and they looked quite tasty. I climbed the tree and used the broom to knock down some of the apples, but I had to be careful not to let them hit my mother and sister on the head, while they were picking up the ones I'd already knocked down. Dad said not to worry about hitting them on the head, though, not because my sister was being irritating, but because one  falling apple isn't really enough to knock someone out and injure them for the rest of their lives.

Afterwards, we hid the bags of apples and the broom, and went for a walk round the secret orchard. on our way, this golden retriever that walked like a show pony, and was really friendly came up to us and we stroked it. Soft, fluffy dogs aren't extremely uncommon, but this one was especially nice and furry. A lady appeared a few seconds later. She smiled and we exchanged helloes with her. She said the not usual things dog owners say about their dogs. At first, the lady just sounded normal, but suddenly, she sounded dutch, and said "Golden retrievers are very friendly, that is why so many young families have one". It was really funny when she said that because she pronounced all her 'R's as "GH"s.

Okay, back to apples! We made apple crumble, apple juice, hot apple juice with ginger, and apple chutney with the fruit we picked. Yummy!