A Day In The Life

When I'm not selling vintage at festivals or fairs, dressing up as a unicorn & being serenaded by 1980s pop stars or spending all day in Wetherspoons what on earth do I do with my time? Here's how I've spent today.

The alarm went off at 7am. After feeding the cats & the tortoise I had a 30 minute Wii Fit workout before joining Jon in the kitchen for breakfast (Lidl's Fruit & Fibre and a mug of tea). After a quick wash I got dressed, tuned into 6 Music and altered a couple of dresses from the depths of the stockroom. I turned a 1960s Crimplene maxi into a mini, using the surplus fabric to make an A-line skirt and shortened a St Michael 1970s pinafore making it less of a "my Nan used to wear one of those" to a "I'd wear of those".

Sunday was glorious and we spent most of the day in the garden, picking wild blackberries and gathering the glut of windfall apples from our trees. I printed off some labels for the jars of spiced apple chutney (recipe HERE) I'd made yesterday and then knocked up a blackberry and apple oat crumble.

Jon had been over to the mechanics to sort out a problem with our work van. When he got back we had a coffee and then walked into Walsall via Church Hill, which dates back to Medieval times. We call it the Hill of Doom. It's a killer in high heels and positively lethal if there's a frost.

The Brutalist structure  in the background forms part of the Gardens of Remembrance, designed by architect Geoffrey Jellicoe in 1952 as a memorial to the dead of the two world wars.

 As we're having a bit of an Indian Summer I dressed appropriately in an off-the-shoulder gypsy top I'd made from an old silk sari and a 1970s Chelsea Girl Indian cotton wraparound skirt block printed with images of the Taj Mahal, peacocks and holy cows bought from Tin Trunk at Stockport's Twentieth Century Stores.

Once we'd been to the Post Office and bought the AA batteries, Palmer's fragrance free body lotion, price tags and suede protector we needed we had a look round the charity shops, finding a Mr Bennett English-made dead stock 1970s plum velvet suit and a vintage Indian beaded orange tote bag.

Jon treated himself to this gabardine Nicole by Nicole Farhi blazer. When we googled it when we got home it turns out that it retails at £295, not bad for £5.95!

After cheese salad sandwiches I priced the jewellery we're taking to V Dubs in the Valley, pimped up a mirror with some Poundland pom poms and did a trial run of how the display table should look at the weekend.

I hadn't unpacked the mens' accessories since End of the Road and the scarves and cravats were horrendously creased so I did some ironing in the Kinky Shed (our super duper custom built stockroom) while listening to the radio, then I set up the racking to do a dummy run of both the mens' accessories and the womenswear, double checking that everything was priced, then packed it away ready for the weekend. 

In the meantime Jon had been in the coal cellar and sorted out his stash of vintage VW car bits so he could have an auto jumble outside our pitch. I printed off a "£5 sale" sign for him as well as some replacement signs for the shop.

After tea (roasted red onion & vintage Cheddar quiche with salad) I washed up, emptied the bins for tomorrow's collection and had a shower.

Tonight we'll be eating crumble (mine with natural yogurt, Jon's with custard) , catching up with  Beck  (and the lovely Gunvald) and watching the last of  One of Us, which neither of us are particularly enjoying but as we've see the previous three episodes feel like we've got to see it through to the end. I'll read a chapter or two of The Gettin Place when I go to bed.

Tomorrow we're off to the mid-week car boot sale and then the rest of the day will be spent sorting, pricing and packing stock for V Dubs in the Valley, where we'll be heading on Thursday morning. Our last festival of Summer 2016...sob! 

See you on the other side.