Nothing can prepare a household for a four day visit from Sally, mostly because it'll stretch into seventeen days or a month and wives and husbands will have long stopped talking to each other or washing their children weeks before there's any glimpse of the end in sight.
An all-pervading sense of frustration stretching to infinity ruins any attempt to remain civil to Sally as saucepans get burned, crumbs pile up everywhere, unwanted fish appear and rot in the fridge and pound blocks of cheddar cheese get "accidently" dropped into Sally's home made celery soup which uneaten except by herself fills the house with noxious reek from the evening of the second day until she leaves, usually by force after days of silence and me suddenly cracking and yelling after a particularly withering look from my wife and begging looks from my children, " MUM! You are leaving! NOW! Get your bags packed and I'll be waiting in the car! What? No, I haven't checked the train timetables; you'll get on the first one available! What? What do you mean," I'm not leaving Shirley with you in such a temper you bully!" ?
Oblivious to the marriages she has wrecked, Sally would travel from son to son, outstaying her welcome, breaking precious porcelain, leaving endless cups of undrunk tea all over the place, breaking fridge doors by opening them and using them as a seat whilst her toast burnt to ashes in the then forever unusable toaster, driving the kids mad by borrowing their "Chopper" bikes to go shopping on, the parents madder by talking endless twaddle about the shape and colour of obscure friends' rooms and local shopkeepers agog with wonder after she'd shown them her family photographs and told them everything about everyone she'd ever known.
But worse, far worse than anything else were the pins and needles that she, I think, deliberately left stuck in furniture arms or dropped on the floor despite being ordered on arrival not, under any circumstances, to start repairing her clothes or anyone elses during her visit. I would have to be up at dawn to sweep the house with a strong magnet to prevent the children inadvertently treading on one or putting one in their mouths.
Sally had a thing about old clothes which, seeing in a junk shop ( long before the modern days of the genteel "Charity" shops which now choke our high streets and wreck any hope of restoring a thrivng local shopping centre ) she would buy and without washing , take apart to remodel for herself but never ever, ever complete!
Anything knitted would be undone and the balls of dirty wool thrown onto a mountain of hundreds of others which if you touched them would turn your hands black.
She had intended to reknit them into baby clothes. Poor babies!
One Christmas, knowing that no one else could stand the thought of her destroying their festivities we invited Sally up to ours and as usual all attempts to be tolerant disappeared within the first three minutes of drivel.
Coming quite forcefully into my room and grabbing me even more forcefully by the throat Shirley "suggested" that I might like to get Sally to do one of the two shows that I had mistakenly double-booked for the same day.
Getting her out of the house by 8am was a major feat on it's own but I managed and set her up in Newcastle's Guildhall with a large selection of shoulder bags, a money bag with a float and instructions to not talk to customers unless they asked for help and not to leave the stall unmanned at any time without asking a fellow trader to watch it whilst she went to the toilet or get a cup of tea and a sandwich and if she could manage it to stand all day and definitely never to sit and read a book as so many traders still seem to do before complaining that they'd had a bad day.
In those days I displayed on a rug on the floor and people could walk around and between the stock and choose. Well on this particular day I was due to go straight off to the other venue leaving Sally in her element, for she had been brought up as a market trader and took my leave but not before a colleague I was passing suddenly exclaimed "Oh MyGod! Will you look at that!" and as I turned I'm afraid that Sally was back in her TV watching stance, bent from the waist, legs stradling my display, with her back to the crowd, her skirt risen and displaying herself in an inappropriate manner!
And then the selling started, as if she was back in her youth," 'Ere you are ladies! lovely bags wot me son makes and blimey look 'ow cheap and 'and made and all!"
I left and had a terrible day selling almost nothing at a new place where the organisers had forgotten or simply couldn't afford to advertise and I've done a few of them!
Back at the Guildhall Sally stood flushed and triumphant with not a bag left!
"Mum! Where are my bags?"
"All gorn darlin'!" She was still talking Cockney. "I cud av sold loads more but I ran art didn' I? Youse shud av leftus moran youse did!"
I was shocked! I took the empty money bag off the chair where I'd left it and said, "Mum, where's the money?"
"Up me bloomers darlin! That's where yer money's safest! That's what me mum tort us! Ere y'ar!" and she started ladling the stuff out from under her skirt!
"Oh! And I boughta few fings an orl!"
And there piled at the back was enough stuff to make a lot of other traders very happy that I'd brought my mum!
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