The Church in Brit Lit - The Jumble Sale

As we gear up for our increasingly lucrative Quietside festival, it is fun to look at this type of fundraiser as it is presented in British fiction. One of the simplest versions is the ubiquitous Jumble Sale. All kinds of odds and ends are sold at such parish sales and one can easily revisit one’s old possessions. In A Glass of Blessings Barbara Pym describes Wilmet meeting a “distressed gentlewoman wearing a lavender-colored cardigan that I had sent to St. Luke’s last jumble sale…I could only suppose that one of the organizers of the sale had allowed Miss Prideaux a kind of preview of some of the best things, for I hated to think of her fragile old body being buffeted by the rough jumble sale crowd.” 
Elizabeth George in The Presence of the Enemy presents Stanley, a hapless garage mechanic, as a prime suspect of a child’s murder when part of the child’s school uniform turns up as a rag in his garage. The detective asks, “Can you tell us where you got the uniform?” 

“At the Jumble Stall.”

“What Jumble Stall?

“At the church fete. We have a church fete every spring and this year’s was Sunday. I took my gran because she had to work in the tea booth for an hour. It wasn’t worth taking her to the fete, going home, and coming back, so I hung about. That’s when I got the rags. They were selling them in the Jumble Stall. One pound fifty each. It was for a good cause. They’re raising money to restore one of the windows in the chancel.” 
Miss Prideaux and Stanley are typical Jumble Sale shoppers and the church benefits from their small purchases. Our Quietside Festival now has a chairman for a Jumble Table, so save your attic treasures and “white elephants”.   We can make this an important part of our festival.  And is Stanley the murderer?  Read The Presence of the Enemy and unravel the clues for yourself! 
CassWright