1989

This story is genuinely true!

Nearly 25 years ago during our ownership of Dig & Delve in Swanpool Street, Falmouth Lou and I were getting ready to go home when about 5.30 pm a customer comes in asking for the boss so being senior to my Lou I stepped forward ‘Can I help you’? “I want to leave Falmouth early in the morning and I have a house full of furniture, I want it cleared tonight for £500.00 cash”
I explained it would be impossible for us to clear a house at such short notice but we would be prepared to ‘come have to look tonight’ to see what is involved. The house was just over the road from Falmouth Rugby Club and we were amazed by the task because of the good furniture and every room full of good quality and very sellable items.
The man we will call Olley took us through the house pointing at all the items he wanted up to take away. We were surprised that his wife must have left in a hurry as in the main bedroom all of the drawers were full of her clothes and dresses some very ‘horny’underwear and a quantity good jewellery the lot! There was a mountain of bedding in fact out of the ten rooms there was just a car load of Olley items. The kitchen cupboards and drawers were crammed with quality pots and pans and entire sets of fabulous dinner services and cutlery galore! As soon as we were finished with the clearance he and his dog would journey away from Cornwall to Southampton.
Olley was distressed to the point of crying whilst constantly drinking whiskies and telling us he and his wife had fallen out, she had left him and he wanted to close down his life and start afresh away from Falmouth. In the front room of the house was a parrot that talked non-stop mainly with curses and the ‘eff word’ in every sentence ‘You can piss of you old cow-go on eff of now’ followed by shrieks of laughter but no he wasn’t included in the deal as had been sold to a pet shop.
We arranged to meet early in the morning to get started with a mammoth task as we moved all the contents into our shop, our quayside stockrooms , home, everywhere was crammed and all this for the bargain price of only £500 cash. By about five o’clock we had cleared the lot and wished Olley good luck and said good-bye to Parrot who again told us to ‘eff off’

Next day we could not move in the shop with floor to ceiling boxes of goodies so we had to restrict customers to the front of the shop as we sorted and price up the new stocks! There was a huge amount of women’s clothing and as we did not sell clothes I wandered around the corner where 4 really lovely lady pensioners ran the local AGE CONCERN charity shop they were all cuddly and gorgeous and had great sense of humours so when I told them the story about Olley and his parrot and all the drawers full of undies and grundies and dresses they said bring the round tomorrow. Lou and I started filling bin liners to be delivered however in one of the drawers she found some really good jewellery and 6 different shaped rubbery coloured dildos with undies galore! She could not see the funny side of this but I thought it would be great fun to make sure they all work with new batteries and put them together into one of the Age Concern sacks! She went along with the joke so I delivered 10 sacks of clothing just on their closing time with a warning ‘Before you open in the tomorrow start with THIS ONE you will have a bloody good laugh’!

Shortly after nine Lou had collected several other bits and pieces for Age Concern lovelies and decided to take them round to their shop. Surprised, they were closed she tried the very securely locked front door and could hear howls of laughter coming from within! She banged on the door and they let her in. She had never seen the great fun side of this foursome as they had some of the undies on and brandishing their dildoes making indecent un-granny like gestures which I will leave to your imagination, Lou was worried that one of them might break her false teeth as she took on one of the vibrators! (Really Granny, that’s very rude) but they had-had the ‘bloody good laugh’ I had promised them and opened the shop an hour late!!

Lou was tiring and getting teasy about ‘stock everywhere’ and became a pain the arse so like Ollie’s parrot I told her to eff off for a few days, she looked exhausted after the removal fiasco, typical woman, cannot stand the pace! On day three she came back to the same full shop but it was organised and the ‘buzz word’ had gone out that Dig & Delve had got some great stocks and we had two record weeks in a row.
The Olley clearance was the best one we could have wished for and I would estimate that over the months and years that followed we would have made over £20,000 on the deal! Thank you Mr Olley…..but……………?

Lou has a suspicious mind and when we first looked at the clearance we were told there was nothing outside the house the contents were all inside and the curtains to the rear were always closed, she had a feeling that Olley had bumped off Mrs Olley and buried her, its only because she heard the parrot screech” She’s IN THE FUCKING GARDEN” and Lou noticed his pretty ugly dog was constantly standing and looking up to the kitchen door even though Olley had taken it out for walkies? Spooky darlings?

AGE CONCERN; Sadly the shop we used to have so many laughs with the lovely lady volunteers for Age Concern has been replaced by an Arts & Crafts showroom, yesterday Lou and I were in Falmouth Town Centre and remembered the fun days and how these darlings of the charity shop filled peoples lives with respect and happiness and love but they had wicked sense of humours and I loved them like they were my own!! Sniff, Sniff get the tissues out mother….

Ps; They took the dildoes home! Hah!
October 2012

By the way: Louise still does house Clearances;
0777 951 7749