Jumble sale
A jumble sale, bring and buy sale (U.K, Australia, occasionally Canada) or rummage sale (U.S and Canada) is an event at which second hand goods are sold, usually by an institution such as a local Boys' Brigade Company, Scout group, or religious institution such as a church, as a fundraising or charitable effort. A rummage sale by a church is called a church sale or white elephant sale, frequently as part of a church bazaar.
United Kingdom
Organisers will usually ask local people to donate goods, which are set out on tables in the same manner as car boot sales, and sold to members of the general public, who have paid a fee to enter the sale. Typically in the UK the entry fee is somewhere between 20p and £1.
Jumble sales may be becoming less popular in the UK, as car boot sales and the World Wide Web enable people to sell their unwanted goods rather than donate them to charity.
United States
Rummage sales in the United States as a rule do not charge any entrance fee, but sometimes charge a fee, or reserve for paid members or donors access to "preview sales" before the general public is admitted. Sometimes the sponsoring organization excludes donations of certain items, such as furniture or exercise equipment, or have a sale restricted to a single type of goods, such as book sales or sports-equipment sales.
Jumble Sale
My love life was as humble as my features when I
stumbled
On the jumble sale. Unbelievable,
The things that you can find there. They've got stuff
of every kind there
At the jumble sale.
I was down and out, I'd nowhere else to go,
I'd sown my oats, I'd flung my fling.
The parish hall was all lit up, its doors were wide.
I poked my nose inside,
Before I'd time to hide
The vicar asked me in.
Romance perchance prevails
At humdrum jumble sales.
With a jaded eye I eyed the faded piles of lumber
Of the jumble sale, rough and tumble sale
Where ladies of the village fight like visigoths for
pillage.
Dear old jumble sale.
But behind the cut glass, brass and pewter pots
The plaster pussy cats, the china gnomes
I saw a girl, a wild eyed butterfly
Junoesque but shy
And just the thing for my
For my mantelpiece at home.
Chick of the bric-a-brac
Pick of the vicar's knick-knacks
With a pounding pulse I skulked around the bulky
counters
Of the jumble sale, fumbling at bundles
Of those long-departed trousers, old pyjama-tops and
blouses
Found at jumble sales.
I'd not got the savoir faire, the flair,
I hardly dare look over at her stand.
But with determination which defies belief
All set to come to grief
I grit my snaggle teeth
And I took her by the hand.
One bob per objet d'art
Gratis and carte blanche my heart.
Iacta was my alea, my chips were down and numbered
At the jumble sale. But suddenly my tongue tied,
I just burbled, I just bumbled, I was sure my chance
had crumbled
At the jumble sale.
I just stood there in a funk, a dumbstruck booboo
Gawping at her pretty bibelots.
But then she smiled. Not much, but I knew then
I'd see her lips again,
Her bijoux and her gems
And her precious curios.
Perchance romance prevails,
So come to some humdrum jumble sales,
Jumble sales.
