My wife the entrepreneur…

Its the early 1980′s again, I am living in the little pit village that I speak so much of and working in the big city for an electrical contractors when one day one of our electricians comes into the office with a tale of woe and merchandise to sell.

His dear mother it seems has just had to close her wool-and-wimmins-clerthes type shop in Jarrow and now he has the remnants of her stock to sell and were either of the two women who worked in the office interested in buying such trendy things as leg-warmers, for he has lots in these two black bin liner that even now he is holding at arms length as if he wishes the ground would open up and swallow him – it not being seemly for a man who works on building sites to want to sell wimmins things.

If it were anyone else then I wouldn’t believe the sob story, but this was Tommy Johnson, the mildest most inoffensive man in the world, my mate off the building sites Tommy Johnson, I took the two bags of wimmins stuff off him and told him that I’d sell them for him, why I do not know, but he looked mighty relieved and quickly informed me that there was a list inside one of the bags with the purchase price of each item on it – in other words these prices were what his mother had paid the wholesaler ok ?

Its important is this bit, thats the price that they had cost his mother, ok.

So it being lunchtime I took them home to my future wife’s mothers house, ok its probably easier to say my future mother-in-laws house, where my future wife was sitting gabbing to her mother and her-from-up-the-street.

I quickly explained what I had in the two bin liners and as the women eagerly dived into the bags I told them, I definitely told them, that the price list was what they had cost, the wholesale price, and I definitely recall telling my wife to be that she should double the price on the list to find the retail price and in doing so we would make ourselves a nice little £50 or so, which in 1982 was not to be sniffed at – I’m an entrepreneur you see, I know all about wholesale and retail prices me, I’m clever like that.

Come 4pm and I’m sat in the office and my wife to be rings me full of joy, she’s sold everything in the bags and her mother wants to know if theres any more for they only had to stand outside in their street for ten minutes for the word to get around and women from all over to come and avail themselves of wimmins things bargains.

I call Tommy Johnson and he too is overjoyed at the news but confirms that sadly no, this is all there is but not to worry as we have both made ourselves a few quid on the deal, and I confirm that yes indeed Tommy, yes indeed we have, for I put 50% on the wholesale price and he could have half if he wanted – you see what I did there, I didn’t tell him I’d doubled the prices, I just said 50%, see, thats called entrepreneur that is, write that down, you never know.

So that evening I go around to my future mother-in-laws house where my future wife presents me with an envelope full of money and the list of items all ticked off and added up to a lump sum at the bottom, “Its all there” she proudly tells me, “all there in the bag”, and something doesn’t feel right all of a sudden.

“You’ve added up all of the prices that Tommy wrote down” I tell her, and she confirms that yes, she’s added up all of Tommy’s prices and that is exactly what is in the envelope, they’ve sold the lot, aren’t they good.

“You didn’t sell everything at these prices did you ?” I ask, pointing at Tommy’s wholesale price list, and she confirms that why yes of course they did, for those were the prices.

“No” I cry into my cupped hands, “you’ve sold all of the stock at wholesale”

“And ?” she asks

“And so there’s no profit” I tell her and go on to explain the principle of commerce while trying not to swear a lot.

And the next day I have to explain to Tommy Johnson that the envelope contains all of the money that his mother was hoping to gain and yet none of the money that he and I were hoping to gain, and Tommy being Tommy just shrugs his shoulders and says “Ah well”, and he gives me five pounds out of the bag which I do not tell Suzanne about.