Bob of Small End (6 page)

“
I’ll be
happy to do that.”

As usual Bob
stayed a night with both his children over Christmas. Sam’s
daughters, Jane and Bess, loved the kitchen set. They made three
cakes and some jam tarts as soon as they had time on Christmas
morning. Bob ate one of the cakes and two of the jam tarts and the
girls ate the rest.

“
You
didn’t save any for your Mum or Dad!” said Bob.

“
Well we
didn’t know if they’d taste okay, Grandpa. There were good, weren’t
they?”

“
Yes,
very good.”

“
Then
we’ll make some more for them.”

They cooked
five more cakes and two dozen jam tarts and ate them for tea. Lilly
said they were all very good and that they could help her next time
she made cakes.

Regina’s son,
Roy, wasn’t interested in his aeroplane until his Dad began
constructing it then he helped glue the paper on the wings. However
the plane wasn’t finished before Bob returned home so he didn’t
know how well it worked.

Whilst
visiting his children he looked at his grandchildren’s’ toys. The
only wooden toys they had were ones he had made. He was told that
they played with them but he wondered how often. The train sets
were toys designed for children aged five or six and they must be
boring for eight and nine year olds. There was only so much you
could do with an engine and three carriages, even if you had two of
them.

Regina and Sam
were very surprised when he told them he was going to Portugal in
February.

“
I
thought you didn’t need holidays,” said Sam. “What changed your
mind?”

“
Oh, Joe
asked me to join him and Jane on their trip and I said I would.
It’ll make a nice change.” He didn’t say anything about Claire, or
how she had changed his outlook on life. There wasn’t much to say
about her, anyway.

“
Well I
think it’s a good idea,” said Sam. “You should take a holiday each
year like we do. There’s lots and lots of different places to
visit.”

He thought
about Sam’s suggestion on the bus going home. It would be nice to
look forward to an annual holiday, and look back on it, afterwards,
though how could he pay for them? It was not sensible to spend his
savings on vacations. The grandchildren might need them or he might
need them when he was old and needed looking after. He’d have to
make more money and sell more toys. He could ask a shop in Big End
to sell them for him. Rose sold all she could already. What would
she think if he were to do that? Would she mind? He’d have to ask
her. That’d be the easiest way to make more money. Of course, he’d
probably get tired of making train sets. Maybe he should make
something else, something that would appeal to eight- or nine-year
olds. He’d have to think about that.

Since he had
nearly an hour to wait in Big End before the next bus to Small End
left he looked in two toy shops, hoping they might suggest things
he could make. All the toys of the kind he could build were made of
plastic. He thought about making them in wood but quickly forgot
that idea; it would take too long and they wouldn’t be as nice as
the plastic ones. Also he’d have to charge more for his and no one
would buy them. So he’d have to make trains.

Jane and Joe
invited him to have dinner with them between Christmas and the New
Year and, in return, he invited them, Rose and Jack for an
afternoon of drinks and snacks. It wasn’t until January first, when
he was about to make a New Year’s resolution ‘to make more trains,’
that he remembered he should first ask Rose if she would mind him
selling them in Big End.

Saturday night
at the pub he asked her, first telling her why he wanted to do
this.

“
It is a
very good idea Bob. I don’t mind at all. All the trains we sell are
bought by our villagers or by tourists that come to the village.
I’m sure they’ll still buy from us even if you also sold in Big
End. I think I know someone who might sell them for you. I’ll phone
her on Monday and ask, though I think she’s on holiday right
now.”

“
Oh,
thanks, Rose.”

“
I’ll
tell you what she says as soon as I hear.”

“
What
else do you think I could make Rose? I’ll soon get tired making
trains and carriages.”

“
What
about your birds Bob? You can sell them too.”

“
But
they take too long to make. I can make two train sets in the time
it takes to carve a bird.”

“
Well
young children are often interested in farm or zoo animals. Could
you make some of these?”

“
I could
probably make them but I suspect each one would take a long time
and I’d have to charge too much. I don’t think they’d sell if they
were expensive. I’ll look at some of my old wood working magazines,
there’s bound to be something there.”

Chapter 2 Jenny

Monday morning
Bob woke with an interesting idea; he could make a farm or a zoo to
hold the plastic animals that many shops sold. The farm could have
a house, a barn, a pigpen or a chicken coup. The zoo could have
enclosures of different sizes, an entrance with a ticket booth and
a shop where snacks could be sold. He could also make wooden
tractors or trees and fences that both sets could use. Surely these
toys would appeal to eight or nine year olds.

After
breakfast he sketched how the toy pieces might look and made notes
about how big they should be, how each might be made economically
and thought about how they should be sold. Would it be better to
sell them one at a time or sell several in a box? And, if they were
sold in sets, how many pieces should he put in each one? He
eventually decided they should be sold as complete farms or zoos
and he would decide how many pieces should be in each set later.
He’d make a farm set first and model it on Joe’s farm but he
wouldn’t provide a plan of the farm, the children could build their
own. He would make hedge rows in several lengths so they could lay
out their fields in different shapes, with a few wire rail fences.
He could also make a variety of barns and sheds and sell them as
extras, that is, if the farm set sold. There were a lot of things
he could make easily and quickly to house the animals that shops
were selling.

He began by
making a simple house. He considered making a more complex one, a
larger one with a covered entry porch, wings and a conservatory. a
bit like Joe’s, but a farm house really didn’t need to be that
complex. However, it gave him another idea; he could make a village
set; that could have several different kinds of houses, some shops,
a church and a pub. So many other ideas quickly came to mind and he
jotted them down so he wouldn’t forget. He would make a farm set
first to see how that sold, then a zoo set next to determine which
sold best. No, a zoo might be too much like a farm; it would be
better to make a village set next.

Bob’s coffee
breaks shortened and he lost interest in reading books. When he
went to Big End on Tuesday morning he didn’t go to the library.
Looking in toy shop windows interested him more than searching for
a new novel or reading the next edition of his woodworking
magazine. He spent his time constructing pieces for the farm,
watching the clock as he did so and thinking about what he could do
to make each piece more quickly.

By Thursday he
had made a twenty piece farm set. He sanded and painted the pieces
at the end of each day then left them to dry overnight. He
assembled what he had made then quickly realised he needed many
more hedges because the fields should be larger. Hedges were
difficult to construct yet a farm needed many of them. It might be
easier to make villages and have just a few of them. He’d talk to
Rose tomorrow and ask her what she thought.

He put
the set in a cardboard box Friday morning and took it to
Rose’s
Gift Shop
and showed
it to her.

“
I like
the idea Bob. Put some of the pieces on the counter and let me see
how they look with animals next to them.”

Rose put
several cows in one field and two horses in another. She then put
the man by the pigpen and the woman next to the back door of the
house.

“
They
look good but they don’t quite fit Bob.”

“
No, my
pieces are too small or your animals are too big. I’ll have to make
the farms bigger. Right now the cows could almost walk over the
hedge.”

“
Yes,
but I’ll put it in the window and see if it sells. How much do you
think we should charge for it?”

“
Well it
took three days to make but next time it should only take about
one. Do you think that thirty pounds would be okay?”

“
That’s
a bit high. Plastic farm sets sell for about twenty pounds but you
are making them of wood and many people like wooden things better
than plastic. Why don’t we try selling them for twenty two fifty
and see what happens. We can change that price or add more pieces
later if it doesn’t sell. Bye-the-way, I can order you some
cardboard boxes. They come flat, in lots of a hundred and cost ten
pounds.”

“
All
right. I’ll have a hundred. Let me pay you now; here’s the
money.”

“
Thanks.
Jack can make a label for them; want him to?”

“
Ah,
yes, please. Ask him to sketch a few and I’ll look at them tomorrow
at the Crown. Will you be there?”

“
Yes.
Jack’s looking at an old cottage right now but I’m sure he’ll have
time to make a few sample labels before then.”

“
Will
you lend me a cow and a man Rose? They’d help me get the size
right.”

“
Sure,
here, take these.”

At supper on
Saturday, after Bob had explained what he was planning to do, Jack
showed everyone the three labels he had sketched.

“
I’se
called your company
Small End Wooden
Toys
. ‘Wot d’you think o’ that?” said Jack.

“
It’s a
good name,” said Bob. “Then the toys could be called
The Small End Train Set
and
The Small End Farm Set
. I do like
the idea of using this village in the name. The Small End Wooden
Toys company. Yes, good, that’ll be fine.”

They discussed
the label designs finally settling on one after Rose and Jane had
suggested the colours to use.

“
What
would it cost to make them Jack?” asked Bob.

“
First
dozen ud be free Bob. Yer can pay for t’next batch.”

Monday morning
Bob used the cow and the man to set the size of each piece and
began to make twelve farm sets. He used a production-line process,
shaping a block of wood long enough to make twelve houses before
cutting it and making a long length of hedge that could be cut into
several lengths. It took about a quarter of the time to construct
each piece that way. He solved the problem of making a decent
shaped cedar-bush hedge by cutting quarter-inch strips off an
eight-foot plank, using his router to shape its sides and a special
bit in his hand drill to shape the tops of the bushes. His paints
would give it the final touch but it wasn’t bad the way it looked
already. He solved his fence construction problem by gluing short
posts onto small bases and supplying a length of cotton thread
wrapped on a piece of cardboard. Children could make their own
fences and the cotton would make the fence wires.

Each day
passed quickly. Thursday afternoon Bob went to the Community
Centre. Jim and Ken Smith had returned and they began making the
set for the elementary school children’s Spring production. The
scene called for a wood on one side of the stage, having a gap
between the trees and bushes big enough to crawl through. Half a
house, with a window and door that had to open and close, stood on
the other side of the stage. A backdrop showing trees and grass
covered the centre. Ken had made sketches of the wooden structures
that would hold the canvas covers and the crew began by making the
house. It took two hours to construct the wooden framework and to
staple on the canvas. Jim and Ken said they’d paint it on Friday.
Bob didn’t offer to help them, he wanted to get back to work on the
farms.

Rose told Bob
his boxes had arrived when they met Saturday evening in the Crown
and he collected them and the labels on Sunday morning. He looked
forward to finding out if his farms would sell.

Altogether it
had taken him one and a half weeks to make, glue and paint the
twelve farms. He didn’t include the wire fence posts he had made
because he thought children would find it difficult to knot the
thin cotton thread around each post. ‘One and a half weeks isn’t
too long,’ he thought, after supper on Thursday night. ‘If Rose
sold each one for twenty two fifty I’d make a hundred and eighty
nine pounds. I could make enough money to pay for a second holiday
in about two months, that is, if the next trip didn’t cost more
than the Portuguese one.’ Further thoughts came to him; he could
make the sets faster if he drank his coffee in the shop whilst
working. He might make an extra set each month that way. Or he
could work in the evenings but, no, that would be too much, he
didn’t want making toys to take over every minute of his life. It
actually did feel like he was working now. It wasn’t a hobby
anymore but he didn’t mind. He, once or twice, thought about hiring
a helper. That would make things easier. He’d have to think about
that when he was on holiday. In just two weeks from now he’d be in
Portugal!