ABOUT BAZAARS

Radio Record, Volume VII, Issue 46, 24 May 1935, Page 55

ABOUT BAZAARS

¥F I had plenty of money, I think I’d ‘try to become a professional bazaaropener, if such a career was possible, Elizabeth Craig im the "Radio Times" (London). You ‘get your first thrill when you mount the platform and the clapping starts. Then when the chairman starts reciting. all kinds of complimentary things about you, your head begins to swell until by the time you rise to do what is necessary, you’re not sure whether your hat is on the right way or back to front. People who have come .o the opening ceremony, so I’ve been told, want more for their money than ‘I have much pleasure in declaring this bazaar open.’ The point is that you must say something to make your audience want to You must be imbued with a feeling of not -aring whether it snows so long as the cause is ‘elped, or you won't make people who have come to buy feel reckless. That’s why it’s so important to have a chairman or chairwoman endowed with a gift of blarney, a chairman or chairwoman who will paint you to the audience in such glowing language that yow’re inspired to rise to the occasion in every way. Tt takes a real artist to preside at a bazaar with success, an artist gifted with a vivid imagination, someone who can put the audience in a good humour before people like me, who have been asked to perform the opening ceremony, start to put their foot in it. But it’s not enough tO open a bazaar. The opener, after acknowledging (or forgetting to acknowledge, as I sometimes do).a vote of thanks, has to lead the way to the stalls. That’s the part I like best of all. I love spending 4 woney, whether I can afford it or not, I love to buy bargains, or what I think ure bargains. . Sometimes. I have to pay dearly forbargains found at bazaars; as, for ex~ ample, when last summer I bought what looked at a casual glance like two fine roasting fowls, for which I myself received a good roasting from the guests to whom I presented them en casserole the following Sunday. It does not pay to forget your spectacles when you go to a bazzar. Sometimes you would be wise to take a magnifying pilass. The most amusing thing that ever pappened to me at a bazaar as an opener was to have to steal a child's ‘doll in order to be sure that she would bring me a bouquet at a riven moment, when I displayed the doll, Bazaars are very human occasions. Sometimes a little too human... but that’s another story.