Shopping and then Shopping Some More

Shopping in Paris has always been a pleasure (albeit an expensive one), and this time was no exception.  The only problem with our trips during the northern hemisphere autumn is that the sun doesn’t come up until after 8am, so it was a pre-dawn foray off to the markets.  And when we got there we found we had forgotten to bring the torch – an essential shopping tool if you want to really be sure what you’re getting before it gets light.  But plenty of the locals had brought their torches, so we were able to see most stalls pretty clearly. 

Even though the markets officially open at 7am, plenty is going on before that and stalls progressively get their wares out until even 9am, so you need to do a few laps in order to be sure you see everything.  And again, with this type of market where the stall holders and the punters all turn up at the same time, it’s often a matter of being in the right place at the right time in order to be the first to spot a bargain being put out.

After several laps we were loaded down with a quite elegant retro Italian electric lamp, the biggest and heaviest metal pestle and mortar you’ve ever seen, more enamel kitchenalia, really nice Art Deco cutlery – French Deco cutlery is very different from the English, and often features bakelite or horn handles which are lovely - some seriously cool giant butcher’s hooks that Doug is thinking of invoking the I-Must-Pry-From-His-Cold-Dead-Hands clause over, more good glass, some copper saucepans, lovely jewellery and a very elegant piece that is an Art Deco polished aluminium coat hooks and luggage rack with a mirror ensemble - very French Art Deco, very nice.

So after a couple of hours and a number of laps, each one slower than the last because by then we were lugging quite a lot of heavy things, we decided to head off to the Loire Valley to position ourselves for an excellent Puce (flea market) on Sunday morning held right on the Loire River.  We spent the night in Saumur, which is a lovely medieval town with the most giant and apparently unassailable fortress chateau, and had the best meal of the trip so far.  Then up before dawn for the Puce. 

A whole bunch of fit young cyclists in very very tight lycra were staying at our hotel, and the inn-keeper told us that he hoped they wouldn’t wake us the next morning because they wanted to have quite an early breakfast.  Ha!  The definition of “early” was clearly lost in translation, and it’s a sad day when a couple of unfit lay-about antiques dealers are the first up and out, and the super fit cyclists were starting to emerge all bleary-eyed just as we were skipping out the door.

Okay maybe ‘skipping’ wasn’t exactly what we were doing at that point, but we were up and on our way and most of the cyclists looked like they were going to miss their scheduled early breakfast.  We decided a 7.30am start at the Puce would be civilized, seeing how the dealers arrive at about 7am and we had learned from previous experience that a great deal of coffee drinking, cigarette smoking, arguing and making up, and general wandering about socialising is what goes on for the first half hour of this market.

They call it a Puce rather than the more upmarket term of Brocante, but I think this is just an affectation because there is no way this is a junky flea market.  There are some serious dealers there, with serious stock that has serious prices.  But if you navigate your way (carefully!) between them you can find the more realistic dealers with prices you are prepared to pay.  And just as the sky started to develop its first blush of pink and the last of the mists were rising from the river, we made our first purchase. 

And with that, as with our last visit here, we started a stampede of punters.  Last time we attended this Puce we milled about with all the other buyers at the top of the ramp leading to the riverbank, unsure of whether we were allowed to go down and mix it with the dealers while they were setting up (and drinking coffee, smoking fags, arguing, mwah-mwah kissing to make up, dashing off to buy forgotten baguettes, etc, etc).  On that occasion I spotted something I wanted to get my hands on before anyone else - a fabulous big red enamelled bread bin - so I decided to risk breaching protocol to pop down to see the dealer to buy it before anyone else could. 

Emboldened by my move, some of the other punters decided that they too would come down the ramp, but most of them (American tourists) continued to mill at the top, unsure what to do.  This is what comes from only travelling with tour guides, I reckon – you lose all sense of independence and the ability to make your own decisions, however dodgy.  But anyway it was fine by me – gave me room to browse unimpeded and buy before my rivals got their act together.  I almost said until my rivals grew some balls, but that would have been mean and I’m a nice gel.

And after chatting with the seller of the bread bin in my pidgin French I learned that indeed punters can come down to the riverbank at any time – the stall holders will take your money whatever the time it is and however chaotic the whole scene appears to be.  So this time, armed that knowledge, I weaved my way through the waiting throng of buyers at the top of the ramp and went to inspect the first of the day’s offerings.

Immediately I found a really good bottle carrier at a very reasonable price, so that was the first buy of the day.  And not counting the dealers trading between themselves it literally was the first buy of the day because all the other punters, watching from the top of the ramp, saw me hand over my money and realised Hey! She’s shopping!  And we’re standing here like Dills! and this set off a great rush of people, some trotting, some walking briskly, down into the Puce to mix it with the dealers.  I didn’t point and laugh, though, because it was only my determination to get my hands on that bread bin before anyone else that stopped me being a Dill myself last time.

Yet again we had to do quite a few laps of the Puce before we were satisfied that everything that was going to come out had come out.  And fortunately, this time the van was nearby so we were able to make several trips to unload my trolley and Doug’s bag and then start again.  When I say “we” I mean mostly Doug, but I did get to lug stuff myself from time to time.  So now we have heaps of good copper, some more Deco electric lamps, a bit more linen (although the price of linen has tripled over the last year in most places so now it’s a real challenge to get at a good price), more cutlery and yet more beautiful jewellery. 

But the things we were most pleased about were three large wooden platters with legs.  We’ve been looking for these for about two years, because the last time we had them Doug decided we had to keep one and I had given dibs to someone for the others, thinking she would buy one, but when she saw them she bought both.  And mid-purchase someone tried to gazump her and make off with one himself, but she very smartly told him to be on his way (without her platters).  He came back later and asked for first option if we ever found another, and it’s taken two years but at last I’ve got what he wants.

After the Puce we started the trek north, at a leisurely pace because I had discovered that the Chateau de Pierrefonds (the Camelot castle in the TV show Merlin) isn’t open on Mondays at this time of year and that was the only day we could venture into Picardy on this trip.  Bugger!  So I shall work it into the schedule for next trip, and we shall see the chateau in the Springtime rather than Autumn.  We consoled ourselves by visiting a small street Fete we unexpectedly found in a tiny village, and came away with some really beautiful kero lamps.

On Monday we visited Serge, who occasionally has cross-roads crosses in stock, and hurrah he had one!  And yes, it is accounted for already because I have a Wait List of 11 people for one of these beauties.  Serge told me (and so had another dealer) that these crosses are getting really hard to source because dealers from South Africa and Brazil have been coming to France to get them because the market for large cross-roads crosses in those countries is very strong.  So now French dealers are having a hard time getting hold of them, let alone poor Australian dealers.  But anyway, we got one and were very grateful.

Continuing to head north, we stopped for a quick picnic lunch of cheese and pate and baguettes at a charming old village called La Bouille, which is on the Seine but quite close to the sea.  We ate our lunch at the quay, watching a dinky little car ferry struggle against very strong currents, but it made good progress and was continually dashing back and forth across the river with lots of customers.  Then we decided to stop nearby for the evening and headed for Honfleur, another charming town, this time on the sea.  It’s one of our favourite towns, and you have to stay right in the middle of the old part of town so you can wander about and enjoy its ambiance. 

Honfleur has a lovely small harbour which is lined by incredibly narrow and incredibly tall old buildings, and has boats moored all around it.  You know you’re very very rich if you’ve got your yacht moored in Honfleur’s harbour.  And so does everyone else.  So the important thing is that you sit on your yacht for as long as possible, so everyone else can see you sitting on it and know that you’re very very rich.  I want to be effluent!  I want to ponce about on a yacht on Honfleur harbour, going nowhere but being seen to be very very rich.  Ah Lotto, wherefore art thou? 

Okay yet again it’s a mega-missive, and I still haven’t gotten around to trying to download photos so it’s a lot of text and no pictures.  Suck it up and learn to concentrate, I say!  Reading is good for you!  I shall make it pretty with pictures when I next have the time to experiment.  So far that’s not been happening.  But soon.

Buying up Big in England, and Oh La La in France

Boy are we having fun!  On Thursday we headed off to the biggest antiques Fair in the world, held in the north-east of England, and even though it’s the biggest it’s not always the best so you can never be sure what you’ll find. 

The forecast was rain and extremely high winds, and the high winds certainly made their presence felt – very strong gusts sent things everywhere flying and dealers diving to save their stock.  There was lots of damage.  But one dealer told me that after we had left the other big Fair on Tuesday huge winds developed and in one gust a 100 foot long marquee was ripped up and flew off, scattering thousands of pounds of stock and causing general mayhem.  Fortunately no-one was hurt, but lots of damage.

No such drama at Thursday’s Fair, but mini-disasters were happening all over the place.  We had one period of heavy rain for about 15 minutes, so we took that opportunity to dash into a pavilion to visit one of the jewellery sellers we see most trips, and yes I bought up big.  Over the course of the day I bought masses of jewellery, so we shall be well and truly stocked until the next trip.  And that’s before we got to Paris on Saturday (spoiler alert:  Paris buying was fantastic!), so we’re well set for jewellery I’m thinking.

And yet more scales.  Last trip we saw nothing affordable that was worth buying, and this trip we have so many we’re going to have to re-name the shop Scales R Us.  Actually, they are all excellent scales, and some really quite beautiful and rare, so the shop shall be called Really Cool Scales R Us.  I really should have photographed some before we dropped them with the packers, but as usual I forgot.  Oh well, they’ll all arrive soon enough and then they can be viewed in person.

We also have quite a few very high quality glass pieces, and I’m now feeling very happy and relaxed about the glass.  I bought so much glass at one point I started to get concerned about the shop having little but scales and glass on display but then I thought bugger it, fabulous glass always sells well so I should just go for it.  So I did.  And now I have an awful lot of glass and there isn’t a single piece I don’t think warrants front window status, so that’s pretty good going.  Already I’m planning what flowers will go into what vases and how they will be displayed, and it’s going to be fun styling the shop when it all arrives.

And despite all this good buying, which was indeed very good, this is the Fair where we tend to find the more esoteric things.  So now we have another good croquet set (because the set I had in the window has now sold and they’re actually hard to come by so as soon as I found another good quality one I snapped it up).  Plus we have a really cool iron street lamp that we might keep if we can think of somewhere to put it around the house-to-be, but if we decide to offer it for sale it shall go straight to the front window and should attract a lot of attention.  We now also have a particularly battered and weathered Master Not in Command copper ship’s lamp, that is probably the oldest one we’ve had so far, the smallest and certainly the most lived-in.  It’s certainly seen some high seas, there’s no doubt about that. 

Something really unusual was a pair of quite old Foo Dog roof cap tiles.  The provenance is that they were removed from a temple roof in 1972, right in the middle of the Cultural Revolution.  Religious items were often removed and hidden so they weren’t destroyed, often at considerable risk to the people hiding them.  I used to be able to get these tiles from time to time years ago from a supplier who went into China all the time, but I haven’t managed to get any for at least five years so these were good finds.  Poor Doug had so many trips back to the van over the course of the day, but he is such a wriggle bum and it’s good that I can harness his powers of wriggle for good rather than evil.

Then on Friday it was off to Dover to catch a ferry to France.  An uneventful crossing, as usual, and then we hit the road for Paris.  Doug wasn’t impressed at having to negotiate the Paris Périphérique (the ring road around Paris) during peak hour, when the traffic was manic, but he did really well.  And the traffic was manic but also strangely courteous.  With so many vehicles on the road going in all sorts of directions I guess there is no choice but for everyone to be polite or else or it would all just grind to a halt. 

And talking of grinding to a halt, at one point the car in front of us stopped and the guy driving jumped out.  Right in the middle of peak hour on one of the busiest roads in Paris, he dashed over to the side of the road (a 6 lane road, I might add) so he could have a pee.  In his defence, he clearly had been hanging on for a long time – it was a very long pee, right in front of a significant audience waiting in their cars for him to finish and get back into his car so we could all proceed.  Welcome to Paris!

In addition to such edifying sights we also noticed that there was one spot between two of the lanes on the Périphérique where all of the hundreds of motorbikes travelled, and also all the Police cars.  Police sirens in France have such a distinctive sound (re-watch the Bourne Identity if you forget) and they are all dinky little cars that can fit into that little gap between lanes of traffic on busy Parisian roads.  We also saw motorbike taxis, which we had never seen before, and they would certainly get you where you want to be a whole lot faster than a car but with all their ducking and weaving between cars you would be taking your life in your hands.

Our hotel was incredibly convenient for us to visit the markets next morning, so we didn’t have to leap out of bed at some ungodly hour.  And ah, a comfortable mattress at last.  The French do such good mattresses – so much better than the English.  But they also do the world’s suckiest pillows.  A prize to the first hotel in all of France to offer decent pillows.  Thank goodness I know enough to always bring my own pillow, otherwise I’d have difficulty sleeping.  Anyway, I digress.  After dinner in a nearby bistro we settled in for the evening and it took five entire minutes before we saw a bare bosom on the telly, which is unheard of.  On every other trip, no matter what TV station we have turned on, we have been guaranteed to see bare bosoms within a minute or two.  What has happened?  Are the French going all staid and inhibited on us?  Of course that’s not counting men prepared to flash their willies on major Parisian thoroughfares.

We didn’t get to Paris in time for me to see The Bold & The Beautiful in French, which was a pity, but maybe I’ll see it next week.  Oooh, Ridge sounds so much more sexy in French than American.  I remember years ago watching the show in a bar in Portugal, with a bunch of old Portuguese men.  It was just me and the Portuguese bar flies, but I couldn’t understand a single thing that was being said (by either Ridge or the Portuguese codgers).  At least in French I have some hope of keeping up with who’s sleeping with whom. 

This has turned into a long missive, so I shall stop here and talk about the rest of our French merchant adventuring a bit later.

Shopping & Whinging but Mostly Shopping

You know what I hate?  What I really, really hate? 

I’ll tell you what I hate:  I hate it when you’re at a Fair and you’re looking at things on a stall and there isn’t a price on anything.  Generally, if you can’t be bothered putting a price on your stuff, I can’t be bothered asking.  But every now and then you see something that is really quite nice and if it’s the right price you will buy it, so you’re obliged to ask.  And then the dealer looks you and up and down and decides on the price there and then, based on what they reckon they can extract from you.  I really, really hate that.  We’ve even had a woman say Oh, let me think of a number when we asked her the price of one of her pieces.  And that number was really big, even for me who dresses like an impoverished bag lady when doing the Fairs.  How much would she have nominated for a punter who looked all coiffured and nicely presented? 

So okay, that might sound like a pet hate unique to someone who shops at the big English antiques Fairs and encounters this type of behaviour, but no-one likes it when someone tries to rip them off.  And so blatantly.  And then these dealers sit around moaning about what a bad day they’re having and how no-one is buying anything.  It’s because we’re not total Idiots who majored in Idiocy at the Idiots Acadamy based in Idiotsville that we’re not buying from them.

And yet, notwithstanding my whinging (I’m becoming an honorary Englander!) today’s Fair was probably the best buying we’ve done at any Fair ever.  We made our first major purchase – a really nice large French metal & wire garden table – within 10 seconds of entering the Fair, and it was all good from then on.  We even ran out of money and had to run off and get more, which is unprecedented because we take scads of cash with us and it’s usually more than enough.  Doug has even stopped nagging me that I need to buy more stuff, which is also unprecedented.  We bought a very large amount of fabuloso Art Deco glass and really lovely ceramics from the late Victorian era to about the 1930s, and we bought so well that our customers are going to swoon with excitement when they see our prices.  I fell down dead myself at some of the bargains I was getting.  So we came away very Happy Vegemites indeed.

Some of the more unusual purchases were a number of Ming Dynasty pot shards (c1590) that have been made into pendants.  They were excavated from the archaeological dig of a large kiln site in central China, along the Yangtze River.  Broken pots were tossed into ditches back in the day (seeing how they didn’t have rubbish collections in rural China in the 1500s) and it’s these ditches that are now being excavated.  I asked the dealer to be a little more specific about the location because the Yangtze River is the third longest in the world and “somewhere along the Yangtze” covers a pretty big area, but like all dealers he jealously guarded his precise source, so central China was the best I was going to get. 

And you never know, I might have decided to quickly learn Mandarin and then go trekking the entire length of the Yangtze River to find a restricted-entry archaeological site, and then bribe the guards to let me in (because my language training would naturally have included all the necessary espionage and bribery phrases), and then negotiate with the site administrators to purchase the shards I want and convince them that even though I only want about 20 I’m still totally worth dealing with, and then clip them into shape and band them with silver-plated metal myself.  It’s possible.  I’m sure I’ve done stranger things.  Anyway, no matter how unlikely it was that I would take the necessary action to gazump this dealer and go directly to his source myself, I do understand about protecting supply sources.  It’s just in my case it’s entirely sensible and in his case it was silly.

Meanwhile, back at the Fair, to make the day even better the Red Arrows spent most of the day doing the most spectacular aerobatics directly over us.  I think they belong to the RAF, and they are a synchronized flying stunt team.  They were fantastic, and from time to time all activity stopped at the Fair as everyone just stood and watched what they were doing, with all their loop-de-loops and close formation zig-zaggy routines.  At times they seemed perilously close to the ground so if they were going to have a horrible crash they would also have taken out most of the Fair.  But away, they did well and didn’t crash and dead impressed everyone.

We’ve just finished a mega pack day, so now we’re regrouping so we can head off tomorrow to attend the biggest antiques Fair in the world.  After the Fair we’re heading down to Dover so we can catch a ferry to France on Friday so another big day is ahead.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (seriously, please put your clothes back on)

The good thing about nice warm weather in England is that it’s nice and warm.  The bad thing about nice warm weather in England is that every second person seems to feel the urge to take most of their clothes off.  Goodness me, we have seen sights these last few days we did not need to see.  Big fat pot bellies are not enhanced by turning bright red, let me tell you that right now.  I know we have no grounds to mock other peoples’ bodies, but hey we kept our kit on and did not inflict a big fat (bright red) pot belly or an incredibly huge, heaving, wobbling, life-of-its-own (bright red) bosom on anyone else.  We’re beginning to hope it turns horribly cold and necessitates lots of coats and scarves.  Lots of coats and scarves.  Yessiree, feel free to just pile on those clothes, people.

So anyway, off we traipsed to the west Midlands to go to a Fair and a couple of antiques centres.  What a disappointment!  Boring and over-priced when it wasn’t reproduction.  I mentioned to one centre manager that there was a huge amount of (undeclared) reproduction throughout the centre, and she came up with some pathetic excuse, saying that if the dealers can’t get sufficient real stock they have no choice but to get in reproduction.  They live in England – the place is crammed with real antique and vintage stock.  Yes you have to hunt to find particularly good things at particularly good prices, but it’s totally possible.  And there is no excuse at all to pretend that reproduction items are real - isn't that what normal people call LYING???  And what is this insane philosophy about putting prices massively up during tough financial times?  What am I not getting?  So anyway, suffice to say that we did not buy very much at either the Fair or the antiques centres. 

On the up side as far as stock goes, I did find a very beautiful large German ceramic jardiniere that looks just like Australian Melrose pottery, and I envisaged potting it up with some orchids and putting it in the front window of the shop.  On the down side as far as stock goes, I was better able to envisage it potted up with some orchids at my house, so it’s probably going to stay home.  As far as stock that I am prepared to sell goes, the buy of the day was a beautiful Wedgwood gurgling fish jug (also called a glug jug).  I’ve been looking for a nice glug jug for ages, but usually their fishy features aren’t very crisply moulded and they are a really boring brown, so finding a very crisply detailed green majolica glug jug was a great find.  So something good came of the trip West.

Then it was off to Nottingham, where we will be based for the next week.  Sherwood Forest is a fraction of its former self, but still lovely for a quick walk through.  On Sunday mornings in Nottingham all the churches (and there are many) ring their bells at the same time and it sounds really lovely.  Too bad if you want a Sunday sleep-in, but our plan was to go shopping in any case.  First we saw the end of Wales annihilating Fiji in the Rugby World Cup, and the start of Ireland doing in Italy.  We’re not really into rugby union, but there’s no escaping it here at the moment and some of the matches are turning out to be quite exciting.

Then off to a few centres we usually frequent when we’re in this area and a new one that has only just opened, plus a little Fair that we came across unexpectedly.  All up, it was pretty good.  Nice books, really good jewellery, more interesting cutlery, and some nice Victorian ceramics.  I don’t buy a lot of Victoriana as a general rule, but some of the ceramics are lovely so I was particularly looking out for some.  I’m keeping a small plate for my own collection, but in the shop I’ll be offering a really nice cake plate that features Bluebirds.  I don’t know if blue birds meant anything in Victorian symbolism, where every single flower had a secret meaning, but many indigenous cultures around the world feature a Bluebird of Happiness in their mythologies.  In that context blue birds usually symbolise happiness, prosperity and good health, so it’s all very positive.  See, whoever said a degree in Anthropology wouldn’t come in useful?

Now we have a lot, lot, lot of packing to do before we regroup and then hit the next big Fair on Tuesday. 

Hot and Tired but Triumphant

We had a quiet day on Wednesday, with a little bit of shopping and a whole lot of packing.  The centre we often visit in the Midlands provided slim pickings this time.  Every trip is different, but this time there was a great deal of reproduction and the real things were often very over-priced.  We found some bits and bobs to buy, but not many.  I remember that last trip I overheard some dealers talking about their way to deal with tough financial times was to put their prices up a lot, so you didn’t make as many sales but when you did they were really good.  This seemed to be an extraordinary tactic to us, but indeed it appears to have been embraced by most sellers in the centre.  From 160 dealers we bought just 12 items.  Sorry expensive dealers, but I still want bargains.  Fortunately, the big Fairs are just a few days off and I should be well-satisfied then.

As we’ve been driving around the countryside we’ve again noticed the Brits’ proclivity to add apparently extraneous letters to the names of their towns.  I mean if you’re not going to pronounce all the letters, why include them?  So Wymondham is actually pronounced Windam, Towcester is Toaster, Worcester is Wooster, Mousehole is Mauzil, and so on.  This must make it hard for people learning English, let alone blow-ins from Australia who are supposed to already speak the language.  Or Convicts, as we’re often called. 

New Zealanders are Kiwis and we’re Convicts, apparently.  Or Colonials.  And yet I heard on the radio the other day that one in five English people are trying right now to migrate to Australia or actively thinking about it.  So even though they often still try to denigrate us with smartarse names, they still want to join us.  I remember some years ago when I was Vice Consul in the Australian Consulate in the UK I refused a visa to a man with a considerable criminal record.  He got very sneery with me and said But you used to take convicts.  Ah, if only you had applied 200 years ago, I said.  He didn’t appreciate my humour, but I enjoyed my own joke.

The weather continues to be glorious, with blue, blue skies and not a cloud in sight.  Temperatures are consistently 10 degrees above average for this time of year and as a result a lot of plants are again flowering, so there is the odd sight of spring flowers with autumn leaves.  Looks good, though I’m not sure how good it is for the plants.

I was watching the BBC this morning and learned that the castle that features as Camelot in the TV show Merlin is a real castle.  I thought it was computer-generated because it looks too fairy-tale, but it’s real and it’s called Chateau de Pierrefonds and is in Picardy in the north of France.  And we shall be in the north of France in about a week, so we might go looking for it.  Apparently visitors are allowed to wander about even when they’re filming the show so I could end up doing better than last trip, when I was filmed in the background of Bargain Hunt seven times, and this time I could end up being Witch Number 3 in the background in Merlin.

So now it’s Friday and today was the first of the big northern Fairs.  Ah, happy days.  It took seven hours to get around the Fair, and our feet are worn down to the knees.  It was dang hot, and now I’m sunburned as well as really tired.  If you ever want to get over an addiction to Retail Therapy, this is the job for you.  I was having fun, but was still ready to stop shopping.  As usual we paid extra for ‘trade entry’ at 7am, but you sure could tell when the punters were let in at 10am because suddenly there was hardly room to move.  I got lots of things I set out to find, so now we have some particularly lovely enamelware, good Art Deco glass, a couple of beautiful ceramic owls and pickle jars are well and truly back under control.  There’s no way I will run out of pickle jars this time.  Jewellery is off to a roaring start, yay!  And yet another Murano end-of-day fish, but this time much bigger than usual and mostly a lovely deep red.  I now have a particularly big school of fish coming back.  What’s the term for a particularly big school of fish?  I think it’s just a particularly big school of fish. 

Prices this time were mostly very reasonable, so there were plenty of bargains to be had and that means my own prices can reflect that, which is good news for everyone.  After the Fair we drove a few hours west to position ourselves for the next Fair, which is small in comparison with the mega Fairs but held in a lovely Stately Home in the west Midlands.  I’m not expecting as many bargain buys as today, but you never know.  Well I do know, really, and there won’t be as many bargains, but we’re going anyway.

When I'm not so tired I shall experiment with downloading some photos of stuff, but right now I'm only capable of sitting back and watching telly and eating Chinese takeaway.  What a glamorous life we lead!

If the animals don't get you, the shopping will

So a few days have past, and the serious shopping has begun.  But first, on Saturday we decided on a Play Day and went to visit Banham Zoo in Norfolk.  Even though we got there at 10am we practically had the place to ourselves, which was really nice.  We decided to have a go at feeding the giraffes, and that was a lot of fun.  They have deep blue tongues that are about 18 inches long and really raspy, and huge eyes with beautiful long eyelashes.  We were given willow branches to feed them, and they pull really hard as they strip the leaves off the branches so you need to hang on tight.  Doug was bitten on the bum by the biggest giraffe when he didn’t hand over his leaves fast enough, and the keeper said this was quite an honour because they never make contact with people.  I got giraffe spit all over my hands from an over-enthusiastic girl who wanted her leaves faster than I could move my hands, which was a blek! moment.

We stopped by various big cat enclosures (Banham Zoo has cheetahs, leopards, tigers, ocelots, geoffrey’s cats, parres cats and snow leopards, so they’re well stocked with cats) and all the moggies obligingly came up close and posed for photos.  Then we visited the meerkats and decided to take advantage of the opportunity to get in and feed them.  I’ve never been to a zoo that lets you in with the meerkats before, and it was tremendous fun.  The keeper poured mealworms on our laps and in our hands which was another blek! moment although the meerkats thought it was wonderful and they jumped all over us and squabbled on our laps for the best position to be fed.  They have the most amazingly rough coats and they allow you to stroke and tickle them as long as you keep the food coming.  As soon as the mealworms run out they’re off – no food, no friends.

But just after the keeper had finished assuring us that the meerkats had never bitten anyone, one of the wretches bit me!  I was trying to move my hand to give another meerkat a chance at some mealworms when my assailant tried to grab a big mouthful worms but instead got a big mouthful of me.  There was blood!  I’m sure I feel rabies coming on.  I have two little puncture wounds in my hand and they had better turn into scars so I have proof of my deadly encounter.

So after being mauled by assorted wild animals we headed off to the Norfolk coast so we could find somewhere nice for my birthday lunch.  On the big day we went to Aldeburgh Beach and had lunch at a hotel right on the beach.  It’s a pebble beach, as so many in the UK are, so not conducive to strolling along but the day was warm and sunny, a light breeze was blowing and it was a very pleasant place to spend a few hours.  If you had bionic vision I think looking straight out from Aldeburgh you could see the northern end of Holland, and then out into the North Sea.  A variety of people were sunbaking on the pebbles, and we thought that could not be comfortable (although we did not test out our theory by trying it ourselves).  And unlike at Noosa Beach, there wasn’t a bosom in sight.  All the sunbakers at Aldeburgh Beach were entirely covered from their necks to the tips of their toes.

Then we headed down almost to London so we could attend a big Fair that we hadn’t tried before.  On the way we did a quick detour to a small Fair at a community hall, and it was worth the stop.  Mostly the items on offer were over-priced and boring as, but then we discovered some beautiful scales from an old lolly shop in Suffolk, so we carried them off.  They are unlike any scales we’ve had before, and any one of the collectors who visit us should be well pleased with them.

The Fair near London wasn’t nearly as big as we had been expecting, and it was reminiscent of some of the flea markets in France in that all the stallholders and buyers are allowed in at the same time.  So at 8am utter pandemonium breaks out, with stallholders trying to get their wares out as fast as possible, and all the early bird buyers positioning themselves so they can be the first to see the new things coming out.  Of course you can’t be the first person at every stall, but you can jolly well try, and by being at the right place at the right time we came away with a number of really interesting items, including 4 sets of very attractive French scales (one with a marble top), interesting kitchenalia, lots of good quality glass, some lovely enamelware and a couple of big French wooden beer crates.

Today we went off to a huge Fair on the other side of London, which started at 6.30am – not what I call civilized.  We got there right on 6.30am and were amazed to see that literally thousands of people were there ahead of us.  We were the second last vehicle allowed into the huge carpark, which was then full and closed by 6.33am, and poor Doug wasn’t impressed that we were about a kilometre from all the action and he would be the one taking all the purchases back to the van.

As I suspected, this Fair did suffer from being too close to London in terms of gobsmacking prices for many of the more interesting European pieces, but it still took us about four hours to get around and we came away with plenty to be pleased about.  We did particularly well with nice cutlery and good glass again (but no show-stopper pieces yet) and surprisingly well with enamelware in interesting colours.  I’m always on the lookout for nice old wooden items, and this time we have three really big (really big!) wooden sticky rice serving platters/bowls that are about 140 years old and come from northern Thailand.  So they’ll have come a long way to find a home by the time they end up in our shop.  They are lovely and I’ve never seen anything like them, so we’ll see how they go.  Really old wood tends to wax up well with a bit of work, and when they’re good and glowing they’re going straight to the front window.

Tomorrow we’re visiting a large antiques centre in the Midlands, and then positioning ourselves for the first of the big northern Fairs.  Prices are usually more reasonable up north, although you don’t get the same number of European dealers until you get to Newark – the biggest antiques Fair in the world, where absolutely everyone comes from absolutely everywhere.  But for now it’s been a big day and we’re all tuckered out, so time for some dinner and a relax.  More later.

Messing About in Shops & Auction Antics

Well I didn’t intend to post blog entries as often as I am doing right now, but lots is happening and if I waited to talk about it for a few days then the blogs would be humungous and would bore everyone rigid.  Hopefully short(ish) entries are more user-friendly.  Views on this happily accepted.

So, yesterday we visited a nice centre that can be quite expensive but with sufficient hunting you can usually find nice things at reasonable prices.  I tend to do circuits of the centre, because there’s so much to see you can miss things the first time around (or the second, or the third).  I’m reasonably good at finding good stuff, but when things are just piled up higgledy-piggledy it makes it hard.  But still, it also makes for some fun ratting about. 

Doug then relieves me of my finds and transports them off to the front counter for me, so I can do a final inspection before I purchase.  On our last trip I had a good pile of purchases building up on the front counter, but when I had finished I came upon a woman sifting through My Stuff and putting a good deal of it aside for herself!  I explained that the reason it was on the front counter and not still on the shelves was because I had already purloined it.  Then she asked me to give her a tour of the centre to help her find some nice things because she hadn’t found a thing and here I was with a large pile of stuff.  It was too late for her, though, because I had already selected everything I thought was nice and reasonably priced.

Our visit this time didn’t yield as much as it often does, but we still did okay and bought some nice kitchenalia in particular.  One really good thing was a small German enamelled onion storage rack, but Doug immediately seized it and it now falls into the I-Must-Pry-It-From-His-Cold-Dead-Hands category before I can ever sell it.  There was a new French dealer at the centre whose stuff we coveted but her prices were Sacre Bleu! (that’s French for You can’t be serious).  It would be significantly cheaper for us to physically go to France and get these sort of things ourselves, so bugger it we will.

We then drove down to view the auction in Norfolk and found that lots of things looked much better in the catalogue than they did in real life.  But there were still good items to bid on, so we turned up on the day and as usual I ensconced at a table on the mezzanine level with a hot chocolate.  In the end we walked away with three Georgian coffers, which is unheard of.  Just getting one decent Georgian coffer (it’s like a giant blanket box) is always something to celebrate, and three in one auction is unheard of.  The most expensive one was actually the smallest, but it dates to the early 1700s and it’s a dinky size that is really useful for a modern home, which I guess is why everyone wanted it.  Why does everyone else in the room decide to bid when I want something?  I had to battle to get all three, but it was worth it.  I know it wasn’t my intention to buy furniture, but count them people!  Getting three Georgian coffers is a triumph and not something you can pass on.

It was also a happy day because we were the winning bidders on an item for which we’ve been hunting for three years – a brass nurse’s lamp.  It’s a little battered around the base, but it’s in good working order and has the original oddly shaped chimney these lamps always have.  And yes Fran, if you’re reading this I know that right at this very moment you are getting finger cramp trying to email me as fast as you can, but be calm because you can have first option on it.  I know my life would be forfeit if I ever tried to sell this lamp to someone else, for the Wrath of Fran would know no bounds.  And hey I’m not making this up – Fran is someone who still swears horrible and bloody vengeance on some innocent customer who dared to buy a Roman glass tear vial she had her eye on – three years ago!  And she still hasn’t given up on the idea of a new life as a Cat Burglar so she can retrieve a lovely Austro-Hungarian glass egg she fancied but someone else got to first.  Fran is Hard Core and she’s a nurse who knows how to use sharp things effectively, so I don’t cross Fran.

It’s amazing how every trip is different because last trip we found a very beautiful French enamel cistern and basin, which was snapped up before it even made it into the shop, and it was the only one we’d ever managed to get.  But today there was one at the auction and I was determined to have it.  This one is a beautiful turquoise colour and I expect it will end up on someone’s outside wall with flowers in the basin, with the cistern above the basin to water the flowers.  It will look really lovely and I’m always very pleased to buy something so nice.  But fancy that – we went from getting none at all, to getting one last trip and another this trip.  It’s always fun to see how each trip works out.

After the auction we went to visit a charming nearby village, and found an antique shop that was selling a lovely cast iron fire back which features a seriously attractive dragon.  A fire back is a very thick plaque of cast iron that is put in the back of a fire and used to throw heat back into the room.  It’s English and dates to about 1870 and we love it.  But it weights about 50kg and goodness knows where we’re going to put it.  We walked around the village while we discussed where it could go in the house, and in the end we decided we couldn’t think of a single place but what the heck we wanted it anyway.  It won’t arrive in Australia until December so we’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.

Tomorrow we’re doing a bit of cataloguing and packing first thing, but then having a play day and going off to a local zoo that I saw on TV some time ago and have wanted to visit for a while.  It’s hard work shopping til you drop, so we need a bit of relax time.