Assassination by Tiger

Thank goodness Kym and Sharon came to help
at Collectorama.  Here they are in front of some
of our French vintage pictures and reproductions,
and the jewellery cabinet.  This was a busy part
of our stand.

Well, Collectorama was great fun and a great success.  Hurrah!  At the mountain stronghold we normally watch the sun rise over the ocean, but on Saturday we were up and about in the pre-predawn light.  Yeah, I think I can live without too much pre-predawn light in my life.  But the clouds tinged a lovely deep pink as the sun rose, the day promised to be warm and sunny and we set off in high spirits. 

How lucky for us that our friend Sharon and my sister Kym had kindly offered to help out, because boy we were hammered!  The line of punters’ cars waiting to get into the Showgrounds at 7.30am snaked around the block, so that was a good sign that we were in for a big day.  We had worked hard to ensure that our copper was gleaming, the metalware was waxed and polished, and our best pieces of glass were arranged just so.  Our big jewellery cabinet was fully stocked, and those reproduction pictures I had laboured over to get exactly right were nicely displayed.  So we were set and in they came.  And came.  And came.

 

People don’t have to make the effort to approach you and tell you how nice your stand looks, and how good your prices are, so we were appreciative when this happened on a number of occasions.  As everyone had predicted, all my previous griping about how high the prices are at Collectorama ended as soon as I took a stand at the Fair, because it worked entirely to our advantage.

 

The copper looked great and was much admired.
We will be looking for especially big saucepans
on this trip, plus frying pans are always hard to
get but much sought-after.  And any other
special and unusual copper pieces we can find.

We sold as many of our vintage French magazine covers and advertisements in that one day as we had done during our best week ever in the shop.  And interestingly, a high number of those images were the reproductions.  It felt good to see that the effort I had put into ensuring that they are the best reproductions I’ve ever seen paid off, with lots of people admiring them, and at $12 each all the buyers told me how refreshing it was to get something so good at such a good price.  So I judge that experiment to be a success, and shall now get lots more of my best pictures reproduced.  Some people will always want the originals, and we still have plenty of originals.  But it turns out that many people want the beautiful images but at more affordable prices.  So let’s give the people what they want.

We also sold all of my black baroque pearl pendants, which only came out as an after-thought when I was chatting with someone about various pieces of old new stock I had acquired.  Old new stock is stock that is vintage, but has never been worn.  It usually comes from shops that were closed down and packed up, with the boxes sitting for sometimes decades before they are rediscovered and sold off.  It’s really rare to get your hands on this type of stock, but I met a woman in England who bought the entire contents of a jewellery shop that had closed down in Paris in the 1960s, and then got her hands on most of the stock from a jewellery shop in Prague that closed down in the 1930s.  I’ll be seeing her during our up-coming buying trip, and I’ll see if she’s still got any good pieces for me.

Part of our stand at the Collectorama Antiques
Fair.  We used some of the shelving from our
old shop and it displayed lots of things nicely.

We picked up our house-sitters on Thursday, so they had a couple of days to reacquaint themselves with the moggies before we head off.  They've been very naughty lately (the moggies, not the house-sitters), but we’ve not been able to take them for too many walks because of the mess of the building site.  There is good snake cover on the house pad at the moment, and we’ve seen plenty of snakes about in this warm weather, plus it’s tick season and without being able to keep the grass super short it’s great tick habitat.  But it means the gang has been bouncing off the walls – literally in Caleb’s case! – and getting into mischief.  Bloody Klaatu snuck onto the dining table to chew his way through my camera battery charger, Calypso jumped on our vintage clothes airer and mostly broke it, with Caleb bouncing on it and chewing away the webbing to finish the job.  Artemis has been busy asserting her authority and beating up on everyone – not bad for a 4kg skinny little miss (especially when you consider that Caleb is now 7kg), and Mischka has been getting very clingy and trying to burrow her way into the bed every night.  Claws sunk into unsuspecting naked bits aren’t a lot of fun, I’m here to assure you.

Caleb having a brief moment of chilling. 
He has been immune to the chaos of
getting ready for the Fair and then
all the last minute packing for the
buying trip.  All our packing is last
minute - with half an hour to go
before we leave the airport, I must
go now and get it finished.

Now we’re off to the airport, for the bit of each trip that I like the least.  Long haul travel in cattle class is no fun, but we don’t see the benefit of spending so much on business class when we could be spending that dosh on goodies and having a good time.  So I shall settle in for a movie marathon for the next 8 hours to Bangkok.  The flight is packed and we don’t have great seats on this leg, but thereafter we have our preferences.  These small things make a big difference, I’ve found.

 

Tomorrow we shall be at the Tiger Temple, and then off jungle trekking with elephants.  Doug has a history of trying to have me assassinated by wild animals on my birthday - you might recall me being thrust into an enclosure with wild meercats last year, where one little wretch bit me when I didn't feed him fast enough.  But the potential assassins on that occasion were firstly (mostly) too friendly, and when they did get bitey their teeth were very sharp but too small to seriously savage me.  So now Doug has upped his game, and is thrusting me towards a herd of wild tigers.  Okay, probably tame tigers, but still with big bitey teeth and big scratchy claws.  I have plenty of scars from Caleb and Calypso playing too rough, so Doug might be in with a better chance this time.  And failing that, I can be thrust under stompy elephant feet.  Yep, he sure does love me.

Klaatu and Artemis are clearly deeply stressed by our imminent departure.  They very much enjoy the house-sitters visiting, because they get spoilt rotten.  When we get back, oh dear it's back to cat food, people.  So they like to make the most of begging for special treats while we're away, before Training and Discipline returns in mid-October.
 

Okay, we’re off.  Everyone behave while I’m away – I’ll be getting reports, you know.  I have spies everywhere.

Collectorama! - Be There or Miss Out Badly

Caleb enjoying Helga & Michael's lovely garden.
Still wasn't allowed off his leash, though.

In the last fortnight we were invited to visit to the lovely Helga and Michael’s for afternoon tea, with the strict instruction that we must bring a moggie.  Caleb is pretty well unfazed by anything so he was our selection, and he had a great time.  He wandered about investigating a new garden for a little while (albeit with me attached to the end of his leash) and then spent a few hours thoroughly exploring Helga and Michael’s house.  This was a great excursion for him, now that he doesn’t get to go into the shop, and he was an exhausted snuggly-cuddly boy when he got home.  We’re going to have to think of more excursions for both him and Calypso, who both still clearly miss their shop time.

Caleb and Marley the Builder's Baby.  We put
Marley on the verandah whenever machinery is
on site, because he's only a baby and doesn't
yet know to stay out of the way.  Caleb
constantly tries to lure Marley into games,
but he plays too rough and Marley has learned
he can't win so it's best to ignore the
invitations to play.

Meanwhile, planning for the buying trip is completed and our itinerary is packed.  On one day, for example, we’re dashing from an antiques fair in London up to Fort William, which is in the Highlands of Scotland, so that will be a nine hour drive.  But it will be worth it, because it means we get to travel on The Jacobite, reportedly the best steam train journey in the world, on my birthday.  On our way back south we’ll have time to meander a bit, so we’ve selected a route that takes us past Loch Lomand, and then east along Hadrian’s Wall so we can go for a look at Durham, which looks to be a charming medieval town.  I’ve managed to fit in a good number of play days, which is surprising given the very crowded shopping itinerary I have also planned.  But it will be great fun and we can collapse and relax when we get home.

Even Mischka has warmed (a bit) to Marley, although her approaches to him mostly end with him being smacked on the nose and being told he must Respect her Authority and show her Proper & Appropriate Deference.  And he does.  This is a good thing for all little dogs to learn early in life.

 

Meanwhile, we’re in the last throes of preparing to attend Collectorama, the largest antiques fair in south-east Queensland, held at Nambour the Showgrounds next Saturday.  It’s also Federal election day, but that means that people will be obliged to get out and about anyway, so they might as well come to Collectorama and have some fun as well.  This is the Fair that I have consistently bleated about regarding the prices asked, but now I think that’s a good thing because I’ll be looking supa-dupa competitive on prices and will have really different stock to all other stands. 

Klaatu has zero interest in playing with Marley,
and instead prefers to stay inside and watch TV. 
He's now off the V8 Supercars, and currently
prefers nature documentaries.

As I type Doug is off polishing the heads of some seriously cool vintage golf clubs (putters and woods, which is what everyone likes), which are mostly from Scotland.  Doug always has a fit when I tell him what I plan to charge for various things and stomps about declaring that it’s not worth his while doing all that work just so I can give things away, so I’m keeping quiet about my prices on the golf clubs until all the polishing is done.  Then he’s going to polish the last of our French copper pots and pans, which several people have expressed an interest in seeing and are coming to the Fair just for them.  Then, while I have him in Productive Mode, he’ll polish up some brass and iron trays for some really very nice French bench scales.  I have three of these bench scales, all from a produce shop in Normandy that closed decades ago, and I’ve never seen others like them.  They've got that semi-industrial look that I favour, and we'll see how they go.

 

This is one of the magazine covers
that will be offered in
reproduction for $12.  Have
you looked at the pictures on my
other pages on this Blog?
I've put a lot of time and effort
into ensuring that they are the
best copies I've seen.

Plus I’ve got some really good metal crates from a die cast factory in England, and goodness knows what people will do with them but they’re interesting and people are very creative so someone will love them.  I do, which is why I bought them in the first place.  And those very nice and extremely heavy French hexagonal cast iron weights that I featured Caleb playing with a few blogs ago have been cleaned up and look spiffo, plus an elegant English cast iron book press is ready for presentation.  Finally, the very last of the French coloured enamel buckets are coming out.  So all in all, I’ll have some really good metalware to offer at Collectorama, and I know that no-one else will be offering anything similar, which is always good.

 

 

This is another of the reproduction
images I'm now offering.  It's
called Under the Ice.
It's a charming, cheeky and
very rare picture that took me
years to find in the original.

We’ve also dug out some exceptionally good ceramics from the depths of the garage, which I’ll put together with those lovely pieces I bought at the Kybong auction a few weeks ago (see last blog).  And I’ve spent considerable time and effort to get the French reproduction images looking as good as they can possibly be, and I’m really pleased with them.  Have you looked at the other pages on my blog to see the first of them I’m offering?  How lucky for me that one of the best copying machines in Australia is located a short drive away, and it produces the best resolution I’ve ever seen.  We did a number of test runs, until I was satisfied that the colours matched the originals so you can’t tell the difference between real and repro.  I know it doesn’t matter if you haven’t ever seen the originals, but it matters to me that I sell the best possible quality.  Not counting here on this blog, I’ll be offering the copies for the first time at Collectorama on 7 September, so we’ll see how they go as well as the myriad other things we’ll present for sale. 



I'm even dragging out a couple of retro cool reclining TV chairs and a really old wooden office swivel chair for Collectorama, which I will sell at give-away prices simply so I can clear them out of my storage.  Some Early Bird is going to be very happy.  I had intended to have them recovered and showcased in the front window of the shop for Malcolm, and they would have looked great.  But Malcolm is still in hiding - just how long can someone live under their bed? - and the shop has closed and that is that.



Me watching Caleb watching Doug watching the crane
that came to hoist the floor joists onto the house site.

On the house front, building is again delayed because the wrong type of flooring was ordered.  Lucky we were on site to refuse delivery, because we’re having blackbutt floorboards, thank you, not whatever scummy thing turned up.  The main benefit of living on site, notwithstanding that you’re living in the middle of a messy building site, is that you’re on hand to ensure that things proceed as you want.  And seeing how you’re paying a lot, things can jolly well proceed as you want.  We have an agreement with the builder that only the floor and decking will be done while we’re away, because he knows exactly what we want on that front and there’s no room for “creative interpretation”.  And the rest can wait until we’re back home.  It means the build will take somewhat longer than originally anticipated, but we’re happier this way.  When you’re spending so much on an investment, it’s up to you to protect your interests.  However well-meaning people are, no-one takes care of your interests like you do.

 

I will try to find time to write about Collectorama after it’s done, but otherwise the next you’ll hear from me will be from somewhere in France.

 

There's no point having a builder who doesn't have a Builder's Bum, is there?
 



Thank goodness for underwear is all I can say, because it could have been a lot worse.



Secret Auction Tactics

This is a really lovely French frosted
glass vase, c1930.  It's 30cm tall so
is much larger than you usually find.
It will be offered at the Nambour
Antiques Fair, if not sold before.
It's $320, which is less than half of
what you would pay for something
of comparable size and quality in
Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane.

In the last fortnight we stumbled across what turned out to be the best antiques auction we’ve ever attended in Australia.  And it was in Kybong, of all places.  Never heard of Kybong?  Neither have most people.  And that was a good thing in terms of great prices for the punters.  We had no idea the auction was planned and only found it by accident as we travelled north to meet friends for lunch.

A couple of the major auction houses from Melbourne and Brisbane organised it, and because it was being held in Kybong they planned to have a live feed to enable internet bidding.  The auctioneer told me that a great many people had registered to bid online.  But did anyone think to check the internet speed available in a little out of the way spot in the middle of nothing much in Queensland?  No they did not.  So that meant that almost all of the internet bidders were thwarted, and that left just us in the room and a few phone bidders.  Yay!  So wow, there were bargains to be had.  Even someone like me, who has an uncanny gift – it’s totally my Super Power – to compel every person in the room to bid on anything I have expressed an interest in – even I was able to snag some great buys.

It's a rare day that I can photograph something 
without Mischka, my trusty Photographer's
Assistant, helping out.  This is a large blue
glazed ceramic vase by Denby, c1960.  It's 29cm   
tall, making it bigger than I can usually source.
The glaze is mottled deep to sky blue.  It's $110.

 

This is one of the nicest jug and basin sets we've
offered for a long time.  It's by Cauldon, an
English brand, and dates to about 1930.
It's $375, which is several hundred dollars
less than I would have had to charge for it
in the shop.  My lack of retail expenses is
your lack of retail prices.

The trouble is, our next buying trip is in about a month and funds are tight thanks to Malcolm (see Blog of 25 June), so it wasn’t the best time to be buying things for ourselves.  It’s always preferable to have enough money to buy wonderful things when you’re in Paris, I say.  And yet, and yet … there were nice things that I just couldn’t resist.  Most notable was a very nice French baker’s bench which I intend for our kitchen-to-be, but if it doesn’t fit it will be snapped up quickly enough as soon as I publically offer it. 

I also bought three lovely items, two vases and a jug & basin set, that I will present for sale at the Nambour Antiques Fair on 7 September, unless they sell first.  They are high quality pieces but I did such good buying and I no longer have to charge retail prices, so I will be able to offer them at considerably less than I’d have had to in the shop.  That’s always good.

This is a French Bally Shoes
advertisement from 1958.  Soon
I will be offering reproductions
of my best images, including
this one.  The reproduction will
be A3 size, so somewhat bigger
than the original, which is A4.
The reproduction image is
outstandingly good, produced
on one of the best copy machines
in the country.  Reproduction is
$12, and the original while I
have it is $46.

Even though we didn’t buy much at this auction, it reminded me of the auction tactics I’m likely to see used during our buying trip.  Nothing is going to stop a cashed-up punter prepared to bid silly amounts, and you’d be surprised at how often people get over-excited at auctions and lose all reason.  But there are still some tactics that can make your rivals hesitate, and most dealers use them.  Heed me now, Grasshoppers, while I divulge some secrets of the trade:

 

First of all, forget everything you’ve ever seen on TV about people twitching their eyebrow and that counts as a bid.  You’re allowed to have facial tics and they won’t accidentally cost you a lot of money.  But you can’t wriggle too much.  I often develop an irrational and overwhelming need to scratch my head in the middle of bidding, but I always try to control myself because putting your hand up does indeed count as a bid.  You don’t have to make eye contact with the auctioneer to make a bid, although it’s something I always make a point of doing.  But I’ve seen heaps of pretentious plonkers feign bored disinterest while they bid, pretending to read a newspaper while casually putting up their hand.  Auctioneers are very indulgent of pretentious plonkers, and will always accept this type of bid. 

So don’t accidentally present yourself as a pretentious plonker, because waving your hand in the air counts as a bid even if you’re really just flapping away a fly while you look out the window.  You might get away once with spluttering that you weren't bidding even though you put your hand up.  But do it again and you'll be asked to leave the auction room because this is business, people, with sometimes very large amounts of money on the table and you have to take it seriously.
 

This is another of the French Bally
Shoe advertisements that I will be
offering in reproduction, but the
original is also on offer for now.
When I had the shop, Bally was the
most asked-after shoe brand when
people were looking through my
French advertisements.  And
why not?  They produced lovely
ads for their lovely (albeit
hideously expensive) shoes.
The reproduction of this ad will
be $12, and the original $46.

But putting your hand up, however you do it, isn’t an auction tactic - it’s just how you do business in an auction room.  As for tactics, there are some great ones you can employ, some fun, some risky, and some variable in their success depending on who your opposition is.  A bold tactic is colloquially known as Blasting them out of the water. 

 

Picture the scene:  you’re at a major art auction at Sotheby’s.  The room is full of extremely well dressed and tremendously rich people.  On a platform at the side of the room is a row of Sotheby’s staff manning a bank of telephones and computers for anonymous and international bidders.  The bidding has reached a stupendous level and is going up by increments of $100,000.  The room is hushed and tense.  Just then, a mystery person dressed all in black and wearing sunglasses inside, strides into the room and interrupts proceedings to loudly announce their bid, which is five times over the current bid.  The crowd gasps, all rival bidders are dumbfounded, Sold! cries the auctioneer.

Aw, inne cute?  This is Marly, the 8 week old
builder's baby.  When he's not following Caleb
about, Caleb is following him about.  Mischka 
hates him, which is to be expected because
she hates everything new that appears at
 our house.  But she still can't help herself from
 following him about as well.

 Yeah, we’ve all seen this in the movies.  But this tactic really is used in real life, although usually on a less impressive scale.  Auctions always proceed in set increments, whether it’s $5 increments or $100,000 increments.  So it’s a gamble when you up the bidding by a lot more than the next increment, because you might end up spending a lot more than you had to.  But it can also be a great way to shut down an auction - if you employ this tactic at the right moment you can spook your rivals into backing off by appearing to have plenty of money and making them feel that it’s all getting too expensive.  Auction prices can reach surprisingly high levels when they go up bit by bit, in small increments, because people always seem able justify to themselves “just one more bid”.  So by blasting them out of the water with a big jump in the bidding you can actually end up paying a lot less than you would have, because your rivals are demoralised into stopping.

Marly is allowed outside without a leash,
but Caleb is not.  Not fair!!!

But boy this is a gamble, and it depends on how experienced your opponents are.  It can work well when you’re bidding against punters – no offence punters, but you are often inexperienced in auctions and if allowed to keep bidding by small increments you’ll just end up bidding silly amounts.  So you must be shut down.  But if you’re going up against an experienced bidder who knows exactly what you’re up to, the results can be variable.  And that’s because experienced bidders know the secret to use against someone trying to blast them out of the water:  just because your rival has bid an extra-high amount to scare you off, you don’t have to bid a similarly large amount – you can just bid the auction’s next increment.  Lots of punters don’t realise this, so they stop as soon as the extra-high bid is announced.

I have a couple of extremely stylish
fashion shots from a 1950s French
magazine.  Just look at that waist.
This frock is by Jacques Fath, who
also produced really nice lingerie.
The A3 reproduction image will be
$12, but the A4 original is 
available for now for $34.
 

I once took on a pretentious plonker who was determined to blast me out of the water.  This man appeared to have limitless funds, and affected bored indifference as he bid without looking, while reading his newspaper.  I was really put out at him getting everything I wanted, because after investing a day at an auction I want to walk away with lots of goodies even though I don’t have limitless funds.  So when it became apparent that he would bid whatever it took to secure an item and that occasionally he would dispense with a rival by blasting them out of the water, I decided Game On.  But only with one lot, because I didn’t want him to realise that I was playing him and have the tables turned on me.  So just for one lot, every time he bid extra high, I just bid the next increment.

I have 8 May Gibbs bookplates that date from the
1920s to 1950s.  The originals are smallish because
they are from a childrens' book but the reproductions
will be a decent A3 size.  The originals are $25, and
reproductions $12.  This one is called
Out Riding with Ann Chovy.

So if you can imagine it, he was sitting there saying $500, and me saying “and 50”.  So he says “$700” and I say “and 50”.   And so on.  It got scary, let me tell you, because I didn’t want the item we were bidding on that much.  Doug came and sat next to me and hissed What are you doing???  I’ll stop in a minute, I whispered out the side of my mouth. 

Eventually I lost my nerve and stopped bidding, but not before my rival had paid large for whatever the item was – I don’t even remember.  But I do remember my heart pounding as the price went up and up.  I was hoping like mad that he didn’t realise that I was just pushing him for the sake of it, and this wouldn’t be the one occasion in the entire auction that he gave up on something he wanted.  But he didn’t, and even though I did get blasted out of the water in the end, the tactic didn’t work as intended because he had to do it a lot before he won, rather than just once.  And I bowed out with lots of childish giggling.  It was fun!  Though let me say now in my most Serious Adult Voice that it was also silly and could have cost us a lot of money if it backfired and you shouldn’t try that at home. 
 

May Gibbs produced some really charming
images and it's little wonder that she
is an Australian classic.  This picture 
is called A Busy Highroad. 

Though it was fun.

As a general rule, when you’re not dealing with childish and vengeful rivals like me, Blasting them out of the water can be such a successful tactic in shutting down an auction that many mid-range auction houses in England don’t allow it.  Australian auction houses usually do let you do it, and the really prestigious auction houses in both countries also generally allow it because doesn’t do to insult ultra-rich clients, whatever games they are playing.  The only way to discover an auction house’s policy is to just try it – either they’ll get all snippy and inform you that you may bid only the next increment, or they’ll let you take control and bid whatever you want.

Work is still happening at our building
site - which now looks like a bomb
site.  I've wanted terraces cut
into the hill immediately below
our house for years, and now it's
done.  Raw earth everywhere for
now, but it will settle down
soon enough.

In a future Blog I shall divulge other auction tactics that are easier and less risky than Blasting them out of the water.  Perhaps I’ll talk about the simple tactic I used at Kybong.  But first I’ll see if I end up at any auctions on the buying trip and let you know what tactics were used.  We were planning to attend an auction in Cornwall, but have abandoned that idea to have a Play Day instead, and go on what is considered the best steam railway trip in the world, up in the Highlands of Scotland.  It's the train they used as the Hogwarts Express for the Harry Potter movies, which goes along the route that was partially filmed for the movies.  Sounds more fun than sitting in a stuffy old auction room all day.
 

This is about half of the stumps for the rest of our house.  Some of the post holes are almost 2m deep, so we're well into bedrock and no matter how hard the wind blows - and it blows hard up at the mountain stronghold - the house isn't going anywhere.  Thank goodness it hasn't rained for a week, because it was a boggy quagmire before that.

Will it be France or will it be Prison? I pick France.

Calypso is almost 2 and Caleb has just turned 1,
so you'd think that our toilet rolls would be
safe from wanton destruction by now.  But no. 
My only two suspects in this investigation are
both spotted.

 

Things have been moving at a cracking pace since I last blogged.  Just as an aside, let me say that I have taken to sleeping in like that.  How nice to be able to stretch and lounge and have breakfast in bed rather than dash about to get the shop open at the ridiculous hour of 8am.  It just wasn’t natural.  So that’s part of the good news (more of that later).

If you have seen real Lea Stein bakelite jewellery
you can always tell the reproductions.  They're
colourful, but not in the same league.  These
ones were at an antiques fair at the Gold Coast.

In the meantime, I know I said I would not dwell on the unpleasantness in my life lately.  Unless there were further developments. 

 

So how’s this for a development:  Anton the Landlord wants me to give him money or write nice things about him (or both, I suspect) on the grounds of defamation.  Apparently my blog has such an enormous world-wide readership that his good name has been rooned, rooned I tell you, on an enormous, world-wide scale.  Thank you, enormous world-wide readership for being there for me.  So anyway, he has lawyered up and got himself a Big City Sydney Lawyer to write a couple of threatening letters to me. 

This is an interesting way of
displaying jewellery, but not
very effective if you actually
want to sell your pieces.
Also seen at the Gold Coast
antiques fair.

Now I’m only a small town antiques dealer and I don’t have the counsel of a Big City Sydney Lawyer.  But here’s the thing about defamation – in Australian law it is a complete defence if your comments are substantially true – let alone demonstrably true.  So you can bleat all you like about someone reporting on your actions, but as long as that reporting is true you can’t sue for defamation.  Well you can, but you’ll lose and then have to pay the court costs for all involved.  But Anton the Landlord has applied his fiendish logic to the matter and has nonetheless instructed his Big City Sydney Lawyer to threaten me.  Twice. 

Now I’m only a small town antiques dealer without the counsel of a Big City Sydney Lawyer, but here’s a sneak peek at what we might expect at the Trial of the Century:

Are the following points true?

1.      Does the Retail Shop Leases Act 1994 really exist?  Check.

2.      Does the Act instruct that the lessor of a retail premises (that would be Anton the Landlord) must provide a variety of confidential commercial information to the lessee within a stipulated period?  Check.

3.      Did Anton the Landlord fail to meet this legal obligation?  Check.

 

4.      Was Malcolm the spineless-blithering-liar able to weasel out of his lease with Anton the Landlord because this legal obligation was not met?  Check.

5.      Did Malcolm the spineless-blithering-liar's lawyer write to Anton the Landlord to tell him this?  Check.

6.      Did Anton the Landlord give me a copy of this letter, providing the physical evidence himself of his own failure to meet this legal obligation?  Unbelievably, that’s a Check.  Some people have commented that this was an inexplicably stupid thing for Anton the Landlord to have done.  I say that I have nothing but thanks and gratitude and praise for the wondrous mind that is Anton the Landlord’s to command.

7.      Did Anton the Landlord’s failure to meet this legal obligation provide the loophole that Malcolm the spineless-blithering-liar used to void the whole arrangement with the sale of my shop?  Check.

I only liked a couple of things at the Gold
Coast antiques fair, and naturally they
were both the most expensive
things there.  $2500 for a rolled oats
jar was a bit too much for my budget. 
 

Now I’m only a small town antiques dealer who doesn’t have the counsel a Big City Sydney Lawyer, so can anyone tell me why Anton the Landlord would claim any of the above isn’t true when he knows that a range of documents exist that prove it to be true? 

 

If legislation really exists and you really have legal obligations that must be met under it, and no-one but you can meet those obligations, but you didn’t, and you have provided your nemesis (that would be me) with the physical evidence that proves that you didn’t, isn’t that kind of – I dunno – indisputable?

 So why would you threaten to sue someone for defamation over comments you know to be true, and you know can be proven to be true?

Lots of things at the Pomona Antiques Fair were
also pretty expensive, but these nice little
beaded bags were remarkably good value.

I think we’ve hit the nail on the head with the word “threaten”.  You might not be able to successfully sue but there’s no harm in threatening a girl, is there?  What a charmer.  But I will not be bullied into silence when a significant wrong has been done to me, and I can prove it.  The nonsense over the shop really happened, and the whole sequence of events - including Anton the Landlord’s starring role - are demonstrably true. 

 

Ignorance and incompetence has now given way to bluster and threats.  Does behaving decently just not occur to some people?  And as for Malcolm the spineless-blithering-liar, no one has seen hide nor hair of him so he's still hiding under his bed, presumably.

A book I fancied at one of the Antiques Fairs, but
it was - you guessed it - too expensive.  $250! 
Doug has been with me for some time now
and he didn't know what a strumpet is.
That's a good sign, right?

Well now, I did promise to stop talking about this issue unless there were further developments.  So here I am, promising again.  In the finest tradition of AC/DC I might be reporting on my stunningly exciting Jail Break in a few blogs from now if Anton the Landlord is proven right, and I've just been imagining the whole thing.  But until then, it’s back to talking about antiques and house building.

And so back to the good news:  the builders returned yesterday, and dug a large number of post holes that are guaranteed to have us breaking our necks the moment we next step out of the house at night.  And walking the moggies is going to be extra good fun now that Caleb has so many water-filled holes he can “accidentally” fall into.  So it appears that the Council has run out of things to hassle us about - please don’t let them be Famous Last Words - and the builders have been working incredibly hard since they arrived back on site.  You certainly can't fault their work ethic, and they’ll be working at fever pitch until 13 September, when they will have to stop for a month.

Bits and bobs at the Porte de Vanves Market,
our favourite market in Paris.

And that’s because, guess what?  We’re going on the next buying trip afterall.  It was a bit dodgy for a while, what with Malcolm the spineless-blithering-liar causing a significant issue by running off to hide under his bed and leaving us in the lurch.  But there is no doubt we are going to need new stock - good, French stock in particular – but even if we buy it in Sept/Oct it won’t arrive in Australia until December, so we have to move now.

This also happens at my house every
morning, just on a smaller scale.
Doesn't feel smaller when it's happening
 all across my bed, though.



And guess what else?  Thanks to a recommendation from Alan and Carlyle, lovely customers from our old shop, we’re having a play day at the Tiger Temple a few hours from Bangkok on the way over.  Plus an afternoon playing with elephants that will involve trekking through the jungle for a few hours and also appears to involve getting a good soaking in the river while washing your elephant.  What fun it will be, and we’re really looking forward to it.  It shall be this year’s birthday treat for me, not exactly on my birthday, when we’ll either be in London or the wilds of far southern Cornwall (haven’t decided yet), but it doesn’t matter because all dates on a September buying trip count as my birthday.

Meanwhile, we’ve had a few excursions to various antiques fairs around the region, so see if we might be interested in taking stands with them in the future.  The French Fair in Brisbane was cancelled at the last minute, so we instead went down to the Gold Coast to look at an antiques fair.  But it was too small, prices were too expensive, and lots of the stock was undeclared reproduction.  You know how I hate that.  It didn’t take long to view that fair and it was a beautiful day, so we collected some supplies and went to picnic on Broadbeach instead. 

Who wouldn't want to run as fast as they
can to the top of this mountain and then hurtle
back down it?  Sounds like a perfectly
luverley Sunday outing, dahling.

Then off to Pomona, for the King of the Mountain weekend, which involves incredibly fit and incredibly crazy people running to the top of Mt Cooroora (an incredibly big, steep hill) and back in an incredibly fast time.  But there is also an antiques fair held over that weekend, so we went for a look.  Not bad.  We can provide very different stock at very competitive prices and it’s convenient to home, so we might have a chat with the organisers to see if they have any spaces for next year.

 

Plenty of hotted up old cars and bikes at the
Nambour Swap Meet.  And wow
expensive antiques.

We noticed that there was a swap meet at Nambour, so we toddled off there for a look as well.  Hadn't been to a swap meet before, and I've come away still not sure what was actually being swapped.  Most things being sold were car related, and there were a variety of cool old cars and motorbikes on display as well.  Some second hand bits and bobs were also for sale, and some antiques - at enormous prices.  I remember gagging at the price of a lovely retro toaster, just right for crumpets, at the Nambour Antiques Fair a few months ago, but a similar toaster was even more expensive at the far more down-market swap meet.  I expect that toaster has been packed and unpacked a few times now, and will be for some time to come.



Good plants at good prices
at the Yandina Market.

Finally, we’ve had a few Saturday morning trips to Yandina Market, which I haven’t been able to do for years because I had to open the shop at an ungodly hour.  What a good market, probably my new favourite in the region.  Small enough that it’s easy to get around, big enough that there’s a good variety of good quality food and plants.

Now I can go market shopping, so Doug has been
showing me all his favourite stalls at the Yandina
Market.  This stall has the best ever mushrooms.

 

 

 

 

 

So anyway, the next little while shall be spent organising the coming buying trip.  Unfortunately we won’t have a heap of time in France, but the schedule I have in mind is very full so we should get a lot of excellent buying done.  And I’ve got some good Play Days in mind, so we’ll see what can be arranged.