A Vinagerette?

After all the excitement of the last few days, Gawd bless yr Mum, I resolved to cease knuckling my cap and get down to some good honest toil. Strengthening the framework for the tomato plants, cutting back the ivy and sorting out the detritus of my ill fated venture into antique dealing.

My dabblings in fine art started at the suggestion of Swiss Linda a retired bankeress from Switzerland, who is the partner of Nat that I wrote of yesterday. She told me of the monthly antiques market held in Besalu and persuaded me that to raid my modest dwelling and turn some of my objet d'art into readies, would be fun and worth while.

So for the three consecutive months of October, November and December, I arose at some ungodly hour, loaded my trusty trailer with trestles, plastic sheets and camping stools. Gathered together my impressive array of treasures from the four corners of the globe, (or "that load of blessed tat", as the Pleasure Preventer put it) and set off into the frosty chill of a Pyreneean morning to ensure a prime pitch.

By 10 am I was still the solitary occupier of the square, my stall was set out, my wares gleaming in the rays of the rising sun unviewed by any save a dog who cocked his leg on my fine statuette of an asian beauty and this months village idiot who apparently had slept on a bench and came along to speak to me and in a spirit of friendship breathed garlic and red wine fumes directly into my face, but bought nothing.

At about 11 am a couple arrived in a camper van, decanted a dog with intestinal problems who desired to make my leg his life long companion, and who set up a stall selling nothing but brass firemans helmets. Long sort after by Catalan villagers.

Swiss Linda put in an appearance about 11.30, a bit miffed because I was apparently supposed to give her a lift, but her french and mine must be from different cantons, or even centuries because the message never got through to me. Yet as she was berating me I made my first sale, a guitar with no strings and a tuning peg missing, which I had offered at ?25 but was beaten down to ?5 by a six year old boy who took it with great pride to show his mother who promptly dragged him back to me and demanded his money back. In the spirit of customer care ( and because she was a large and ferocious woman) I refunded his money and made him a present of a set of brass monkeys depicting the see no, speak no, hear no, evil of the perpetually timid.

After three old village men had rummaged through a basket of assorted ladies undergarments, some of which I was reluctant to sell because they still fitted me, and I had let go a much regarded plywood table with imitation brass inlay, which had been given to me by George the Greek who used to keep a restaurant in the Tollcross area of Edinburgh, renowned equally for the quality of its moussaka, its retsina and its salmonella, I began to wonder if the effort was worth the effort.

There is a peculiar and distinctive flavour to the disdain which a Catalan villager can summon up when dismissing the precious antiques offered to them by a Scottish lad, naive, and putty in the hands of determined and experienced dealers, easily taken advantage of by rapacious peasants and tired and weary enough to let discounting become the norm and never mind the indignity of begging people to take away my bookstand in chipboard with oak veneer c 1730, my genuine stag horn hat rack with mahogany finials, and the pair of curtains which I had bought in an auction of country house effects,which had graced the four poster that Queen Victoria's second footman had slept in on her visit to Peebles in 1867.
The one bright spot of the whole day was that I managed to buy a very nice little chess set, Ok, so what that it is missing one king which perhaps does give white an advantage, a set of blow football in the original box, and a rather nice plaster effect mirror with rose surround, which is now hanging in my garden shed as the PP inexplicably will not have it in the house.

That was just the first day and I wasn't too disheartened, I have to tell you though on the third day, a wet, very chill December Saturday, I resolved to draw this particular undertaking to a close. That is why today was spent sifting through the stock in the garage, and wondering, in my spirit of eternal optimism, whether summer might be a better selling season. I will let you know! Perhaps the watering can would sell on E-Bay?