My grandma Margaret used to own a vegetable store, which became, effectively, a junk shop called 'The Studio'. I would happily spend hours sifting through the costume jewellery, silverware, and dodgy ornaments or help her and my great aunt Eileen identify the tiny and often illegible markings inside rings of the deceased local residents.
Invariably I would leave with some obscure prize or other; greek myth tableau on a plate, venetian mask (complete with flaking sparkles that get just about everywhere), big gaudy cubic zirconia or glass set rings, and although I always made straight for the standard junk shop addition lucky rabbits foot, with which I was fascinated, I always left it firmly on the velvet covered table top. No way was I going to carry a thing like that around in my pocket, lucky or not. It's a dead animals foot for crying out loud.
This weekend I visited Canterbury for a friends birthday. For the prerequsite hangover breakfast we went to Cafe Boho which we agreed if it is going to have a wall of clocks they should all tell the correct time, or at the least work, the waitresses should not serve flat lemonade, it should sell all-day breakfast (we just missed it at 12.05), and open at night as a bar. We left in the drizzle which dampened the prospect of sight-seeing but on a whim were intrigued to follow a sign that led down some wiggly back streets to an antiques fair.
As soon as we walked in to a foyer that looked like deaths waiting room with a stronger smell of must and moth balls emminating from the pensioners parked up I had a strong but momentary impulse to turn right around and not bother (the smell of old people can be oppressing). As it was, the hour or so spent in that musty hall was a success. Since my experience of gutless thievery recently I have been lacking a watch and I came away with two. A dainty gold Sekonda for a fiver and from another stall we plucked a pretty wrist watch with a tan strap which on closer inspection turned out to be a genuine Emporio Armani. I only had £7.50 left of the required £15 but the nice man relented so now I have a designer watch.
Other purchases were of a beautiful silver and jade cluster set ring, and a delicate silver box chain necklace with silver twisted wishbone pendant, which had a tiny pearl in set which we were informed was from the 50's. Thus, I will now be on the look out for more Antique Fairs for 1. jewellery, 2. glass perfume bottles, especially with atomizers, 3. teddy bears, and what ever else I can uproot from jumbled cluttered tables of musty-smelling bric-a-brac.
