Scything

Tags

Alan Bates, Andrew Marvell, Antiques Roadshow, Babylon, barmkin, Ben Batt, Corydon, Damon the Mower, Deep Heat, Downton Abbey, eclogues, Farmers' Markets, Fiona Bruce, Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, Green-Winged orchid, Grim reaper, Hayter, Highgrove, Lammas, meadow management, Mower to the Glow-Worms, Mr D'Arcy, One Man Went to Mow, pastoral, Pele Tower, Ph.D, Pig-gate, Poldark, Schroeckenfux, scything, snath, Stag's Breath liqueur, The Go-Between, troubador, Voltarol, wu wei

Diana Fotheringay-Syylk was administering embrocations

and a little tlc to a recumbent Murgatroyd, who is, as some

of you will recall, the owner of a Borders Pele tower.

Privately, Diana thought that he had been over-doing things

and Voltarol was not really having a great deal of an effect on

his lumbar aches and pains.

It had not helped when he had lugged plastic crates round the

local Farmers’ Markets, selling his Empress Bangers and porcine

medallions.

Yes, Dear Reader, Pig-gate had already struck, before the

Cameronian variety hit the news.

(Photo:Alpha from Melbourne)

Once he had cleared out the pig-pen area he decided to

re-seed it, to please Diana, who had been upset when their

gardening firm had rotovated the wrong field and inadvertently

destroyed their recently established Highgrove-style wildflower

meadow and a group of what she took to be Green-Winged Orchids.

(Photo by Didier Desouens)

From then on, Murgatroyd had decided to do away with mechanical

Hayters and, Diana, having been inspired by Aidan Turner, like so

many females d’un certain age, had booked him in – Murgatroyd, that

is – for a Lammas weekend scything course in Brighton, where he was

going to learn the sociology of the bar peen.

His back-ache had been exacerbated by carrying the large A4 pack of

information he had been given at the start of the course.  Someone had

probably gained a Ph.D in Rural Studies from producing it.

That meant she could watch the boxed set of Poldark in peace, while

he practised with his new, Austrian light-weight, zero-carbon

Schroeckenfux.

However, her pastoral idyll had been disturbed by Murgatroyd’s

complaints, not in the manner of a Corydon, or passionate troubador,

but more in line with the average husband who experiences muscular

twitches, or sciatica.  He was recumbent and had hung his instrument on

the equivalent of a willow tree, while he lamented his estate, as if he

had been exiled from Babylon.  He felt as if one of the Four Horsemen

of the Apocalypse had wounded him – perhaps that skinny one with the

hoodie and the big scythe.

He groaned.

We’ve run out of  ‘Voltarol’.  You’ll just have to use the ‘Deep Heat’ until

the shops open tomorrow and  I go down to the pharmacy, Diana

informed him, noting that The Go-Between was on later that evening.

What a pity she didn’t have a little gopher, like Leo, to pop upstairs

with the tube of emollient.  She was fed up running up and down stairs

pandering to the invalid.

Having taken him a Stag’s Breath liqueur and having poured a generous

shot for herself, she settled down with the remote in a comfy armchair, in

the barmkin.

This had better be good, for she had enjoyed the Alan Bates version.

For some subliminal reason, she hummed One Man Went to Mow, Went to

Mow a Meadow…

It wasn’t too long before she found herself re-winding to check the length

of the snath handle Batt was implementing.  Impressive-and that was just

his wu wei.

Meanwhile Murgatroyd was looking at a John Deere catalogue while Ben

Batt cut a swathe through Downton‘s viewing audience and no one could

remember what Fiona Bruce had been rabbiting on about on The Antiques

Roadshow.  For, there was an attempt to high-jack a Mr D’Arcy moment for

posterity.

Later, in bed – the spare bed – Diana could not clear snatches of eclogues

from her overactive mind.  She kept thinking of Andrew Marvell poems, such

as Damon the Mower, The Mower to the Glow-worms and Mowing Song.

Snippets of the verses repeated themselves:

Sharp like his scythe his sorrow was,

And withered like his hopes the grass.

and

How happy might I still have mowed,

Had not Love here his thistles sowed.

…there among the grass fell down,

By his own scythe, the Mower mown…

T ‘is death alone that this must do:

For Death thou art a Mower too.

Well, she reflected, Life is too short for meadow

management. I think we will just pave it over again

and get some pots with pelargoniums.  I’ll go to the

Garden Centre after I’ve been to the chemist’s.

And she decided that Alan Bates had, after all,

been more satisfactory.

Coming!

Basic/Better/ Best

Tags

Antiques Roadshow, Basic/ Better/ Best, Blackberry, Border Terrier, breach of promise, Easter Island, Fiona Bruce, Flog-It!, flugelhorn, marimba, Miller Guides, Moai, Moorcroft, Polynesian figure, Quorn, Radio 4, Rocky Road, Sotheby's, Tesco, The Moral Maze

Some archival material which, I think, deserves a second airing!

There was an amateur Antiques Roadshow in Suttonford’s Community Centre on Saturday afternoon, on behalf of the charity, Curs in Crisis.  The organisers had asked local auctioneer, Hubert Wormhole, to give of his expertise and they charged £5 per valuation.  The queues snaked out into North Street, but thankfully it wasn’t raining.

Ginevra Brewer-Mead had donated a quirky, mystery object as a prize.  It was to raise fifty pence a guess as to its identity and use.  The winner would be allowed to keep it.  It was all good fun.

Ginevra had bought the ugly thing many years before, at a jumble sale.  It usually resided on her mantelpiece and her carer, Magda, had encouraged her to get rid of it, as it freaked her out.  (Magda was becoming more and more proficient in her utilisation of Slanglish.)

People were laughing as they wondered aloud which of their friends and neighbours most resembled the figure with the over-sized head.  Pollux nudged his twin and whispered: Caligula!  They both sniggered, but their mother, Brassica, reproved them and said that it was rude to make comments about their teacher.

Hubert had set up a table with Basic / Better/ Best cardboard signs, which was an idea that he had stolen from the real BBC show.  Three examples of Moorcroft pottery stood behind the labels.

Again, people were invited to pay fifty pence to guess the relative worthiness of the three items and, if they were correct, they were given a delicious cluster of Rocky Road from a Tesco bucket.

Brassica’s twins had been issued with their pocket money that morning, and, miraculously, still had some left.

Castor walked over to the table with the hideous figure and realised that he had seen it before, at Ginevra’s house, when he had been visiting with his mother.  He had been fascinated by it and had looked up similar objects online.  He knew that such figures dated from the Pre-Moai period, when Easter Island had been afforested.  A similar object had sold at Sotheby’s in the eighties for £100,000.

He was hopping up and down with suppressed excitement when he asked the woman on the stall, who happened to be Sonia, if he could borrow a pen.

Then he concealed his writing with his arm crooked, as he was wont to do in school tests, so that John, his partner on the double desk, would not copy his answers.  He wrote very carefully:

Rair deety Ester Iland

He appended his father’s mobile number.  Thankfully he was more numerate than literate, so there was a chance of the adjudicator being able to contact him.

He posted his entry in the cardboard box.  Sonia said, I think you might be a lucky boy.

Pollux usually did the Arts subject preps and he did the Maths and Science ones.  Between themselves, they did quite well.  However, on this occasion, he did not collaborate with his twin, nor did he inform him of his entry.

Some people were becoming annoyed as they had guessed the Moorcroft conundrum correctly, owing to an over-exposure of such ceramic art on Flog-It!  They thought that they should have won the best object of the three, but even the Rocky Road was unavailable, as it had been consumed by little boys with light fingers and sweet tooths, no, teeth.  And, in particular, by twins who had been feeding their Border Terrier who lay under the table, with the chocolate and marshmallow moreish morsels.

These small-minded adults had paid and guessed in vain and they were very disgruntled and said that charities should put humans before canines. They expressed other sentiments in terms which little boys should not have overheard.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Brassie was in her kitchen/diner, cooking supper and the twins had been finishing their flugelhorn and marimba practice next door.  She called them to the table.

But, mum, we’re not hungry, they complained.

That’s because you stuffed yourselves with Rocky Road, she lectured.  You know I don’t allow sugar treats and now you can see why.  All this lovely wholesome Quorn is going to go to waste.

The twins simultaneously eyed their Border.   They felt sure that he would oblige in any hoovering up operation to do with leftovers, even though he had consumed a fair amount of the sweet clusters himself.

Darling!  She shouted up the garden in the direction of the observatory.  Supper’s ready.

Cosmo was already coming down the path, fiddling with his Blackberry.

Castor, he said, it’s Mr Wormhole from the roadshow this afternoon.  He says there has been a terrible mistake.

I know, dad.  They didn’t pick up on the Polynesian figure.

What? said Brassie. (The phone always rang at mealtimes).  I’ll take it.   She held the mobile up to her ear with one hand while she stirred the unappetising looking Quorn mish-mash.  Easter Island?  Rare?  Pre-Moy, what?

A similar figure went for an absolute fortune at a London sale of Tribal Art in the Seventies, said Hubert, suddenly very authoritative.  Naturally, Mrs Brewer-Mead had no idea what she had donated.  Even I wasn’t certain until I went home and referred to my Miller Guides.

But Castor guessed correctly, she insisted, amazed at her son’s vast store of knowledge filched from http://www.geekologie.com etc.

What’s all this about? asked Cosmo, confused as ever.

He says that Castor can’t have his prize as he spelled the answer incorrectly.  He’s offering him the best piece of Moorcroft instead, Brassie stage-whispered, holding her hand over the Blackberry.

We’ll see about that, said Cosmo masterfully.  He won it fairly and squarely, as far as I can make out.

No, they’ve had a lawyer on to it already and Ginevra seems to be within her rights to withdraw the prize and to offer a substitute.  Brassie was frantically trying to remember where she had seen the advertisement for No Win/ No Fee legal services. Mr Wormhole thinks that Mrs Brewer-Mead, I mean Ginevra, has already appropriated it, as it was not on the table at the end of the afternoon.

Mr Wormhole rang off, saying that they could discuss things further on Monday.

Now do you see the importance of spelling, you careless boy? snapped Brassie.

Castor’s lip trembled, but he rallied: My teacher says that you can still get an A* so long as she and the examiner people can make out what it is you are trying to say.

Well, now you know that that is a load of rubbish in the real world, stressed Brassie.  I’ll have to have a word with Ginevra on Monday about the EU and Children’s Rights and breach of promise.

Pollux tried to draw the blame onto himself-and succeeded; his father had more experience and kept a low profile.

 I’d have known how to spell the answer, he piped up.

Oh, shut up, Smart-Alec, they all said.

Pollux crept over to the Border’s basket to stroke his little, furry friend and as a tear plopped onto the dog’s wiry head, it looked up quizzically, and, as it did so, it gagged.

Give! ordered Pollux.

After a tussle, he forced open its jaws and a carved splinter of something very Moai-like shot out across the kitchen flagstones.

Mum! he screamed.

Andy, the Border, had evidently carried the figure home in his mouth and had been worrying at it throughout their music practice and Brassie’s meal preparation.

They all agreed to say nothing and to accept the Moorcroft gracefully.  However, Brassie could feel the discomfort on the back burners of her conscience.  She felt that it was the kind of dilemma that The Moral Maze would like to have grappled with on Radio 4 and she felt that they would not emerge smelling of roses.  She wished that Castor had never seen the wretched thing.  It must have emitted some evil power, as she could see how destructive its forces would have been in her family and community.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Think of all the Dewlap Gins I could have bought, said Ginevra, wistfully.

It freaked me out, replied Magda, her carer.  You only lost 20 pence effectively.  But you still have your friends.

Let’s drink to that, agreed Ginevra.  Bottoms up!

And Magda understood the expression, as her English and Slanglish was coming on.

Prost!

The Young Chevalier

Tags

Allan Ramsay, Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bendor Grosvenor, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Camlachie, Charles Edward Stuart, Clementina Walkinshaw, Duchess of Albany, Fiona Bruce, Glasgow, Gosford House, manflu, Meaux-en-Brie, Philip Mould, The Young Chevalier, Walker's Petticoat Tails

So, that would have been one of your ancestors then? teased Brassie.

We were sitting, not ‘sat’, in Costamuchamoulah must-seen cafe now

that half-term was over and we could have the place reasonably to

ourselves.

What do you mean? I parried.

Charles Edward Stuart.  His lost portrait has been found.  Didn’t you watch

the programme?

It wasn’t that lost, Carrie chipped in.  It was safely hung, if not displayed, in

a dingy corridor in Gosford House, but catalogued in the inventory there.

Yes, but it took a man in biking leathers with the name of a Derby winner

to have it authenticated, Brassie continued.  He asked a woman whom I

supposed to be the Dowager Countess if he could take it away and, just

because he shares a name with the Duke of Westminster, she immediately

let him take it off the wall, without batting an eyelid.

Maybe it wasn’t because of his name, I speculated.  Leather seems to be

persuasive. They’re all into it.  Fiona Bruce has several leather jackets in a

wide spectrum of colours and she is all over works of art nowadays.

Brassie became enthusiastic: I know, but when Bendor got his leg over..

..his motorbike- I defused her instantly.

Who’s Bendor? asked Carrie.

Duh! We both looked at her incredulously.

Don’t let’s lower the tone.  We were talking about Scottish Art

and Allan Ramsay, weren’t we?  Or should we talk about Philip Mould?

He’s more age appropriate, but not so fetching in hide, I agree.

I can see Bendor in a blue sash and cockade, sighed Brassie.

Never mind ‘Charlie is my Darling’.

Yes, but as a Sassenach, he’s not strictly entitled to wear tartan, I

reminded her.  And no one is going to put Mr Grosvenor on a packet

of Walker’s Petticoat Tails, are they?

I suppose not, more’s the pity.  She looked disappointed.  I‘d probably

buy some if they did.  He’s better looking than Rabbie Burns.

Carrie tried to change the subject.  Actually, they thought that there

might have been a portrait of Charlie’s mistress, Clementina Walkinshaw

too, but the one in Derby, or wherever, was discredited.

Now there was an interesting woman, I jumped in.  Glaswegian, one of

ten, from Camlachie.  I don’t believe that she nursed him through manflu,

though. No woman from Glasgow is that sympathetic.  Eventually, fed up with

his drunken antics, she re-invented herself, as many a Glesca girl has done,

and styled herself Countess Alberstroff. She went off to Meaux-en-Brie.

Sounds cheesy, remarked Carrie.

Not as cheesy as what Charlie did next.  He married a nineteen year old

princess.

Didn’t he have a daughter with Clementina?  Wasn’t she The Duchess of

Albany?  It was all coming back to Brassie.

Yes.  Poor Charlotte died young after becoming the mistress of the Archbishop

of Bordeaux, I explained.

Did she have kids?  Brassie couldn’t remember the details.

Yes, but they couldn’t be royal as Henry, Charlie’s brother-who was a Cardinal

by the way- made Clementina sign a document of renunciation of any rights.

There might be a lost portrait of Clementina as a nun in one of the French

convents she took shelter in, suggested Brassie.

Or one of Charlotte as the Virgin Mary at a Bishop’s Palace in Bordeaux or

Cambrai, I added.

Should be good for a motorcycle trip to Aquitaine through the French

vineyards, Carrie concluded.

Perhaps he will need an assistant, Brassie said wistfully.

I’d better buy myself a leather jacket.  Fiona’s too tall to fit in a sidecar.

Fake or Fortune?

Tags

BBC, Chinese Girl, Fake or Fortune?, Fiona Bruce, Hals, Laughing Cavalier, Marlborough cigarettes, McEwan, Philip Mould, Tim Wonnacott, Tretchikoff

Sonia contacted Fiona Bruce and art expert, Philip Mould, after watching the BBC programme Fake or Fortune? There had been an invitation to approach the team with enquiries regarding any unauthenticated artworks which might be by famous artists and which the viewers might own.

There had been a portrait of The Laughing Cavalier over Sonia’s marble mantelpiece at Royalist House, High Street, Suttonford, for a long time.  Had her late husband bought it at auction?  Had it always been there?  She could not remember.  It had seemed a permanent fixture of her life and she was not disconcerted by the way in which the eyes followed her around the room.

Of course, she didn’t think it was the, the one and only portrait of the debonair gentleman, by Hals.  She had been paying attention to the discussions on the programme about sleepers, works after so-and-so, in the manner of, and works from the studio of etc.  She knew that copies were made and sometimes the master would work on-(say) the face of a sitter and then his apprentices would fill in the lace and drapery.  A bit like painting by numbers, she thought. Still, it would be interesting to get an informed opinion and she might get onto the show.

If it turned out to be authentic then she would have to sell it, as it would be uninsurable in a private house.  However, proceeds might help with her gas bills. Osborne and Cameron were sure to strip pensioners of their winter fuel allowance and it was a big house to heat.  So, the moment had come to see if the portrait would more than wipe its face.  (She liked that phrase, much utilised by Tim Wonnacott.)

Sonia would dearly have liked to know if the picture was worth millions or not.  Many of her visitors thought privately, that, since she was a clairvoyant, she should have been able to work it out.  Couldn’t she have looked into her crystal ball and made as worthy a pronouncement as some of the obscure experts in Amsterdam, or Haarlem?

She had looked at her falling shares and asked her friend Clammie to e-mail the London Gallery where Mould worked.  Reading Tarot cards part-time was no longer covering her addiction to Marlboroughs , nor to double espressos from Costamuchamoulah café.

She averted her eyes from the Smoking Kills warning on her ciggie packet.  It was a trifle histrionic, she thought.  After all, she had sat in a veritable pea-souper for twenty or thirty years in her sitting room and she hadn’t smoked out the ghost of the fugitive cavalier who had taken up abode in the attic after his escape from The Battle of Suttonford, 1644.

No, one could still hear him tinkling the keys of her late husband’s harpsichord of an evening.  As for the other cavalier- well, he wasn’t exactly laughing, but then he never had been.  The title was a Victorian invention.  She would say that he had an enigmatic smile and that it wasn’t clouded by the thick layer of brown tar which, an opinion which, a few weeks later, Fiona Bruce reinforced by pronouncing what might have been termed discolouration, a wonderful patina.

Smoke might get in people’s eyes, but she thought that the perpetual ectoplasm streaming from her lips gave her a Madam Arcati-like air.  She therefore approached the analysis with a blithe spirit and what she hoped was an open mind.

Over the mantelpiece there was now an empty rectangular space, which revealed the original colour of the flock wallpaper.  She felt that very soon she would be able to sneer at Froyle’s Auction Rooms, who had snootily estimated the picture to fetch between £20-30.  They mentioned chocolate box lids, McEwan’s Export cans and other humiliating images.

We’ll show them, she inhaled deeply.

She didn’t know how everyone in the town knew when the verdict was to be given on the programme, as she thought that she had kept it a secret.  (This was disturbing for a medium.)   The usual boozers in the town had gathered at The Running Sore, where the publican was dyslexic, to watch the episode on the giant plasma screen.

Philip Mould looked nervous as a restorer chipped off the varnish with a miniature scalpel. Paint flakes were analysed and were disappointingly said to be acrylic.  Then the picture was put inside a medical scanner and a face emerged from beneath the tar- a ghostly doppelganger.  Fiona Bruce was mopping Mould’s brow, when a patch of turquoise became evident.  More scraping took place and then the radiographer exclaimed:

My aunty Doris had this in her dining room in the Sixties.

Fiona Bruce laughed:

My gran had it in her sitting room.

Philip Mould recognised it immediately as the most common portrait that had ever appeared at car boot sales in the country :

The Chinese Girl by Vladimir Tretchikoff

Someone- Sonia’s late husband, perhaps? – had painted it over in a competent, but amateurish way.  The author of Sleuth: The Awesome Quest for Lost Art Works buried his head on Fiona’s shoulder and wept.

Sonia said, I should have known!

 

Of course, the BBC and the Fake or Fortune? team couldn’t return Sonia’s painting, as the acid had done its work on the surface acrylic paint.  She wasn’t too distressed, however.  She went to Froyle’s Auction Rooms and satisfied herself by purchasing a large mirror for £20, plus 20% commission.  She was heartened that the fees for lotting, collection, insurance and catalogue illustration had been met by the vendor.

As she was hanging it- or having it hung by her new friend, Clammie- she was certain that she caught a glimpse of a ghostly face, reflected in the mirror: it was her very own resident phantom-see previous blogs!)  The cavalier was laughing at her and he looked considerably more handsome than the Hals forgery had done.  She thought he looked a little like Philip Mould with moustachios.  Now that was something special that no one could reproduce!

In The Running Sore gastric pub most of the punters said: You didn’t have to be psychic to see that coming!

Old Sonia is no oil painting herself, quipped another.

The dyslexic landlord had the final comment, however:

That Fiona Bruce is a sight for sore eyes, though!

We’ll drink to that! chorused most of the males propping up the bar.

Compassion Fatigue

Tags

4x4, Andrex puppy, Andy Murray, Antiques Roadshow, Barrier Reef, Big issue, cashmere, CERN, charity shop, Chewbacca, Co-Op, compassion fatigue, David Battie, Feeding of Five Thousand, Fiona Bruce, Galilee, Jesus, merino, Nanking wreck, neighbour, Oxford Brookes, Roger Federer, Shakespeare, SIM, Suttonford, tennis, Tesco, texting, tramp, vegetarian, Wimbledon

CANDIA, CANDIA, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOUR LIFE?

I may have had love at thirty and even love at forty, but there didn’t seem to be such a score as love fifty.  I even thought that my name was a cross between a sexually transmitted disease and an artificial sweetener.  Or was it that, as a femme d’un certain age my frankness and candour had become eponymous and self-fulfilling?

I looked out of the window.  The rain it raineth every day.  I wondered if it had been the wettest June and July since Shakespeare’s time, let alone since records began.  (My English degree sometimes surfaces like a rogue shark on the Barrier Reef of my endangered intellect.)  I decided to venture forth to surf the main street of Suttonford.)

The lure of Tesco Express hooked me in.  Yellow stickers on a few packets of prawns helped me to rationalise that what I saved on comestibles would subsidise the purchase of a few designer garments in the sales.

Co-op or Tesco?  Difficult, as I’d have to negotiate the Charybdis of a Romanian Big Issue seller who had taken to making himself very comfortable on a teak garden chair, right outside the entrance to TE, causing the automatic doors to go into overdrive; or I would have to steer clear of Scylla, in the form of Suttonford’s designer tramp who sat cross-legged, texting his currency dealer, or checking his Visa account on his mobile. I was in danger of extreme compassion fatigue.  It was no use asking myself: “What would Jesus do?”

Probably He would have been able to address the Romanian in his own language and could have introduced Himself as the original Big Issue, or He could have given the technological tramp advice on a hotline to heaven that didn’t involve indulgences in the form of top up cards.  Maybe He could have transformed intermittent reception owing to SIM malfunction, rather than to sin.  Anyway, I doubted that the tramp would have appreciated being told to take up his bed and walk.  I thought he’d prefer another can of the lager that the public-spirited locals tended to supply.

The Son of Man once had nowhere to lay His head either, but things might have been improved if Nevisport down sleeping bags had been around two millennia ago.  Mind you, maybe the Apostles hadn’t needed such protection, as climate change hadn’t made camping in Galilee as warm and wet as in the present time.

Furthermore, I wasn’t sure if I should offer the indigent, if not mendicant, anything, since I had witnessed my neighbour’s dismay on proffering him the leftover sausage rolls from the Jubilee Feeding of the Five Thousand street party.  He had politely, but firmly declined: No thank you, madam.  I’m a vegetarian.

My neighbour wasn’t used to a tramp taking the moral high ground.  The cheek of it!

Oh well! Better trundle off with my funky trolley out and head for Help the Ancient, before any of the rapacious so-called pre-empt me and bag all the bargains.

I used to find lots of treasures in charity shops before the prices rose in the time of austerity.  Even the rich are feeling the pinch, so why do charities double the price of clothing, which is then unsold and has to be re-distributed to lowlier branches in less salubrious areas, where it is offered at half the price to the same rich bounty hunters, who simply have the plastic wherewithal to put enough petrol in their 4x4s so that they can travel further afield in their materialistic slash and burn forays?

No, not all the elderly are rapacious.  Some volunteer in such shops, but find multitasking challenging.  You must never distract them at the till and it is essential to check the chip and pin, or you can end up paying £8,000 for a pilled pullover, already pricily tagged at £8.  The manager usually has to be summoned like a genie from some steamy esoteric activity behind a back curtain.  Then, to the accompaniment of impatient dismay from a line of jealous vultures who have just spotted your potential purchase of a Merino, or Cashmere find, but who haven’t noticed the moth holes, a till roll with Cancelled, the absurd length of which would  delight any Andrex puppy, will be issued. I always doubt the assurances that a sum that equals the deficit of Spain will not appear on my next statement as an outgoing.  Still, I can’t keep away from the places of temptation.

Hello, Candia.

It was my least favourite volunteer.  Rather than thanking people for donating sacks of goodies, she delighted in deterring them from depositing bags after some arbitrary time of day and she could spot an electrical item faster than a Heathrow sniffer dog uncovers a kilo of cocaine.

When a breathless woman whose twins were squabbling in a vehicle on a double yellow line came in, gasping as she heaved a bulging black bag, the do-gooder delighted in delaying the drop-off by asking all sorts of intrusive questions as to whether the  donor was a UK taxpayer or not.  Eventually the woman snapped:

How can I be a taxpayer when I have never worked?

I didn’t know the volunteer’s name and she wasn’t wearing an identification badge.  I launched in, nevertheless:

You know that Ming vase that I was cajoled into buying last week for a fiver?  Well, it had a hairline-no, not an airline- crack.

She turned up her hearing aid. I continued:

That means that it isn’t fit for purpose and David Battie always says that there is a difference between a firing crack , which wouldn’t affect the value of a piece materially, and a hairline. I know you are a charity shop, but the Trades Description laws apply to you as well. Can you give me, at least, an exchange note?

Certainly.  Do you still have the receipt? Fifteen love.

I hesitated. Well, no.. You see, it said £500,000, so I destroyed it in case someone thought I was into money laundering. Thirty love.

Ah, well, I’m sorry. We can’t do anything without it.  As a decorative item, I’m sure that it is worth what you paid.  I stopped scoring.  The ball was in.  Okay, they were not going to get my old Manola Beatnik slingbacks that I’d bought in a Moroccan souk. I will take them to the next Roadshow valuation day.  They might be worth something in the very distant future.  Maybe Fiona Bruce could try them for size.

My next stop was Costamuchamoulah, a trendy “must-seen” coffee shop, where the price of a cappuccino was commensurate with the cost of one of the rare beans from which its beverages were produced.  A single example had excited more fever on the Stock Market than a tulip bulb had raised in Amsterdam at the time of the girl with the pearl ear-ring.  They sell other things too- such as sprouted beans that might be Ming rather than mung and could featured in a barter system where rare porcelain Nanking wreck discoveries could be exchanged for one millionth of a gram.  Still, as the adverts keep reminding me: I am worth it.  Instant gratification here I come!

Darling!

It was a deeply insincere parent of a dreadfully dim girl that I had once taught.

Look at this amazing double egg cup in goose, hen or quail sizes.  It has such cute little sheeps’ heads on it.

Sheep plural, I scoffed silently.

I simply must buy one for Becca’s Biology teacher.  He really helped her to get an A* with all those extra lunchtime sessions he provided.

The ones which she didn’t bother to turn up for with me, I brooded.

(This A/ A* obsession was becoming as annoying as having to observe all those Chinese silver medallists blubbing because they feel they have let down the Motherland.)

Yes, that’s what got her into Biological Sciences at Oxford, the proud progenitor persisted.

Brookes. I silently supplied the post-modifier.

Instead I said, How marvellous!  And how is – I fudged the name– doing now?  As if I cared.

Oh, she’s landed a superb internship for next year at CERN.  She wants to research Botox particles and can’t wait to jog around the collider when it’s not switched on.

I grimaced.

She was at a party in London and met a girl who babysits for Roger Federer- you know, the tennis player..

(Yes, I do know, you patronising… This sotte voce.)

..when he is at Wimbledon.  Now she’s really into all things Alpen.

Muesli for her, I muttered in an embittered tone.  Must dash. Say her old English teacher was asking for her. (Maybe Becca or Chewbacca, or whoever, could get me a discarded sweat-drenched towel from Wimbledon.)

I will, darling, if she remembers who you are/were.  Ciao.

I couldn’t help wondering who babysat for Andy Murray’s mum?  Presumably Kim.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012