Robin Pilcher

It’s time again for those Christmas house sales where you can stock up with all sorts of presents from sweet-smelling soaps to wicker log baskets. At one of these sales some years ago, I remember there being one enterprising stallholder, a hitherto wealthy landowner and proud member of Lloyds whose syndicate had gone belly-up, who, finding himself suddenly in need of a few shillings, invented a handy device for cleaning Wellington boots after a hard day tramping the fields in search of the odd pheasant. It consisted of a large plastic box with a hose attached to it. You simply stepped into the box and turned on the tap, and then presumably plucked your day’s bag or cleaned your 12 bore whilst the machine did its stuff. I don’t recall, however, seeing many of them being sold.

The problem with the sales is that when you walk around the stalls, you get that same feeling as when you’re ambling past the kennels at the Battersea Dogs’ Home. There are always those stallholders who are stuck in the  corner of the room/hall/enormous shed that is  constantly by-passed or there is simply nothing worthwhile buying from them (unless you’re in dire need of a tartan-covered brick to hold open a door,) who gaze forlornly at you as you pass them by, their pleading eyes saying “Please buy from me and take it home.” You know that to engage them in conversation would only result in you buying the wretched brick, so all you can do is return their sad smile and sidle on past…until you get to the next stall where the same thing will more than likely happen again.

I went to one of these sales last Sunday in a village hall where the passageway was so narrow that we had to traipse around in single file, trying hard not to catch the eyes of the ‘abandoned puppies’. There was one old lady with a stick and a very disconsolate face who,  disregarding entirely the flow of traffic, went the wrong way around the hall, tutting loudly every time she found her path blocked by another fellow shopper. I met up with her for about the third time beside a stall that was selling small knitted dogs, each retailing at the exorbitant sum of £100. The selling point of this stall was that you could order the breed of your own choosing and have it beautifully knitted up. The old dear gazed at the shelf displaying the dogs and shook her head. “Och, wid ye look at that?” she said despondently, “they dinna have ony Dalmatians!”

The girl behind the counter turned her gaze on me, her eyes saying, “Please buy one of my little Labradors.” Actually, thinking about it, they more resembled warthogs…or maybe it was just that she’d kept dropping stitches.

PS. Ha! I’ve been caught out! Turns out the person who invented the wellie cleaning box is in fact a farmer and he made a lot of money out of his invention! The Lloyds man helped his wife sell cakes. Oops! Well, listen, that’s what a writer does – fabricates everything!