This September’s West Meon Hut Rural Auction – or, so it can have its proper title, Crap Sale – had been a celebration of considerable sadness for me personally.
It should have now been the right time: the farm ended up being too damp to complete any agriculture, so we russian brides had a jolly day or two searching crap from the bushes, providing it a stress clean and a hint of oil, and trundling down seriously to the auction field.
The Saturday remained dry, therefore the burgers and coffee were top-notch. The punters had been in and purchasing – the vehicle park had been chock filled with Transit vans that on other time of the season will have had you reaching for the phone. Just what exactly was incorrect?
Well, in the first place, Tom, the mind auctioneer, had forgotten our contract.
Previously within the he’d demanded to know why we didn’t make more use of his Crap Sale year.
We ummed and aahed about needing to clamber through brambles and having drenched and is it truly worth it – most of the stuff that is usual.
Therefore it had been recommended (after having a pint or two) that when we joined half-a-dozen items, he’d perform some auction inside the morning suit and top hat that he’d been spotted using within the winner’s enclosure at Ascot.
We took it further; what about We enter a dozen things, as well as the lovely Mrs Tom waves the purchase clipboard in her own Ascot that is fabulous frock? Agreed.
Therefore because of enough time all of the clay that is old traps, vintage scales, roller mills and square-wheeled trailers managed to make it along the Crap purchase industry, I’d done my bit.
Guarantees broken
Once we hitched from the final little bit of dodgy kit in the Friday, I inquired Tom what he’d be putting on each morning. He stated he previously a coat that is good it rained.
I gently reminded him of our contract. He rushed down throughout the industry in a harrumphing flurry of purchase stickers and obscenities.
As expected, come Saturday, our bet was in fact abandoned – he had been in conventional Crap purchase garb.
The lovely Mrs Tom, disappointingly free from Gucci, stated she’d organized a suit and a tie it had made it no further than the end of the bed for him, but.
And I also had my digital digital camera prepared and every thing.
The prices that are great little to cheer me up. The 10ft Vibraflex reached what it should have cost Dad right right back into the very early 1980s (there’s one for the accountant to straighten out), and its own times of attaining a significantly better cost on brand brand new kit in the event that dealer didn’t need certainly to just take it as being a trade-in had been finally over.
Junk junkie
If the heavyweight vintage scales went for peanuts, there clearly was a ghostly tutting from Hinton Ampner churchyard.
We happened to be into the queue that is wash-up the sturdy gentleman that has purchased the scales (now nicely loaded on their transportation pickup), and bored him with tales of long cold temperatures times weighing down beans, 1 cwt at any given time, on the market to pigeon fanciers.
“Don’t worry” he said. “They’ll result in someone’s yard, favorite, with a big cooking pot of plants to them.” Bless. I did son’t dare ask what he’d offer them on for.
The following early early morning, when I retrieved the Massey 715 4f plough that had inexplicably did not offer, we collared Tom once more, and told him how disappointed I happened to be.
He mumbled about tiny ploughs being difficult to shift often. “No, Tom. I am talking about our contract.”
“Next 12 months, Charlie, we promise,” he stated. Trouble is, I’m nearly out of crap. I’ve got the plough, needless to say. And there’s a Lancaster bomb trailer someplace.