Hertfordshire, UK - We hadn't been to a Salvo Fair since 2001 when it was held at Stoneleigh. I've sort of been remiss about things in the intervening years! Back then my hair was curly and dark but now not only has it gone grey but it's become straighter. Thinner and straighter. Thinner, straighter and a bit sort of wispy! In fact the style it's grown into is very reminiscent of the style that Hitler wore - except in the pictures Hitler's isn't wispy! However it does look a bit like the Fuhrer's and others laugh when I point this out but they only mildly remonstrate with me. They in fact recognise the similarity! How this could have happened I haven't a clue but it is an undeniable and hideous fact!
Thornton - who used to greet with affectionate joy in the old days when he saw me - did not now of course recognise me when I presented myself before him! He did not though recoil as I suspect he might have had a very-Hitler-look-alike walked into the Salvo tent. Of course I don't wear the moustache in fact I don't wear any moustache so maybe that was why only politeness - not polite curiosity - greeted me. I smiled my old smile reassuringly but all I saw was politeness at the back of his retinas. I looked into his thinly-blue eyes and thought of Chaucer!
To be honest I had walked into the tent about an hour earlier having seen the sign for Thos Gaze and son and thought I'd check on their next architectural salvage auction. I haven't been to one of those in ages either - been sort of preoccupied you know. I've in fact just sold off at a good loss, some of the stuff I bought at the last one! Carl Willows sat at the Gaze desk venerable, watchful and with his beard looking in the best condition I've ever seen it! Beside him was the most wonderful walrus skull I've ever seen. Carl's beard and the walrus skull seemed to dominate the room in the tent! It may have been the heat - it was hot - but there was a shimmering around the Gaze table and I was momentarily transfixed!
So excited was I by the skull that I forgot my manners and forgot to offer my hand when saying hallo to him I gravitated towards the skull that seemed to whisper to me 'Peter take me home - I know you want me!' Carl, who has impeccable manners reached for my hand in such a way that I was almost unaware that I hadn't proffered it. Now that's mega-manners for you and I felt a twinge of chagrin! Asking how he was I spoke to Carl but looked at the skull - Estimate £150 -£200 the card said! [Sold £1,700 at Gaze's sale - ed] Oh Blimey! I could buy it now I thought unaware of why the skull was really there. Like an idiot I asked where the Salvo tent was. Carl gave me an old-fashioned look and pointed behind me! Ah! I laughed a teeny bit too high-pitchedly to be convincing! Yes! Of course! I knew it was behind me in the same tent really. Honest!
At the Salvo table was a lady. I asked her if she was Ruby and she said she was. She was a child when last I saw her. I asked after her father and she said he was here - somewhere - wearing a battered straw hat. I said I'd look for him and left the tent.
In the heat outside everything now shimmered and the stand with old polished bits off boats looked almost unearthly. Two interesting sort-of fog horny things were in the front of the stand and people turned the old handles and a lovely fog-horny sound emanated from it. I thought of Conlan Nancarrow who was a composer who used pianolas and in one concert had seven of them on stage each playing their individual parts. I conceived a piece of music using the two fog-horny things in front of me but not being a composer and my eye catching sight of some other wonder the thought left me as quickly as it had come in.
Wandering idly around was a joy. My wife Caroline found a lady selling little teddy bears with hand dyed wool from individual sheep breed which captivated her. They smelled nice I thought, sniffing them. There was a nice lady selling whopping great ancient-looking wooden troughs that were for pounding off the husks of rice and had come from Sumatra. I thought them very handsome and deliciously useless in this country. I fancied sitting in one but it was too narrow.
A chap selling door furniture captivated me with his Eliza Doolittle meets Sid Vicious voice and intonation. He had a polished weather-beaten face and stubble that looked like it was of the consistency of that hair that Jeff Goldblum finds on himself in the film 'The Fly'. I listened, rapt with interest as he discussed with an uninteresting looking man the first integral door-knocker and letterbox in one that he and his fellow 'door furniture' colleagues and competitors had ever seen. To reveal the letterbox you slid the knocker up and the gap was revealed. It was in very nice bronze to boot.
Back in the 70s I had a couple of antique dealer friends who if they bought something that was somewhat unsellable in its own right they would 'lamp it'. One stall holder at the Salvo Fair had gone one better! He 'lamped' what already existed. There was a cricket bat lamp. There was a riding boot light; a tin hat chandelier-thing light. I have to say they were inspired but not that inspiring!
I fell in love with a wonderful bath/invalid chair that was being offered for sale by an Irish gentleman. I rather like wheelchairs and have a lovely old bentwood one that was made in Berlin about 1860 and which I paid quite a bit for. No-one of course is interested in buying it. I buy things everyone thinks are amazing but are essentially utterly useless and unnecessary!
I had great fun in it when I first got it by hiding in the door shed with a frightful mask on that I had acquired many years ago and waiting for Caroline to come back into the yard. When she did I emerged at full speed - I'm pretty nifty in a wheel chair - and hurtled towards her. She screamed politely!
I didn't buy the wheel chair. I didn't buy anything except an ice cream from the Knebworth House kiosk thing. It was a nice fair.
[Old printed SalvoNEWS readers may remember occasional stream of consciousness contributions by architectural salvage dealer, bronze founder, explorer and naturalist, Peter Jones entitled 'Tales from a Nature Yard'. Well, he's back - ed]
