I do like an auction and despite the upheavals of recent months, I managed to find the time to be at two of them in the same week recently.

So, the first one was a not-to-far-away country auction where I have found upholstery projects relying on the fact that despite rumours to the contrary, brown furniture has not come back into fashion ver much.

If you are not an auction familiar, here are a few words of advice/warning.

You rarely go and get what you went for. 

I once went for a Georgian tip top table (two-a-penny at auctions in my experience) but came home with a four foot high carved horse’s head for the garden – only because, dear reader, there were no tip top tables  and the auctioneer egged me on for one last horse bid.  (He threw in a vintage croupier’s rake – every house, it seems, needs one.)

As you can he now has a fine ivy mane.

Anyway, if you are still with me, I went to an auction again looking for an upholstery project to kill time before I got a couple of commissions in.

I came away with an elm coffee table, as you do.

In my defence, the brown furniture went for ridiculous prices that day. A boring mahogany stool which should have sold for say £20 went for a hammer price of £85. The auction porter and I agreed that was somewhat surprising.

And it wasn’t just that stool. All sorts of stuff went for well above the usual prices. I wondered given it was one internet bidder buying quite a bit of stuff whether it was someone furnishing a period film set.

But then I had another auction to watch.

A bit of background:

The people who bought our house had said they ‘loved the look’ and would like to buy some of the larger pieces of furniture provided we supplied a list of items and authenticated prices. (Yes they were not the kind of people to pop in for a cup of tea and a chat about what we might leave.)

Luckily, we had a neighbour who was an auctioneer.

So, we provided a list and it included our handmade arts and crafts dresser, an antique linen press, a satinwood wardrobe and an old large pine cabinet handed down from my BB’s mother.

They said no to all of them apart from the corner cabinet.

So, off they went to be former neighbour’s auction house and then I listened live to the action as you can these days.

I got a text from my neighbour (between gavel banging sessions) who said (rather surprisingly) that a prince of Qatar had bought some Scottish mile and was interested in our lots. (Or maybe he had one of many underlings watching them…..)

The internet in our cottage went down at the crucial moment so I didn’t hear the bidding, but suffice it to say that the dresser I had bought for £10 a decade ago, went for £1,100 and was on its way with all our other furniture to a Scottish mansion. ( A good home, said my auctioneer neighbour.)

Meanwhile, as they say, I had been watching the other lots.

And a samovar came up but went for more than £300 which was above my price range.

( A what? and why? I hear you ask.)

So, let me explain.

Just in case you don’t know: 

A samovar (Russian: самовар, lit. ’self-brewer’) is a metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water. Although originating in Russia, the samovar is well known outside of the country and has spread through Russian culture to other parts of Eastern Europe, as well as West and Central and South Asia. Wikipedia

As for why, well.

Our new home has a conservatory and though i am not a fan, it was the only place the Best Beloved could have a downstairs study.

Knowing that one of the downsides of a conservatory is that they are to warm in the summer, which he can live with, and too cold in the winter, which he cannot, he decided that he would be adding furs and a samovar to the more usual study furniture.

So, my auctioneer neighbour and I were texting back and forth and I mentioned the samovar and he said that two more were coming up later as a joint lot and as he wasn’t on the rostrum, did I want him to bid for me from the room.

Now, being an auction aficionado and knowing what a nice man he is, of course I said yes.

Of course, his colleague knew he was bidding for a friend. I never heard a hammer come down quite so quickly. Mind you they are very quick at those auctions so I may have imagined any slight favouritism.

I know they wouldn’t have raced into the many hundreds, but still felt that £45 was a bargain.

Yes they will be somewhat incongruous in a 1980s house on an estate but everyone needs a bit of incongruity now and then.

Whether the BB will ever get me to agree to his lighting them, is entirely another matter.

So, after two years of trying, we are now the owners of a house in the great metropolis of Petersfield and will leave our country living behind.

No more watching the deer with a backdrop of The Downs from my shower, for example.

Swapping that for the future-proofing ability to walk, not have to drive, into the town centre.

No more crab apple crop, amazing apple crop from a damaged tree which is barely as tall as me – and the rest of the garden for that matter, blackberries out the back, a friend so close it would take her less than five minutes to get her dog, put on some boots and arrive to accept her glass of wine, sit down for a chat, and collect a bit of spare cauliflower cheese for her supper

Swapped for new neighbours who have been charming and have not objected to the skip in front of our new house and builders coming and going, kitchens being delivered etc etc.

Old pale blue leather sofas ( and before you wince, they looked nice) which had lived with us in London, Brussels, Paris and deepest Sussex for a new olive green fabric one which, as we won’t, won’t be going anywhere else.

No more picking up old country furniture in auctions, and having a collection of furniture more appropriate to a 1980s house – except for one or two things, see blog on samovars for example.

And trying to design everything to meet the needs of a disabled BB without anyone thinking they have walked into a house which has raided a local old people’s home for white plastic aids. ( see previous and no doubt future blogs on that….)

But the biggest difference is no Jessie.

There were three in this marriage which was fine by us, more than fine.

I had frequently said that I wouldn’t move until the dog died but she was fine, and then another year of fine and fit and happy and still wanted a bounce on the bed.

She was miserable as the packing started and went on and she went into refusing food which was not Jess at all.

Turns out it was more than misery, so we had her gently put to sleep.

The night before we moved out. 

She was cutting it fine, and wasn’t the most tactful of dogs so I think it was more refusing to leave the home she had known for her life since she was 12 weeks old, and that was a long time ago.

Meanwhile, as I desert Deepest Sussex for the new world of Hampshire ( yes I lied it was never really deep Sussex, only two miles from the Hampshire border) you will be hearing a lot more about future-proofing design and how we or don’t make it work – always assuming of course you continue reading, dear reader.

The Best Beloved took on the daunting (in my view) role of being an independent visitor to someone in care.

He was ‘given’ a Vietnamese ‘boy’, I can’t quite remember but I think he was 14. He was lucky in that he had got fostered by a lovely couple. 

The role of an independent visitor is to be an adult outside the home/fostering system to provide an outlet for the young person.

Bao, needless to say not his real name, was into fishing and the BB and he spent many a visit sitting on a cold beach with a rod and line.

The BB knew and cared nothing about fishing but he made it happen every month.

Bao’s English was not great and he spoke quietly, both a challenge to conversation on a windswept beach.

But both of them carried on.

It is the right of the young person to end the relationship at any time they want and the BB expected that to happen – but it didn’t.

When he reached 18 he was allowed to visit our home.

I was, as you might imagine, slightly apprehensive about this.

I know nothing much about Vietnamese food but I was providing lunch.

I did a risotto – and we were off.

Bao loved risotto, he was really into cooking and food of all sorts.

His English was just great, he wanted to go and collect some wild garlic from the woods near us.

For a small young man, he surprisingly ate most of the risotto whilst we discussed food. The BB just had to sit there and let us get on with it – after all this is a man who can do a mean scramble egg and little else.

Since then, we invite him about three or four times a year.

He tells us how he moved out of foster care (but is still part of their extended foster and ‘natural’ family) to live with a Vietnamese couple and babysit their young child, does nails – not entirely surprisingly – enjoys that, but has also passed his driving  test so he drives himself across Sussex to see us, passed his ‘British test’ tried a course in car maintenance but hated it.

I try to encourage him into something to do with food but he says he doesn’t want to ruin his enjoyment by the drudge of it….. I understand that, but I still think he is missing his calling.

Just last week he was coming to us and I had made a lunch the previous day so I could go into Oxfam in the morning.

I got a message from the BB to say Bao had said he would bring spring rolls.

He and they arrived – all handmade and delicious, along with a salad of all sorts of herbs he had grown, bought from Vietnamese suppliers, rice noodles and a ‘sauce’ of pineapple, fish sauce, chilli and ‘stuff.’

It was delicious and we had such a nice meal and good time with a delightful young cook, who told us about his life what he was up to, and all sorts.

His fishing hobby has turned into making elaborate aquariums with specialist plants, rocks he collects and done with some considerable artistry – and, of course, fish.

There is quite a lot of maintenance involved in all this and, apparently, having a shower timed to make sure the CO2 you are putting in is not on too long – indeed, no I had no idea either.

And no, he doesn’t want this hobby either turned into a job. ‘I will make money so I can enjoy the things I want to.’

Well done the BB and Bao, we are lucky to have him in our lives.

At the risk of spinning out holiday stories well beyond their sell-by date, this is somewhat different.

It is about accessibility, public money and management speak. 

( You can switch off now if the above is all rather alarming.)

As a happy-to-admit-it-leftie, I am not convinced that all things public are bad, wasteful, lazy, and all things private are fast-moving, clever, better value for money.

I think a glance around today’s world will show you that private enterprise, capitalism, is generally not spending much of its energies on anything that might approximate to the furtherance of general good, equality in any shape or form, reducing the gap between the have-nots and the-haves-more-than-they-can-ever-possibly-justify, and and….

Of course there are exceptions, in both camps.

Anyway, this not a polemic on that, well not yet.

So, we were in Malta and going to see the newly renovated Grand Master’s Palace ‘partly’ funded by the European Development Fund. How much of a part is not divulged.

We had been to the marvellous Malta Postal Museum which seems to have used its European money very well, imaginatively and frugally and run by one amazing woman who let you use the lifts all by yourself. (see below.)

We had also been to the National Archaeological Museum which seems not to have had much money spent on it since say 1990, but is rather charming because of it.

And accessible to someone needing two sticks to navigate the world.

In each of the Archeological Museum rooms there was a chair holder. You could unhook and take out a fold up chair, take it where you needed it, sit on it and return it. Simple. Practical, Cheap. Not needing any attendant and, actually in our case, very useful.

But the Grand Master’s hangout is another case entirely.

And it is a place which has, so we were told, been designed to combine tech with the integrity of the building.

‘What,’ I hear you cry as one,’is wrong with that?’.

Mmm, well.

Follow me when I go into this palace with my Best Beloved who can walk with the aid of two sticks, gently, and with some places to sit.

Now, a lot of people who visit museums are people of a certain age. Don’t get me wrong, parents with children do, and many are determined to do so. Young couples do, single women on a break do. People with specialist interest in the subject of the museum do too. And good on them all.

But any museum needs to take into account people whose mobility is not that of the 36 year-old-designer and his cohorts of tech-enamoured followers.

Tech could, should, and sometimes does, great things to make a museum come alive and be possible for people to use well – but then again, not always.

The first rooms of the Grand Master’s House had nowhere to sit. It had a rather confusing 3D tech plan of a bit of Valletta virtually rising within a bit of the floor. But it was just blocks, not anything really visual. 

You were not allowed to touch the rail which went round this despite the fact it was sturdy metal and would have been useful for someone a bit unsteady. An attendant was there to tell you so.

Then you went out into the courtyard. Nowhere across the whole space was there anywhere to sit. No bench, no low wall. Nothing.

To get to the famous armoury ( BB’s inclination rather than mine) you needed to go upstairs or take the lift.

The nice man who had taken our tickets said he had to contact his colleague to come out of the building on the other side of the courtyard, conduct us to the lift, he in turn had to call his colleague on the next floor up to meet us, and then we could travel in a lift one floor. That is three attendants for us to take a lift from the ground floor to the first floor. I rest my case…..

In the armoury there were benches a-plenty against the walls. There were (and those of us not fascinated by the means of killing each other) an awful lot of exhibits – four lines of showcases of guns, armoury, knives, swords etc etc.

Then there was a lower floor with the grand rooms of the house/palace.

But to get there was a flight, not a long flight, but a flight nevertheless, of highly polished stone steps. Nothing to hold on to. No ramp. And, can you believe it, a sign saying be careful because they were slippery.

We asked an (another) attendant and she said there was a lift, but it was broken and hadn’t been fixed for ‘a while.’

There is no way someone with balance issues, using two sticks to walk around in the best of circumstances, was going to attempt a flight of steps of polished stone with an arse-saving notice saying basically you were warned that these are slippery, so your fault if you fall.

Yes, he could have gone down on his bum but really, would you? Would you want to have to do that?

We left. 

On the way out we were talking to the nice man by the ticket machine, who lifted a barrier he no doubt shouldn’t have, to let the BB access to a seat. He told us he had to stand for his whole shift because the cameras watched him and he was reprimanded if he was caught sitting down.

I was cross. Clearly millions have been spent on this renovation and so little spent on making it accessible – children were being brought in, but where was the child-friendly stuff/space to make it all make sense to them? I have no idea what there was in aid of helping visually-impaired people – no audio that I saw. Leave alone anything else. 

Below is from the website:

(So, Heritage Malta’s CEO is Noel Zammit who says of himself, )

‘Software engineering skills and national heritage are rarely uttered in the same sentence. However, as CEO for Malta’s National Agency for museums, conservation practice, and cultural heritage, I find myself relying on my extensive experience in the former to improve and promote the latter.

My professional career as software engineer began in Malta and continued in the United Kingdom, where I provided development solutions to multinationals, giving them a competitive edge in their respective sectors.

Eventually, I made my way back to Malta, where I worked within the Malta Centre for Restoration until it was ultimately absorbed by Heritage Malta. Within the Agency, I gradually climbed through the ranks, moving through IT, finance, marketing and business development, until I was appointed CEO in 2017.

In my few years in this role, I have pooled my knowledge and experience, spanning over two decades, to lead a massive internal cultural shift in Heritage Malta, through careful re-structuring, re-branding and strategic alignment.

Heritage Malta clients and observers have surely noticed our focus on digitisation and market presence of our cultural heritage, not just as a way of remaining accessible through COVID-19 or to ensure long term sustainability, but also as a way of safeguarding a heritage that is, as our motto implies, ‘Part of Us’ all.’

That is the language of business-speak if ever there was. 

There is nothing wrong in coming from a ‘different’ background into the heritage field, I am sure that could be a very good thing. The issue is what he wants to say and do.

What is ‘strategic alignment’ when it comes to history and making that accessible in all sense of the word? Just for example.

I’ve no knowledge of Zammit but hope 

1. he speaks human to his friends and family 
2. he is doing better with the people who work for him than teaching hem management speak 
3. he is not part of the notoriously corrupt Maltese elite
4. he reads the email I have sent him and does some simple things to make accessibility better in the Grand Master’s House.
5. an answer would be nice but I am not holding my breath.

And by the way The Grand Master’s Palace had the worst, least-stocked museum shop I have seen in a long time. Not that I am in a complaining mood……