Buying something from an auction is as much a rescue mission as a shopping expedition,  I tell my best beloved.

And here is a tale of one great rescue mission:

I went to a country auction looking for a chair to re-upholster and I was in bullish mood – a button backed one, I thought.

(To non-upholsters, I need to mention, button-backing is a more than usually fiddly business in an already time-consuming business, so you need to gird a few loins if you are going to do one.)

I found this one.

(It is Victorian and won’t have the gold draylon on it when I have finished with it.)

This auction requires you to go and have a good look around on the Friday and give up a lot of your Saturday to be there for the bidding.

Of course, you see several chairs and have to juggle your bidding.

Lot 100 at 11.30 maybe be a goer as far as you are concerned but lot 320 at 1.30 is a much better bet – but can you chance missing the first lot and then be outbid on the second…. you see what I mean.

Anyway, I wandered around, looking for the chair that I wanted,  pulling and pushing to see which chairs were strong, and so on.

I saw other stuff which was lovely and should I have won the lottery and moved to a much bigger house, I would have bid on.

‘Brown’ furniture may be making a come-back in London but here in the depths of the countryside you can get it for a song – and for some of those pieces, I would have sung.

There was this lovely arts and crafts/art nouveau dresser.

Hand-made, of course, in oak with brass fittings and carving decorations and, and, and.

I had seen it and admired the side-racking, the proportions and, and – and  thought it would make at the auction, say, £700 given that this is not retail, so you get things cheaper.

So, I identified my chair(s) and went back the next day and waited, and waited.

My first choice of chair – dear reader, I have a better eye than wallet – went for far more than I could afford, so I was hanging around for the next lot.

Whilst viewing I had seen a croupier’s rake.

Smooth, light, old – no doubt with a lot of stories to tell and very tactile.

The lot came up and no one bid.

I looked at it, reached over to where it was lying and touched it.

‘Come on madam. There’s a whole new career beckoning  you,’ said the auctioneer.

So I bid, and got it for £5.

And then, when I was waiting for my chair lot, the dresser came up.

‘Ahh,’ I thought, ‘ I always have a better eye then wallet.’

But, dear reader, no one bid at all.

I got it for £50.

Of course, there was the commission, and to pay for it to be delivered – and persuade my best beloved, who I have to say, was easy to persuade, that we should swap our old pine dresser for this one.

But all in all it cost me just over £120.

Old (and indeed not so old) pine is still in fashion and so we sold our previous dresser online and we have made a considerable profit.

And we love our rescued dresser.

My niece was staying so she came to work on the set up of The Garden Show at Loseley.

She was bowled over by the big house but less impressed by what we were doing, ‘Is it like a big car boot sale?’

To be fair she had never seen one of these shows in full flow and indeed didn’t stay long enough to see it in action – but next year….

Anyway, she and I, along with a very nice man, were delegated to put up bunting.

It may not sound like much to you but it is one of those details which have to be done.

She came up with the idea to string the bunting from the central pole and after a while – always one to consider things before jumping in – she got into the swing as it were and I think she enjoyed the day.

As I said, I am the H&S person so have to give very member of staff a briefing.

We have codes for emergencies – fox for a fire, moses for a missing child, and sands for a suspect package.

Anyway, I was in full flow of this briefing with my niece looking rather surprised that all these people were listening to me and that I had even an airy air of authority when I got to the code around a suspect package.

I explained that we were a garden show and if it looked like a bag of delphiniums it was very likely to be just that.

And we would never be high on a terrorist’s list of targets.

‘Pretty niche terrorism,’ someone said.

For reasons I am not entirely clear about, we seem to have had a lot of donations of sets of books into the shop recently.

There are some for whom the trip to Oxfam was the last daylight they ever saw and before you recoil with horror, do you know anyone who is willing to pay money for a set of Reader’s Digest’s abridged novels in leatherette covers? Be honest now. I thought so.

We are a place of many retired naval chaps and so we get a fair amount of their books which currently include three complete sets of Maritime History ( one of which has been taken by my retired naval friend at a knock down price – very knock down as it happens as he forgot his wallet when he came for supper and took them away).

Theoretically they are worth about £70 but in practice, they appear to be unsaleable – but bulky.

Not nearly as bulky though as the near complete set of naval architecture books we have been given.

A near complete set because the very nice naval architect (retired) who donated them, wanted to keep a few of special significance as in, he was a contributor..

And, as any fellow booksellers will know, a near set is a long way from a complete set.

And when I say bulky, each book weighs kilos and there are currently about 10 crates of them littered around the upstairs of the shop.

Again in theory they are worth good money but even offering on them on Oxfam Online at a heftily reduced price, there have been no takers.

Needless to say, we have listed them as buyer collects.

If you know someone for whom many books on naval architecture would be a treasure trove of fascinating information, a priceless read, a delight to savour, then do get in touch quickly because we need the space and the crates.

The other day I put out a complete set of Graham Greene books and just half an hour later a man came and bought some of them.

He had picked out nine and I managed to persuade him into a round ten of them but now, as per above, I have a less than complete set.

Unfortunately no one has bought any of the set of Rudyard Kiplings – all rather small and sweet and bound in real red leather ( even if it is flaking a bit and the loose bits have to be swept off the shelf now and then.)

I was told he as making a comeback as a ‘fashionable’ author but apparently not yet in Petersfield.

Then there are the complete works of Agatha Christie. I knew she had been prolific but not nearly two whole shelves worth of prolific.

Interestingly, the DVDs of Miss Marple played by Margaret Rutherford I put alongside them – squeezed onto the end of the second shelf – have sold much quicker than the books.

And the trouble with having sets of books out, is that we get more of them.

There is a direct link between what we put out on display and what we get donated.

(The other week, we very dangerously short of history books. However, I had carefully collected a box of books on WW1 ready for the Paschendale anniversary and we put them out on the table.

That was before I was away for a week os so – when I came back the history shelves were groaning with stock.)

So, I look forward, with trepidation, to endless boxes of, seemingly endless, complete sets.

Still, it fills the shelves.