Another month another auction.

The direction of wind is a remarkable thing. It can switch from a balmy Southern draft to an icy northern blast within a tiny time interval.

So it is also with the management, last weeks expensive dinosaur IVECO is this weeks highly useful long wheel base high top van.

This would of course have nothing to do with the imminent arrival of the date of another auction of course, not a bit of it.

So anyway off we went in convoy this morning, her roaring off in a cloud of gravel that had a xantia somewhere in the middle and me following on in somewhat more sedate fashion in the IVECO.

Of course today was a bit different, an auction with a stat review in the middle, does no harm to let SW know that your whole life does not revolve about their every whim and desire.

But I digress, she had spent a pound here a fiver there and with the credit crunch in full swing she was buying us in to all sorts of things and ornaments. Gwion is on an inset day, for reasons I did not really fathom we bid five pounds on a fish tank for him. Another five pounds bought a big box of games and a pound bought a box of original magazines from the 50's.

Auctions are strange places and rules such as they are can be hard to fathom.

Management had decided she needed a new sofa, now with 9 kids on the plot it does not pay to spend out hundreds of pounds so management was looking for good second hand. A couple were on offer, a rather nice three seater went for a mind boggling 160 pounds. Declining that one, management opted for the one next to it, a two seater for a whole pound now, it was hard to see 159 pounds between them. Both were newish both perfectly serviceable, yet one went for a mountain one went for an anthill.

Similarly G plan stuff seems out of fashion, now you would have paid a fortune for this back in the 80's and it's built like a built thing, yet we got a whole bedroom full of the stuff last auction for 3 pound. I could not see any possible need for any more so I let it go 2 quid.

This brought us up to lunchtime and time for the stat R. Left to my own devices and with strict instructions from the management I carried on with the bidding which is where things started to unravel.

Some little while later, returning to the auction management somehow missed me and, with lots coming up she quickly got herself a new buyers number. This was all very well when she bought an immaculate 1960's era push bike for 5 pounds but of course when the carpentry tools came up she was sitting at the front of the auction whilst I was acting on her instructions, at the back.

I shan't say exactly what happened next, I'll leave it to your imagination....

But anyway the day wore on and our little pile of goodies grew into something altogether bigger. By the end we had an impressive pile and a wee bit of a dilemma.

You see yesterday I picked up 4 sleepers for Tallies shed and these were still in the van begging the minor question of how it was to be transported home.

Now lets see a drop leaf table (pound) sofa (pound) an adult bike and several large boxes of woodworking tools added to the four sleepers and of course this all had to be safe so 4 kids could travel in there too.

Not a big problem then....

Being of a managerial disposition she delegated, well, buggered off is another way of describing it.

Anyway pooling our resources we managed to shoe horn everything in.

Well we did after we had paid for it all, ahh yes paid. Now this is the sort of local auction where you pay on the day, cash being preferred though cheques are also OK. Plastic is simply that, plastic.

So of course where was our cheque book? Safely with management in the Xantia which was at that moment screeching it's way across the county. I had a slight dilemma then, fortunately there was a cash point, about 15 miles away....

Fortunately pooling all our cash the kids and I managed to come up with enough money, well we had about 75 p left over..

It meant we could not bid the pound it would have cost for her last few items, a couple of wicker baskets to hold fire wood for the best really, we would have had to leave a child behind to bring them home....

But all is well, the box of comics contains a number of 1950's and 1970's originals which management assures me will make us unbelievably wealthy when they hit eBay. Well OK maybe we will not be buying a yacht in the Bahamas but they should realise more than a pound we bid on them, if all else fails she says they will be cheaper than buying newspaper to light the fire...

Five box games for three pounds. Oh and there is a deluxe corkscrew brand new in it's box, hmm I think I might try that out later on today.

Management is over the moon, she has found one just like it on eBay for 15 pounds she says she has decided what she is giving me for Xmas....

R