Such Fun

It was off to Framlingham College last night for the latest production from local am dram society FADS. Arnold Ridley's Ghost Train was an excellent choice for the group having just the right blend of comedy, thrills and drama to entertain a wide audience. The Headmaster Porter Theatre was packed and we had a great evening.

It's set between the wars at a remote station in the wilds of Cornwall; a group of passengers are stranded in the gloomy waiting room. The last train has gone and the station master is ready to head for home. He's reluctant to stay and warns his unexpected guests of spectral visitors and an infamous ghost train that haunt this place on this particular date.   

Should they stay or should they go? Their dilemma unfolds with their individual stories; newly weds, nearly divorcees, an old maid and an idiotic and bumbling young man make up the group and keep the audience amused as things go bump in the night and not everything is exactly what it seems.

Mark Watts stole the show as the very silly Teddy. He was word perfect and captured the Bunteresque character to a tee. He was supported by another gentle husband performance from Peter Turner as the newly wed Charles and Ian Baird as grumpy Richard Winthrop. Kathy Churchill (from the excellent AboutFram) was gloriously melodramatic in Act 2 bursting into the station in a wonderful period evening gown to add confusion and intrigue to the proceedings. The remainder of the cast all played their characters very well.

A special mention should go to Glynn McKay for his fabulous set and to Maurice Gifford and Tom Howard for the super sound and light effects. This was just what amateur dramatics should be; fun for the audience and fun for the cast and crew. I felt that they were worth a couple of curtain calls but they left after just one bow - very modest.

In other news, we managed to get out on the bikes on Tuesday. The weather was glorious and, due to my lousy navigation, we managed to find ourselves three miles off the planned route in Kettleburgh instead of Earl Soham. Whilst that added six miles to the ride, we had a good workout and the build up to our cycling tour in Provence in June has finally started (could do with some padded shorts though).

It's good to see the village signs around the county. They add a nice individual touch to the communities. It's also good to see all the local produce for sale with honesty boxes. We bought a bit of marmalade en route.

Along with the fabulous naive painting I mentioned on the last blog, I'm selling this super little fluted Delft dish on eBay starting tonight. Dating from around 1690 it's probably the oldest pottery piece I've ever owned but it looks like it was made last week. My eBay name is lfcchampions. I signed up with that name when eBay was in its infancy and I was confident that Liverpool were heading for the top of the Premiership. Maybe, my selling name will finally be justified if they can win their remaining matches.

eBay Snakes And Ladders

If you've been following this blog lately you'll know that, after being inspired by shows like Antiques Road Trip and Bargain Hunt we've been seeing if we can do any better than the people on the telly.  After my first week when I managed to make about £100 profit (not taking the cost of fuel and admissions to antique fairs into account), I was sufficiently upbeat to give it another try and I am now selling another seven bits and pieces. Four were bought on eBay for a total of £43 and the other three are from my own collection and cost me £110 which means a total outlay of £153. At the moment bidding is up to £78 so I am technically £80 down but I am confident that with the numbers watching the items I should move into profit by next weekend when the sales end.

But it really is like a game of snakes and ladders. Last week I found this beautiful Stilton Dish made by Dudson in around 1890 and worth two or three hundred pounds. The eBay seller made a mistake in the listing and I managed to buy it for £31 including carriage. I was pleased with the buy as we do a bit of entertaining and I thought that we might actually keep this for serving cheese to guests. So fortunes were heading up the ladder.

But then it arrived and it was onto a snake. Okay the seller refunded me immediately but why didn't he put FRAGILE on the box and wrap it carefully? 

Then there was this interesting little figurine. I am not sure if it is anything or not but it was worth a punt at £14. Now the seller tells me that she is so busy that she can't post it so she has refunded me. Marvellous! It's not as if finding these things takes a couple of minutes - I've probably looked at over a thousand items for every one that I have made a bid on. So that's another snake.

Then this little cream boat arrived. It cost £76 but I think it's rather special and dates from about 1760. I've got high hopes for this one. I will wait and see how the other bits and pieces sell before I put it up for sale but perhaps I'm back on a ladder.

I don't think that I will be doing this Lovejoy stuff for long but I have enjoyed it immensely. It's a bit like a treasure hunt. We've driven to a few antique fairs and visited antique centres as far afield as Long Melford and Clare. The problem is that, if I start making profits, I'm running a business and I'm retired now and I really can't be bothered with all the tax returns etc.

All that driving around is thirsty work so we've become coffee shop aficionados and few days are complete without a visit to one. So a special mention to Tiffins in Long Melford for some excellent coffee and cake.

And, again, to the wonderful Pump St Bakery in Orford where we went yesterday. 

And not forgetting Framlingham's finest The Dancing Goat where they kindly tolerate my hogging a table until I've finished the crossword (although we would always leave if there were no seats available for other customers).

Today we've been spoiling ourselves a bit. Leo's Deli opened at ten this morning and we bought some fabulous Pump St Bakery pastries for breakfast and then we enjoyed some excellent Orford lobster from Pinney's washed down with a very fine bottle of white wine from our old friends at Whalley Wine shop. This retirement's not such a bad idea you know.

Alone Again

Our darling little granddaughter Rose and her mum and sister travelled back home to St Andrews on Thursday. We all headed down on the train to London and met up briefly with son Paul and granddaughter Catherine before putting Sarah, Rose and Melody onto the Leuchars train for the long journey back to Fife. It's a very long trek for a two year old and a five month old but their mum tells us that they both behaved perfectly. They bought seats in the first class compartment and the extra space was money well spent.

We enjoyed our brief visit to London. There's always something interesting to see and the blue cockerel on the plinth outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square makes an interesting addition alongside the stately lions and Victorian grandees. Our daughter-in-law joined us later on after she finished work and we enjoyed a good dinner at The Covent Garden Hotel before heading back on the train to Ipswich.

It was so good to have the family with us but a pity that the weather wasn't too good. There were two very tired little people with us after the three days in London and, apart from a trip to Southwold and a quick walk around Framlingham we didn't get to do as much as we had hoped. We hope that they can get back soon in warmer and drier times and we can give them a nice break.

Yesterday we had  lunch with a difference when we headed down the road to Woodfarm House at Stonham Aspal and Carl Scott's super pop up restaurant.  Carl has turned the house into a restaurant over a couple of weekends in the last twelve months and Michelin trained chef Mark Peters (above with Carl - hope you don't mind me pinching your photo Carl) has delighted the diners with some fabulous menus. We enjoyed seven courses plus coffee and every course was a delight. You might think that seven courses was excessive but each course was sensibly sized and well balanced so we did not feel that we had overdone it. The cosy atmosphere was as pleasant as in any restaurant, the timing of the courses was perfect and Carl was a warm and genial host. After a Venison amuse bouche, we enjoyed shredded duck confit, blood orange marinated carp, Suffolk pork belly and tenderloin, coffee infused pear,and a fabulous local cheeseboard as well as a super sorbet between the fish and meat courses. The meal was excellent and competitively priced and we very much look forward to seeing the restaurant pop up again soon.

If you are a regular visitor to the blog you will remember that a few episodes of Bargain Hunt and The Antiques Road Trip had given me the urge to have another go at buying and selling antiques after an absence of three or four years. My first foray ended yesterday. 

This cup and saucer that I mentioned on here after buying at the Norfolk Antique Fair sold for a 50% profit and after selling seven items I ended up about £100 better off after eBay and Paypal fees but it was a lot of work for £100 and, if I am to do it seriously again I will need to be far more selective in my buying especially as I haven't taken into account fuel and fair admission fees. 

On a positive note I took a gamble that this cup listed on eBay with this terrible photo for a pound or two could be something good.

I think you will agree that it is.

I've Got The Bargain Hunting Bug Back

In the 90's when eBay first started up I used to spend a lot of my spare time visiting junk shops, antique fairs, auctions, car boot sales and flea markets and buying stuff. Some of it I kept and some I resold online. I was fairly successful and I soon registered the hobby as a business to make it easier to sort out the tax position. When the whole world and his dog started selling on eBay things became less successful and I wound the business down and sold most of the residual stock. I had had a great deal of fun, made five or six spectacularly good buys which brought big profits and more than a few spectacularly bad ones which brought big losses (fortunately the good far outweighed the bad).

I've never lost the interest in antiques but in the past few weeks we've found ourselves at home a bit more than usual and with the weather being inclement we've been watching episodes of Antiques Road Trip and Bargain Hunt  with the affable and irrepressible Tim Wonnacott. And it revived memories of the caricature I bought for a fiver and sold for over £2,000 and the broken teapot that fetched in excess of £1,300 and it's given me the bug again.

So off we went yesterday to Norwich to the Aztec fair at the Norfolk Showground. There were hundreds of dealers there but we struggled to spot any bargains. 

However, as someone with the buying bug, I couldn't go away empty handed and bought this lovely little cup and saucer for £50 to save a wasted journey. It was made in about 1770 at Derby porcelain factory owner William Duesbury's Chelsea factory and I think it's a super little item and in fine condition for 240 years old. I've also bought three or four bits and pieces on eBay and in total spent about £130 that will be my starting stock. I won't buy anything else now until I've sold the bits I've got. Will I build it up or will it be money down the drain? I'll let you know in a few weeks but at least it should be a bit of fun until the weather improves and we can get out on our bikes again.

At least the weather has been perfect for movie fans and today we went to Ipswich to see Dallas Buyers Club at Cineworld. Matthew McConaughty has been nominated for an Oscar for his role as Ron Woodroof a tough and homophobic Dallas cowboy who is shocked to find that he has AIDS and is given just thirty days to live. Unwilling to curl up and die he does everything in his power to try and get hold of drugs and medications that will help him and eventually becomes a crusader on behalf of himself and other AIDS sufferers to distribute unapproved medications by way of a "buyers club". Along the way he comes into contact with plenty of gays and his attitude to them changes as he strikes up a friendship with transgender Rayon played by Jared Leto (also Oscar nominated). It's based on a true story (although I believe that the story has been heavily altered) and it's yet another fabulous performance.

In the last few months we've seen Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips,  Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street, Bruce Dern in Nebraska, Christian Bale in American Hustle and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Twelve Years A Slave as well as McConaughty today. It's a really close call for the Oscar as all were excellent but I think that McConaughty will just edge it.

Busy Doing Nothing

We're having a couple of weeks off from our hectic schedule of driving from one end of the country to the other. The caravan site in St Andrews closes its doors for the whole month of February so we can't head to Fife for another three our four weeks and our son is visiting family in LA so we won't be visiting him in Kent for a while. So it's the ideal time for the bump on the new car to be repaired and we drove it down to the Mercedes body shop in Essex on Thursday to have it sorted out. 

If it wasn't for the damp patch above the lounge window, everything would be just right for a relaxing few weeks but as I write, the plastering expert Tony is chipping away outside in an attempt to discover the cause and hopefully effect a remedy. The builders made a temporary repair to a crack in the render and since then the wallpaper has dried out and despite some torrential rainfall the water ingress appears to have stopped.

On Friday we had some friends round for a meal. I think it was a success and the smoked salmon with prawns followed by home made chicken pie, chocolate dessert and cheeseboard went down well with them. As did the wine. I felt a little embarrassed to be depositing so many bottles in the bottle bank on Saturday morning. I put a nonchalant "haven't emptied these since Christmas" look on my face as the bottles kept coming and coming. We ended the night well into the small hours.

With no plans for Saturday and Sunday nights we had a marathon session with Series 2 of The Bridge and got through seven episodes before finishing off the final three last night well after midnight. This really is a classy series. The leads Sofia Helin and Kim Bodnia are outstanding and their relationship is what makes this such a compelling drama. As with all television crime drama (Silent Witness, Morse,Midsomer ) I have an issue with the number of victims but the beauty of this one is that the motive was unclear right until the excellent finale. If you haven't seen it, you can still catch up on iPlayer and, if you've got a spare ten hours or so to kill, it's a perfect distraction.

I haven't had the chance to get out with the metal detector for a few months now but I had a letter from the Lowestoft Coroner's office yesterday notifying me that the silver brooch I found in the summer has been declared "Treasure" and they will be holding an inquest. It's not a valuable item but it's over seven hundred years old. If the farmer agrees, I will donate it to the Colchester museum who have expressed an interest in acquiring it. But on the subject of the hobby, I saw this advert in The Searcher magazine. It's wrong on so many levels implying that if you go fishing you might catch a fish but if you go detecting you can run away to Las Vegas on the spoils. I've been using a detector for twenty five years and if I sold my finds (which I wouldn't) they would not cover the cost of the detector let alone the fuel and other travel expenses incurred over the years. If people are encouraged to go detecting for financial gain, most of them will be disappointed but, more importantly the damage to our heritage will be enormous with the finite supply of metal artefacts ending up on eBay. Most of the detector users I have met are decent and sensible people but unscrupulous use of these machines is a very very bad thing.

And speaking of eBay, I've not been selling on it for three years now but was asked by one of the family if I could help dispose of an unwanted Christmas present so I've given it a try and, whilst listing the item, decided to try selling an old jug that I found in an Antique Centre near Dundee last summer. I'll see how well those two sales go before deciding whether or not to start selling regularly again although  I'm not sure that I can be bothered with all the bookkeeping for the taxman and the packing.

This weeks film is Lone Survivor starring Mark Wahlberg. There aren't very many war movies around these days. When I was growing up there was nothing else (apart from cowboys). So we're off to Cineworld in Ipswich later. I'll let you know what I think.

Goodbye eBay, Goodbye Liverpool, Goodbye Betfair, Goodbye Forbrydelsen

All good things come to an end and the time has come for me to pull the plug on my dabbling on eBay. When I started out full of optimism in 1999 with the ludicrously optimistic user name LFCChampions (forged from the misguided belief that the Mighty Reds were once more on the verge of greatness), I had great fun trawling local antique fairs, auctions and even the odd car boot sale in search of bargains to resell on the exciting new auction site. As well as being fun it was a rare hobby that actually made money rather than being the usual drain on resources and, at its height, even after bank charges, tax and accountants' fees I was making several hundred pounds a week which I used to fund my collection of antique pottery. Those heady days are now in the past as this week I sold nine excellent antique ceramic pieces and made a princely profit of under £80. Pieces that would once have sold for £60 fetched nearer £20 and, but for one item that I bought very cheaply, the nine sales could easily have brought a loss. With the financial year ending soon it won't be worth preparing the accounts for the accountant as, if he charges me for checking them, I will end up with a hefty loss.


With all the antique shows on TV and attendances at antiques fairs up as a result I would have expected to see prices rise in reflection of all this interest. But on all the TV shows the emphasis is on driving a hard bargain and I will have to accept that interest in my specialist area (c18 and c19 English ceramics) is not what it was or there are simply too many people on the eBay bandwagon. In addition, the site used to bring high prices and charge low commissions but today it is exactly the reverse with high commissions and low prices. I've got about thirty items left that cost me around £1,000 so I've decided to take them to a local auction and see what happens. I imagine that after fees I will end up with maybe half that but £500 in the hand is better for me than a load of pots on a shelf. So farewell eBay. It was good while it lasted.

Another thing that's going the same way as eBay for me is my season ticket on the Kop. I've held season tickets at Anfield for most of the years from around 1970 to today (apart from when the kids were young and I couldn't afford it) but since the megabucks of the Premier League started to filter into the game,boy has it suffered. Today it's a big deal if a club breaks into the "big four" whereas I can remember seeing Swansea City top the First Division and on opening day at least 75% of teams' supporters thought that they had a chance of winning the league. I now feel the same for footballers and the money men in football as I do for the likes of Bob Diamond and Rich Ricci of Barclays who think that £14m is a justifiable wage packet (mind you, that's hardly surprising as it is the Barclays Premier League) Of course there are exceptions. Not all footballers are greedy bastards and some still feel passionately about their clubs but for every one who does there are half a dozen who couldn't give a toss. Few supporters today think that their team has any chance of winning anything and, whilst I wholeheartedly agree that winning isn't everything we are not far away from the situation in Scotland where one of the same two teams has won the league for as long as anyone can remember. In fact I just had a quick look at the statistics and only four teams have won the English Premier League since its inception and one of two has won it for the past six years.


It isn't going to change. We used to know that we had a match on Saturday at 3pm and maybe the odd midweek game. Now Sky and ESPN expect us to turn up on Monday nights, Saturday evenings at 5.30pm - sometimes at noon - and Sundays when they feel like it. I might as well watch the games from the comfort of home and save myself the hassle of the travel as it's no pleasure to be at the match where the main aim of those running the sport appears to be to milk the mugs who go of as much of their hard earned cash as possible and give them as little as they can in return. Would you pay a quid for a KitKat? The people running Anfield clearly think it a fair price. Forty four years or more of supporting the Reds will be hard to give up but I honestly don't think that I will miss it for a moment.


I'll be putting the £700 I save on the season ticket towards a new metal detector as the old one, although still working, has seen better days and is getting a bit heavy for an old bloke like me. They've got lightweight detectors on the market now that use wireless technology and make detecting for people with hip replacements more manageable. I haven't found anything like the cost of the detector in "treasure" over the eleven years that I have owned my current machine but fortunately I'm not in the hobby for money (although I'm not saying that I wouldn't love to have a valuable find) and anybody who takes it up in the hope of riches is likely to be very disappointed. I'll also give up my weekly flutter on Betfair to contribute to the detector. No criticism of Betfair - a great gambling site and one that I will return to as soon as I've paid for the new machine.

Saturday saw us on the edge of our seats for the final episode of BBC4's Danish import "The Killing" or "Forbrydelsen" as we afficionados have come to know it. I know that there are still plenty who haven't viewed the denouement and don't know whodunit yet so I won't give it away here. It was a masterpiece of storytelling with great acting, great filming, great lighting and the best woolies ever to appear on TV. It appears that almost everyone on Twitter has been following the show and it was on Twitter that @Glinner  (Graham Linehan) sent his followers this fun link.

Animal Kingdom And Funny Girl - An Unlikely Combination

We had a day out in Liverpool yesterday. We centered it around two visits to the wonderful FACT where you get to see the films that other cinemas don't show (plus all the latest releases of course). The first was Animal Kingdom an Australian film set in the present but with more than a hint of the wild west. It tells the story of Melbourne teenager Josh, who, finding himself orphaned, turns to his grandmother, the only relative he is aware of (although he has not seen her for donkeys' years). Gran turns out to be a bit of a Peggy Mitchell figure who dotes on three of her four grown up sons but keeps the psychopathic fourth son Pope at arms length. She takes Josh in and soon he is embroiled in the lawless life of his uncles who are lying low and, after a career of holding up banks, looking for safer options like drug dealing. 


The local police, who have Pope as Pubic Enemy Number One, are out of control, tending to shoot first and ask questions later and Josh - a basically decent kid - is faced with the dilemma that is a choice between a dangerous home or no home at all. I won't give the plot away but it is a tense, dark and brooding drama with an excellent cast and a tremendous performance from Ben Mendelsohn as the scary psycho Pope. It gets four stars from Marion and me.

   

After a trip to ASK for a bite to eat, it was back to FACT for Funny Girl. FACT are running a season of musicals on Wednesday evenings for the next four weeks and this was the first. Made in 1968, I don't need to tell you about this famous extravaganza but we had the real old 1960's cinema experience complete with the film breaking and causing an unplanned intermission and then an hour later a huge melting blob appearing on screen as it stopped again. The audience in the small screen (The Box) responded in a very upbeat manner and we were up and running again ten minutes later after each break. When we were kids, few films were complete without mishaps like this so the evening had a very authentic feel to it - something you don't get with digital projectors.

More treats for FACT customers in the next few weeks include Herzog's Cave Of Forgotten Dreams. We've booked to go to see the screening which includes a Q&A session by satellite with the great man himself (Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre Wrath Of God are two of my favourite films). Richard (of IT Crowd fame) Ayoade's directorial debut Submarine is due to be released on 18th March and, from the trailer,it looks great. I doubt that it will surface at Vue but you will certainly get the chance to see it at FACT.

If you are familiar with this blog you will know that I enjoy trawling through listings on eBay for interesting bits of pottery and porcelain. I spotted this large New Hall bone china (c1830) saucer dish for 99p. It wasn't worth a fortune - probably about £30 but it's worth nothing now. I really don't understand how sellers can ship ceramics with just one flimsy layer of bubble wrap and expect them to arrive in one piece. It happens all the time and that's why I drove miles the other week to pick a piece up.

We can never pass the super Waterstones store in Liverpool without going in and, although we ostensibly visited yesterday for a cup of coffee we still ended up with this lot to take with us on holiday next week. A nice selection to keep us busy if the weather is bad.

Preparing For A Blitz On Ebay

We decided today to get around to doing something about all the stuff that we have accumulated at home that is no longer on display or that I bought with the intention of flogging on eBay but stuck in a cupboard instead. Exactly three months into retirement I suppose that it's time that I did more than go to the gym and read books (although to the surprise of the guests at the weekend's party I thoroughly enjoy doing just that). So Marion and I went through everything and split it into two. The small stuff that is relatively easy to post has been set aside for selling on Ebay. There are some really good items and I'll start on the photos later.

And then there's a second pile - a big box full and more - that I've decided to take to the local auctioneers. This box contains everything that is either too big (or fragile) to post or that I am not convinced is worth the effort and cost that eBay entails. I reckon that there is well over £500 worth of stuff in this (at what we paid) and I wonder how much less we'll get when the cheque arrives in due course.

While we were eating during Saturday night's Perfection party, my phone beeped and reminded me to complete my Mappiness record. Mappiness is an iPhone application in which users take part in a survey being carried out by the LSE which is recording levels of happiness. You record how happy, how relaxed and how awake you feel when the alert rings. You also record where you are, who you are with and what you are doing. They aren't getting too much useful info from me as my figures are almost universally the same. Our guests didn't think I was filling it in properly when I showed them the graphs which have a low of 86% happy and an average of 97% over the month that I have been doing it (the 86% was just after I backed the car into a concrete post) but I can honestly say that I am filling it in genuinely. The levels of how awake I am do fluctuate more (see note re concrete post) but the relaxed figures are, like the happiness ones, pretty consistent at an average of about 92%.

We were delighted when Sarah's partner Duncan emailed this scan of our first grandchild who is due to arrive in early July. We don't know if it's a boy or a girl but we can see that he or she is certainly growing quickly. Time has flown by and there is now only a little more than four months to go. It's so exciting for us.