The tension starts to rise a week or so before any fair. No matter how often I exhibit I never can be completely blithe about the process. Back in my Mallett days there were people buzzing around making preparations but now it is all down to me. It begins with a piece of paper and a ruler. I measure out my stand and start imagining the 'mise en scene'; this takes a while, with quite some crossing out and redrawing, but from this skeleton all else follows. The plotting triggers everything including the nervous anticipation of both problems and triumphs. There is always the dream that someone will come on to the stand and buy everything, a fantasy balanced by a nightmare where everything is unsold, damaged and derided. Neither has yet come to pass.

My current focus is the Olympia Art and Antiques fair which opens ominously on the night of Halloween. I am not going to wear a comedic spooky outfit nor will I bedeck my stand with cobwebs and pumpkins - when most people see my modest prices they are scared enough. There are countless UK and international fairs from September through to December - the Autumn season is packed but as a rough guide the season starts with the Biennnale in Paris and ends with Winter Olympia. This fair strives to mop up the last of the year's buyers before they run off and hunker down to celebrate Christmas. It offers for the most part items of modest value and whilst there is a larding of six-figure pieces - even the occasional seven-figure - the majority will be four and five. That does not mean the stuff is only decorative, it just means that it is modest. The quirky and the imaginative is what is on offer and that can be excellent and exquisite in execution.

The fair comes at a difficult time in London because Brexit has triggered a large drop in the value of sterling, and whilst the devaluation creates an opportunity for buyers - providing what appears to be an inbuilt discount - it increases people's sense of nervousness and insecurity. That mood is as discouraging as the reduced price of the items is tempting. In addition many of the buyers at UK Fairs are Europeans and Americans who have moved here for work and their future status is now uncertain. This dissuades them from furnishing in an indulgent way. So within this brittle market Woodham-Smith Ltd and confreres are trying to make a show which will both be commercial and entertaining. To this end we focus on the classic methodologies. We gather fresh things, we show practical pieces with an edge of originality and glamour and we keep our prices down. Invitations will be sent out and good clients personally encouraged to attend. It is a lottery to which we all buy far too many tickets in the hope that one might come good.

I am getting ready. I have my plan but now I must make a really hard decision. Do I take my wine fridge or not? It is a great boon and comfort to have chilled white wine ready at all times but it is possibly a distraction to spend more time plotting my evening libation than focussing on the customers. Also the fridge itself is no enhancement to the beauty of the stand. Though I am pleased with my 70s revival glasses. It will probably go.

I walked today through Battersea Park with my friend Arthur Millner, an expert in Indian and Islamic art. He is not an exhibitor but he is giving a lecture at the fair. He was fretting too, he is worried that he has not done enough work in preparation and consequently he is going the shut himself away for the next week to get ready. Nearly all fairs have a lecture programme and an exhibition to enhance the visitors experience. I am uncertain how much potential buyers want to attend lectures but it does make the fair more rounded and organisers want to encourage visitors not just buyers. Although I know his lecture will be excellent, Arthur's nervousness is infectious and back at home I spend a careful afternoon checking up on my preparations.

At Hatfields, the restorers, they are completing the finishing touches to the items coming to the fair. Richard, the foreman and manager tries not to let his face fall as I bowl in on an almost daily basis asking for the impossible. They say a watched pot never boils and that seems to apply to restoration: if you hang over the shoulder of a craftsman they rebel and down tools - you have to encourage and cajole them like getting a timid cat to come out from under a cupboard.

In addition, upholsterers and polishers should not consider going away on holiday for a fortnight before a fair - certainly they should not be allowed to. I ring my shippers for the umpteenth time encouraging them urgently to deliver my foreign purchases in time to get them ready. As the fair approaches so does the sense that everything needs to be done at once, preferably yesterday. I can comfort myself with the feeling that I am not alone, similar calls are being made by dealers throughout the land.

Then comes the computer and the printer wrestling match. Like many dealers I print my descriptions onto sticky labels and then fix those onto string labels. The devils who design the software for label printing at Avery must chortle with delight knowing the exquisite torture they put us through. The box provided for the words never quite lines up with the label that comes out of the printer. It all ends up being a pile of errors dumped into the paper recycling and yours truly ragged and wretched accepting imperfection and scribbling hand-written corrections onto the labels in an unforgivably scruffy way. It is a battle I fight and lose before every fair.

The penultimate battle is the one fought getting the treasures onto the stand and looking good. The carriers arrive and with a requisite amount of complaint and groaning the van is loaded up. The traffic stiffens and, cursing the delays, they arrive to do battle with the fair organisers security. Unlike prison guards who want to keep their inmates in, their struggle is to keep everyone out. If you get your goods to your stand without weeping or cursing their day is clouded. What follows is a sweaty few hours battling with wobbly walls and equally wobbly ladders. Screws fall out, nails bend, pictures hang skew whiff and the furniture tips in unseemly ways due to the uneven floor. In the end it all looks as good as it can and you head home in order to prepare emotionally for the descent of the fair's vetting team next day.

Like blood hounds following a scent the vetters sniff round the fair in pursuit of errors. They rootle about seeking imperfection and deception and debate how best to correct it. Will a change of wording do the trick or does the offending item have to be ejected from the fair? It is a necessary pain, as mistakes can be made and it is best to do what you can to protect the unwitting public.

And then it's done. You dust, wipe and move an object slightly to the left. The rest is up to the random delighted guest who falls so in love with an object that they have to take it home. Roll on the 31st October.

As I sit on the edge of the bed carelessly pouring sand out of my shoe onto the carpet, I muse that not only am I making a mess but that the summer is drawing to a close. It is always this way - as August shuts down the clouds part and the sun bursts through in an almost mocking way. In my old Mallett days this week began with the tying of a tie and the donning of a sensible dark suit. I would wend my way up to the West End as if it was my first day of school. These days as I inhabit the chaotic world of the self-employed the transition is less physical. I don't get up any earlier and I don't wear work fancy dress as of yore, but there is a palpable sense of the seasonal change.

At the end of July one can sense a kind of exhaustion in the art world as if a long race has been run. The first half of the calendar year is frantic and culminates in a flurry of auctions and fairs leaving the organisers, participants and eager buyers bleary-eyed and blunt to all excitement. Then summer bursts out and for about six weeks people are away. In France it is very obvious as nearly every shop and restaurant actually closes, but here in London there is just the inevitable ‘out of office’ you receive when you send an email, the message service when you call - or even the foreign ring tone followed by a disgruntled voice as you realise you have woken the recipient at about four in the morning. Even the most pushy and energetic dealers have to rein themselves in and take a pause. For this period it is hard to buy and hard to sell but it gives us all time to recharge our batteries.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the summer is that it gives you time to sit back and plan. The idea is that careful reflection and analysis of one’s business and its practice should lead to sensible and thought-through development and enhancement. But for many during this period of repose and reflection myriad hair-brained schemes can percolate, ruminate and generally become more interesting than they actually are. In the absence of business a certain loss of confidence and desperation can kick in and consequently the prospect of starting a scrumpy bar in Somerset or pig farming in rural Burgundy can suddenly seem like fantastic ideas. Luckily, occasionally plotting and planning has to give way to the sensible exercise of one’s time-honed skills and sometimes a small purchase or sale will clear the screen of fantasy and allow reality to once more hold sway.

But my friend Andrew - stylish, tall, blonde, killer salesman - is sitting in his picturesque chateau in France pondering how he can entice private and trade buyers over to visit. Should he give a series of dinners or even a masked ball. He considers how he might create a sort of sensation that will put his location on the touring map of european buyers - in a good way. In London the other sales dynamo, the ever-charming Tarquin from Pimlico road reflects on how to drive sales whilst simultaneously spending less time at his shop. Tucked away in his fortress in the drug-dealing epicentre of South London Nick the internet king spends his days scouring the websites for the holy grail of a cheap shop in a good area with passing trade. What am I doing? I pass my idle summer days considering how it is that I became so addicted to buying and what can I do about it.

Luckily for me the end of summer brings with it the prospect of the next outing - the Decorative Antique fair in Battersea Park which kicks off on the 27th September. It is quite a way off but there are forms to fill in and floor plans to be strategised. The fair suffered a shock this summer as its owner and major force David Juran died suddenly whilst on holiday. He was young - early 50s. The fair will go on and his family will continue to manage it through the already appointed officers but it will nonetheless be strange without his larger-than-life presence, booming voice and signature wearing of the shorts he wore in all seasons. Dogs will still roam the hall and the occasional squirrel or pigeon will wreak the usual havoc - life goes on. I will always remember the visit to Mallett of a distinguished decorator from Los Angeles, who asked me about my boss David Nickerson. He had both retired and died since her last visit as I carefully told her. A tear ran down her face and she expressed great sadness and regret as he was beloved by all. She then pulled herself together saying ‘Lets have a look around.’ She asked me if I was now in charge, and whether she could still get her usual huge discount. I confirmed both and off we went. Life goes on.

The kind of creative insanity that too much rest affords.

We need to get back to work.

Various writings