Swap til you drop - The Critic September 2020

The best day of the dealing year comes in early September. It isn’t a day when people make a lot of money, but it is a day of trade. It takes place at the cricket ground outside Stow-on-the-Wold and it is called the Swap Shop.

The day actually begins earlier in your own storage as you peruse and evaluate those items that you have ceased to love. Every purchase begins with enthusiasm and optimism but as the years pass and the storage and restoration bills mount so in equal proportion the adoration fades — sometimes to the point of odium. You make a list of the worst offenders and then book your hotel room. On the eve of the big day you load your van or car to the gunnels and head off for the legendary pre-swap dinner and drinks.

Old friends gather and some who you only see at the Swap Shop, many pints are consumed as stories are traded and the beer is fussed over and analysed for quality and flaws.

From there a short but erratic walk to an Indian restaurant more renowned for their ever-patient staff than the cuisine. More beer, a little shouting, some off-key but heartfelt singing and some food later, we roll off to our cots.

The next day, early but not very bright, we convene in the car park of the cricket ground. Goods are unpacked and the prowl begins. Everyone walks up and down several times. After a while someone says I like x and you say what have you got, and you go over and look at their pile of rejects.

If you are lucky there is something there of charm and interest and if it looks viable you swap. The rule is that you never discuss or mention money.

Very often, either you don’t have something they want or vice versa and you need to engage in what’s called a “long swap”. This is when maybe six or seven dealers swap in turn for things they do not directly want but that they know someone else does.

It all has to happen at once and can take a good hour to tee up but a good long swap is a thing of great beauty. In the end everyone gets what they want.

There are several masters of the long swap but Tony Fell from Norfolk is most people’s idea of The Compleat Swapper. Others have skill, such as Max Rollitt or Edward Hurst, but Tony is hard to beat.

The Clarke brothers run the day and are the world experts in campaign furniture

There are some people who want to sell their things for money but they are in a minority, and they are patiently tolerated. Most people will end up swapping all or nearly all of their erstwhile loves and come home with vehicles crammed with fresh meat. Some pieces make a regular appearance but in a different van every year. The thrill of getting rid of something and acquiring a new object of affection is hard to beat. The whole event takes only a few hours: by 12.30 everyone is swapped out.

But the fun continues as lunch is provided by the Clarke family. Second-generation dealers, they run the day and are the world experts in campaign furniture. Lunch is robust, straightforward and delicious, seconds are available and there are always large slabs of local cheese to hack a chunk off. Wine is available for those in the mood and Diet Coke for the rest.

The final act for me is the legendary cricket match, while for the real hard core there is a further pub and supper event. The match is a very special treat. Avid cricketers beware. The players rarely wear white and the shoes are a long way from regulation or even safety. It is another moment for Tony Fell, who corrals everyone into teams and makes sure there are enough bats and pads to go round.

Tony’s rule is that everyone has to bowl at least two overs. Now there are some players who come with their own kit and clearly know what they are doing, but most, including yours truly, are quite atrocious. My overs are traditionally the most humiliating minutes of my year. The worst was in front of my son Inigo when I bowled a catastrophic series of wides, one of which went for four runs.

Everyone had a good laugh and I did my best to hide my tears. Inigo is a very useful sidekick at this event as he can drink beer, which I cannot, in unfeasible quantities. He can also hit a cricket ball and on this occasion made some valuable runs and took a catch.

The only comfort is that nearly everyone else is hopeless too. The winners celebrate uproariously even if their victory is by some astonishing concatenation of good luck.

It is a grand day and one that feels as if it is from another age. Long may it continue.

Life in the Arts Lane -week 129 - The anticipation game

Waiting is a fact of life - that does not make it any more bearable. Two weeks ago on a bright Monday morning I rented a van and - gathering up my son Inigo en route - loaded it with some of my least loved items of stock and headed off to Stow on the Wold for the "swap shop". I have only attended this annual event once before and it has stood in my memory as a great experience. I was at Mallett then and the assembled motley crew of dealers looked on in delight and surprise as the Mallett van turned up and disgorged myself, two porters and about 150 items. three hours later, aided and abetted by swap shop maestro Tony Fell I found myself loading about a dozen new pieces onto the van and all 150 items had gone. A nightmare cricket game followed during which I was so humiliated by my incompetence that it has remained a 'laugh' for many of the trade ever since and it was over 10 years ago! Nonetheless loaded up and full of hope and expectation I threaded though the traffic up to Stow. That night 16 dealers gathered to eat curry and reminisce ahead of the morning swap. I felt nervous - like before a fair. I had to wait and see what would happen. The next morning as Inigo and I pulled the stuff out from the back of the van I predicted I would both find nothing I wanted and no one would feel desire for any of my stuff. The wait dragged on for nearly three quarters of an hour and then things kicked off. Admittedly, various folk tried to persuade me - in a nice way - that my treasures were rubbish and theirs were solid gold, but that is to be expected. As before - with a bit of argy bargy and the occasional dramatic pause, I packed up into the van a bunch of new things and left my once loved things behind. It was a good day. Sadly the cricket was no better than before and being bowled by Edward Hurst to a daisy cutter that barely made it to the wicket is a further humiliation I will have both to bear and never hear the end of. Especially as my son has now been inducted into the mocking crew.

The triumph of son over father.

The next stressful wait is for things to arrive from abroad. Last week I went to Belgium with my ex Mallett colleague Nick Wells. He has fashioned a post Mallett career for himself as an internet selling maestro. His website gets a regular avalanche of hits and he sells steadily and well a delightful smorgasbord of items. Nick buys relatively little but he felt like a day or so on the road. The highlight was eating in Brussels at Vismet which is my favourite fish restaurant in the world. Nick took on the 'assiette matelot' which is a delicious but unceremonious bowl of seafood. Oysters, crab, mussels and whelks comes in a heap and you just tuck in.  It is fabulous. I, in an unexpectedly demure fashion, had a carefully crafted plate of cod preceded by a half dozen of their typically bright, fresh and very salty oysters. But we were ostensibly there to buy art and the next day I succumbed in a big way and he more modestly. Sadly the items I bought would not fit into the car and so I now have to bite my nails nervously until they arrive. I am not concerned about damage - I am terrified that I won't like them when they arrive. Sometimes the thrill and drama of driving, eating and shopping abroad casts a rosy hue over all that you survey and bad mistakes can that way tend. So now I am waiting to see whether it will be future swap shop fodder or happiness. Another week to go.

Vismet - Assiette Matelot.

Today I am waiting for the public. The Battersea decorative fair opens tomorrow and I have set out my stall and am hovering expectantly. The Big Bang comes at midday but you have to be alert as for the last two fairs the Beckhams have been allowed early access to shop discreetly. I have to report with sadness that they did not dwell or even linger around the Woodham-Smith Ltd booth. Waiting is now my friend for the next few days. I will stand by for an eager punter to light upon something they hanker after. I will be tolerant of those that want to share with me how similar something of mine is to one they once owned or bought for a fraction of what I am asking - even if on analysis there is little connection between the two. I will enjoy the banter, the dogs, the look of horror when I reveal the price, I will enjoy it all because amid the frustration and the patience there will hopefully be a few sales. I will change around my stand and perhaps a few new things will come on and perhaps I will buy something.  

It is a dog's life - always waiting.

The final and almost the only nice wait is the one before you get paid. It is true that you often wait too long and that can be exasperating, but the soft warm glow that follows a sale and the raising of an invoice is kept as glowing embers by the wait for the money. I have been expecting a payment for a couple of months and when it arrives it will feel as if the item has been sold all over again. Two tastes of honey for the price of one. Waiting is not all bad.

Maybe see you at the fair?

Life in the Arts Lane -week 127 - Silly Season – or - how to love tidying?

Silly Season – or - how to love tidying?

Here we are in August in London. In a perfect world we hard-working dealers would now relax and go on holiday having done more than enough business in the first half of the year. But sadly the world is far from perfect. In fact we seem to be faced by a world burdened by an unending catalogue of misery. The list of woes is seemingly endless; the killing of innocent black people in the USA by their own law enforcement officers, the unstoppable rise of Donald Trump, the global tragedy of displaced people through civil wars, the terror that increases every day because of IS, the casual and everyday racism that seems to have become tolerable and acceptable in Britain since we narrowly voted to leave Europe. There is more and more to get distressed by - even jolly old sport is racked by scandals and ‘cheating’. To top it all - business is tough too. What do we do to remedy this situation? My answer is that we should all tidy up.

Is this your home or office?

Tidying puts things in order and for the majority of people it means throwing quite a lot of stuff away. The computer age instead of freeing us from paper has drowned us in it. As paper accumulates even the most avid filer-away will discover on review that a fraction of what has been kept needs to remain. The joy of many full bags of recycling being taken to the dump is hard to define. It is like have an enema - unpleasant beyond description - but you are cleaner and feel better afterwards.

Once you have purged yourself of unwanted paper you need to seamlessly move on to printed-paper. Look at all the catalogues you have accumulated over the years. For me endless auction and dealer magazines together with random sales brochures need to be evicted from my shelves. Books come after magazines and though often beautifully produced I know an awful lot of books will never even be opened or have lain fallow for more than a decade - off to the charity shop. Suddenly shelves are emerging like buds in May. A clear shelf is a thing of beauty.

From the fresh white of an empty shelf I look round my store to assess the random fragments of potentially ‘useful’ things I have accumulated. Several carloads are taken to the dump and some are given away to become cruel clutter for some poor eager fool to accumulate and have to deal with later.

A glimmer of hope.

Then - on a roll - I dive into actual furniture and decide on disposing of bits that have settled in positions around the house and store without my permission. Furniture can do that. Sometimes things creep into the house and hide because you don't know what to do with them. You look behind a door and you are shocked to see what is hiding there. Yesterday someone asked me about a friend whether he was a dealer or a ‘real’ person. I think the remorseless accretion of ‘stuff’ is a problem for both the human race and ‘dealers’. My friend in Norfolk Tony Fell is a dealer and he has an annual evacuation, which is the ‘swap shop’. Rather like the Grand Vizier offering to exchange new lamps for old we dealers would rather have a fresh new white elephant than an old one. You never know – someone might buy it. Vans all over the country are filled and driven to the cricket pitch at Stow on the Wold. There in a feverish couple of hours people swap their unloved items for others that they invest new hope into. One mans sow’s ear is another’s silk purse. For many the greatest joy is not the new opportunity but simply saying good-bye to something you have had for too long. Tony is the master of the ‘long swap’, which is when an object has to be swapped through several hands before it gets to its new home. In extremis often a dealer gets satisfaction from throwing something away in a skip that he or she bought for proper money. The principle is getting freedom from the albatross around the neck. The day closes with a celebratory lunch followed by ritual humiliation as we all play cricket. It is worth it.

So now you have separated the wheat from the chaff. You have to order what remains. The model for me is to consider how quickly you could move out. If you could easily pack and be ready to leave for another home in a week you are a black belt in tidiness. If you cannot imagine moving because sorting everything out would be an unimaginable nightmare - you are in need of intense therapy.

Applying order begins with small steps; I always begin by getting everything of the same ilk into the same space. It sounds bafflingly obvious but you would be surprised how often people don't do this    - because they are used to where things have historically always been. That task achieved I would recommend wiping everything and putting things in boxes. The process of wiping is not cleanliness - it is holding it in your hand. If you handle an object even if it just an old biro or a jar of jam you reevaluate it and you decide whether you want or need it.

Whether this process takes place at home or in the office the clarity of mind and purpose that this undertaking requires can lead to a new approach to life and business. Taking the baggage out of life and making only what you can use or need hang around - may inadvertently improve business by filtering out distractions. When we return after the summer break maybe a little more order and tidiness will make the world seem a more positive place. Maybe life won’t seem so bleak.