Having recently moved house I have some rather empty rooms and bare walls, so, I decided to visit the Auction House. A friend of mine had bagged a few bargains and I thought I’d give it a go.

I went with another friend and it really wasn’t what I expected. My naive self assumed it would be full of stuffy restoration types all discussing history of art and which era this or that piece of furniture was from. No no, it was more like a hectic car boot sale only there is just 1 seller and even the buyers are on display, apparently!

The people there were a real mixture. Some wearing tweed, others shell suits, men and women, old and young, unwashed and washed. The same goes for the items on sale… Lloyd Loom wicker baskets, untouched 1930s cabinets and rather a lot of junk!

Once the sale had started one woman told me her unfortunate (and disgusting) story about a man masturbating next to her during the auction a few weeks back. And even my (not particularly wealthy) friend was told when she entered the room ‘you can’t hide money love’ as a man looked her up and down. Is the auction house really a man’s world? The comments and behaviour of one or two, not to mention the smell of some of the people in there, would certainly make you think so.

At first it was almost impossible to understand the auctioneer but we listened VERY hard and when it came round to the items we wanted it was our turn to bid! So we pushed our buggies a bit closer to the front and had our programmes ready to wave in the air.

I was outbid but had a go, my friend bid up to win the piece of furniture she wanted and on doing so the auctioneer announced: ‘there you go, you’ve just lost your auction virginity.’ We hadn’t realised that we were so obviously ‘new’ to this… Or was it that we were washed? I’m not sure.

Anyhow, I did buy some ‘junk’ as my husband calls it. I’m very pleased with the old glass bottles on top of my kitchen cupboards and I’m glad to have lost my ‘auction house virginity’!