The "must have" item

Saturday started with a trip over to the Sale Room at Littleton to bid on the oil painting we viewed yesterday evening. It was only seventy one lots in to the Sale so the plan was to bid, hopefully pay and collect before heading in to Stratford for a few errands. Unfortunately that plan did not take account of Lot 21…

… Lot 21 was described as a pair of hand cranked sheep shears and horse clippers and for those unacquainted with agricultural antiques a brief description now follows. Imagine a three legged, cast iron stand that is about 3 feet high. At the top of the stand is a hand crank and gear unit. Attached to the crank and gear unit is a flexible drive shaft with a pair of clippers on the end much like those used by barbers. Basically this is how shearing and clipping was done after hand shearing and before the advent of electric motors.

The lot was a pair of these units and 30% took a liking to them. Christ knows why, but she advised that she was going to bid on them if they didn't go for much. A few minutes in to the sale she was waving her hand in the air like a thing possessed and we became thirty quid poorer and the bemused owners of two antique farm implements that were covered in generations of grime and oil. Fantastic!*

A short while later we reached lot 71 and there was no interest when the Auctioneer tried to pull in a bid at fifty pounds. He lowered the opening price to forty and then thirty before someone on the other side of the sale room made a bid. I followed suit and we were soon back to the fifty pound mark. At fifty five pounds the other bidder dropped out and we had secured the lot. When we took the painting out from the gloom of the sale room in to daylight we were amazed how it came to life and we couldn't wait to get it home and hang on the wall.

Having paid up and loaded everything in to the car, we headed in to Stratford where I needed to arrange to have a jacket and suit altered and collect a piece of cow hide** before heading over to one of the Supermarkets to pick up a click and collect grocery shop 30% had completed yesterday evening. It was then a case of home for lunch.

The afternoon saw a quick post-prandial nap on the sofa before we both headed out around the Three Miler with T&M. On our return the clippers were stowed in the garage roof space and the painting was hung in the Dining Room. We were joined for dinner by both TP and his GF and the day came to a close watching a film on the sofa.

---

* As in Fantastic, I had nothing better to do than get out the ladders and find space in the garage roof to store these for eternity
** I have a pair of horns that need to be mounted and this is needed to trim them and conceal the join.