Loches was the venue this time.

Loches was the venue this time. And the white barriers were out across many of the streets with “Route barree” signs scattered around. We weren’t the first to arrive but there was still a good deal of unloading going on. My attention was drawn to an open backed lorry stacked with metal children’s cots, garden tables and folding chairs. This was a good lesson in don’t be polite and wait, just grab someone’s attention and get what you want before it gets sold to someone else! The charming and rather besmirched and dusty vendor offloaded two cribs for me. There have been so many, many things learned since that day – and one of them is that metal cribs are gorgeous but they don’t sell very quickly and they do take up a lot of space on a pitch. Lovely as they are, I’ve not bought any more.

Loches had been a local “vide grenier” in a historic and picturesque town but the market at Joue les Tours stretched for miles down a road in a Zone Industrielle on the outskirts of Tours. The energy was different here – less of a casual strolling, more of a determined push and pace. There was a mix of stalls – some selling clothes, toys and videos, some just come for the day to clear out the last of Grand Mere’s bits, and then the professional dealers with their old white vans, who aren’t about to sell a metal bottle carrier for under 15 euros!

The first purchases were made...

The first purchases were made from a dealer with a large showroom, courtyard and barns. The barns were full of items still “dans leur jus” (- in their juice) as the French say, waiting for restoration. I found I was much more interested in the contents of the barns – climbing over obstacles, peering through a stack of furniture with a torch to see what was at the back. My absolute novice status was doubtless, but Claude the proprietor and his wife and the dog encouraged me on. We lined up three large mirrors and a cupboard painted in bright yellow gloss against the barn wall. A price was broached and negotiated, and the items were loaded into Moe. My happiness was indeed great. Van doors were shut, hands were shaken, and as we were about to leave, Madame said, “Vous voulez des pommes?” (- you want some apples?) We did.

The first early morning foray to a market was a solo 5am drive to Richelieu – Graham drew the line at such an early start. I had emailed the tourist office and got dates for the markets there. Driving along pitch black winding lanes, hoping I’d arrive before I ran out of diesel, I did feel a mixture of nerves and excitement. I made it to Richelieu as the sky was just beginning to lighten. What a strange and fascinating town! It is set out in a perfect grid of beautiful stone buildings. The covered market place was easily located and beneath the ancient roof beams were stall holders, already setting out their wares. But all I could see were lettuces, aubergines and leeks – not a stick of wood wormy furniture in sight. I groaned inwardly.

At that grey blue early morning time, the café beamed with light. The red neon letters above the door broadcast their message of “Bar” to welcome the sleepy and, in my case rather deflated, marketeer to a grand crème and croissant.

Never mind, tant pis! Another market tomorrow.

Getting ready for the first trip...

Getting ready for the first trip over to the house in Preuilly was full of excitement and sleepless nights – I researched markets and dealers around the Touraine, ordered Millers Guides and French parallels. A friend put me in touch with an English dealer who had lived in France – he offered many helpful pointers and told me not to buy any French enamel coffee pots as "the bottom's fallen out of the market". Each time I picked one up subsequently, unable to resist, Graham stood at my side shaking his head and repeating "the bottom’s fallen out of the market....."

So, one early morning on a grey October day, I sat at the wheel of Moe on the ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg as the ramp lowered - my heart thumping, I was on a mission! We arrived at Preuilly after dark. Graham backed Moe into the courtyard of the little village house, onto deep gravel and got stuck. Oh well, we’ll sort it in the morning we said. Hope had said that everything was still in the house for us to use. But oddly it was without bedding, cutlery, fridge, washing machine. A table remained but there were no chairs. Our first night was spent camping in a half empty house and with no water - the stop tap was in a manhole in the driveway - just beneath where Moe had got stuck in the gravel. The issue of furnishings was resolved the following day, and six car loads of household goods were returned to the house that afternoon, following perplexed phone calls to a rather canny property negotiator who had not expected anyone to be at the house prior to its sale – “Oh we ‘ad joost taken eet for the cleaning” he said with a watery smile.

I’d lived and worked in France...

I’d lived and worked in France, I’d worked as a tour guide, I’d worked as an interior decorator in the past – and this new venture promised to weave so many strands of my life together: the chance to use the language again, to map read, plan itineraries and discover lanes and vistas, staying in manor houses that now offered B&B, to bring home beautiful objects, restore them and set out my stand.

The next issue for attention was that having had this fabulous adventure in France, what was I going to do with all these things when I’ve got them back to England?

Yellow Pages open on the table, phone calls made to Antique Centres, notes scribbled. At the one over in the Cotswolds I’d have to work there a day a week if I wanted a pitch. At another they only had a space under the stairs (bad fung shui), at another there was a waiting list. But at The Quiet Woman just outside Chipping Norton, yes they had a space, not too big, not too small, would I like to pop by and look at it?

On a blustery day in September – I was returning from a morning’s private conservation tour of Chastleton House, looking at dead furniture beetles, discovering that squirrel hair brushes are ideal for dusting fine objects and talking about micro crystalline paste favoured by conservationists to protect and enhance everything from leather to metal to wood – I called in to The Quiet Woman. Ann, the co-owner, was warm and enthusiastic, offering help and support, whilst at the same time running round organising tea-shop staff and dealing with customers. She showed me the pitch and there I was, on the cusp of a major decision to embark on a new direction in life. And yes it was - I’d take the pitch the following month, on my return from my first trip.

About the same time as this, a dear friend Daphne had left her life-long home, a farm just up the road from our cottage, to go to a retirement home. I spent an afternoon up at the farm with her daughter and rattled back home towing two trailer loads of buckets, enamel kitchen ware, chicken crates, Aga kettles, an enormous kitchen table, basins, folding chairs, baskets and a lot of woodworm to treat. So sad to see the farm go, but I also understood that this is, of course, one of the ways that antiques and the like return to the open market.

I’d really, really like to hire a van...

“I’d really, really like to hire a van and go over to France and buy up loads of brocante….” I’d been saying this for quite some time, years actually when, following a walk in the Derbyshire Dales with my friend Hope, a thrilling plan emerged. Hope’s new partner was selling his house in the centre of France and why didn’t I go down there to stay and take whatever of the furniture remained in order to start me off? An offer that had enormous appeal.

Whilst looking into renting a van for this trip another idea was suggested. Buy a van, it’ll work out cheaper and you can always sell it afterwards, was the counsel of Graham, my ever supportive and tolerant partner. He came with me to Buckingham Van Centre and I peered into a few obligatorily white vehicles – some polished and clean, some straight off the building site. No, I couldn’t see myself driving a three seater, let alone a Long Wheel Base jobbie. “What about this one?” - my eye was directed to a diminitive, quite elegant really, LDV Cub van. Her license plate reflected her name to be – MOE. One slightly nervous test drive later (a lot more noise than a car, rather wide, rather high!) she was mine. And did Little Moe get sold after “just the one trip”? How could I?

Moe has become my workhorse, my shelter, my mobile workshop and my pal, not to put too fine an anthropomorphic point on it. Sometimes I look at her and feel a quiet happiness that together we are creating a story, an adventure of so many possibilities – and joy!

Vague signs were there from early on, I suppose...

Dreaming repeatedly, as a child, about a room – always the same red walled room, my dreamer’s gaze moving slowly around it, taking in detail after detail of how it was arranged.

A bed time chapter “The Borrowers” arousing a sleepy intrigue about the tiny dwelling of those resourceful little people, how they made their home cosy with things “borrowed” from above the floorboards.

I concocted rooms from cereal packets for my dolls and stuffed toys – furnished with toothpaste cap flower vases, chests of drawers from 6 matchboxes glued carefully together and the like.

Things took a more specific turn in my teens. A Victorian potty was spotted on a lunchtime stroll in the dusty window of a shop under refurbishment. A workman had hung it up with a “For Sale 10p” sign on it. My school friend, Barbara, looked on as I made my purchase, delighted, and emerged not only with the potty but also a Mable Lucie Attwell calendar that read "The Thirteenth Commandment: See that you are not found out!”

There follows a story heralded by clamberings in and out of skips, of the feather mattress I hauled home (“Fleas!” said my father, “You’re not bringing that thing in the house”), of the metal trunk bought without looking under the old sheet of newspaper that concealed the rusty hole, of first venturings to 5am candle lit Bermondsey markets - and a longing to forage endlessly in French brocante shops but with no way of bringing anything much home.

So it’s no real surprise that I am now living my passion - the only surprise is that it has taken me so long.

What follows are my musings, my dreams, something equating to a love deep in my gut, for travelling the backwaters of France, for not knowing what next delight I will uncover, for the glance of amber light through a dusty barn door, for furniture long since forgotten and left to age into oblivion at the back of a hangar, for the sons of sons of brocanteurs, with their stories, their rough corners that warm into a greeting and hospitality, for the dealing and head scratchings, for the squeezing one more piece into Little Moe, and bringing it all home to be dusted of ancient cobwebs and loved back to life.