After a week of bubble wrapping, sorting and pricing up for the big spring event at Peterborough, the day finally arrived. Last year was horrific, it snowed and snowed...after a month of praying to the gods of weather, the dreaded TV forecast showed a cold spell on the way. Fortunately no snow, but cold nights, meaning thermal underwear, coats, socks and boots...all this after the previous t shirt weekend when we sat on the patio in the sun !
Arrived noon, to meet the dreaded queues of traders waiting to descend -a new town within a City was springing up. Cars lorries campers caravans of all shapes and sizes, old new foreign and British. After a 2hr wait (which is so typical of the organisers who couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery ) we all finally got in, only for more chaos as they forgot to make it a one way system, meaning traffic moving from 5 different directions came to a gridlock in the middle. Resulting in several thousand traders cursing and swearing, even mild natured Tony went out to give the traffic control security a piece of his mind. Four hours later, stall finally set up we crawled back to a freezing cold camper van no hook up to electricity , drank copious amounts of wine and fell asleep. Next morning 6am boiled eggs and toast, back to the stalls. 8am the traders come in, in their thousands to buy....we had a great day, the sun shone and suddenly the frustration of Thursday vanished. Following day Saturday when the public came in...it was cram packed, but we like most of the other traders had a dreadful day, no one wanted to part with their money and haggled on everything, even if it was £1...shows us that the recession is nowhere near over :-( and too many of them actually believe they are going to get the discounts that they miraculously do on Bargain Hunt and Antiques road Trip
Of course bargain hunt appeared, so did Eric Knowles (who upset our friends next door to us by saying aloud on camera their posters were reproductions when walking past, he never even stopped to look at them...well as they were original, and had cost them a lot of money, they rounded on the film crew and gave them a piece of their minds. The film crew smelling a potential riot of like minded traders ganging up on them, beat a hasty retreat :-)
The man who wears funny bow ties and leads bargain hunt, came to our stall...I made excuses to tony and bolted to the van to make tea. When I got back I asked tony if he noticed, and of course Tony had been walking around with his eyes shut and never even saw him :-)
Well it's been and gone, and over till October....was it worth it..yes because I learn very time I go, I see lots of people who have now become friends, and learn from them. However I have total respect and praise for those who trade in any 'pop up' situation, be them market traders, craft traders, antique traders or any trade that has to build up and dismantle a shop front to sell. Because my god, it is such hard work, it leaves me totally mentally and physically exhausted for about 24 hrs afterwards :-(
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