A souris up the pantalons and a pig in the trough!

 It is so nice to be feeling so well again now that all the pipes and stitches are gone!!

I went back to hospital last week to have the drainage tube out and had been told not to eat and drink anything after midnight the night before and to be there by 7am. 

Of course I had convinced myself I was going to have a bad time of it and on the drive there my imaginagion went into overdrive. By the time I arrived I had terrified myself into thinking I was going to have to swallow a camera, have more stitches, injections etc etc!  So when the delectable and suave Docteur L`Argentan swept in to my day room looking like a young Omar Shariff I was ready to knot the sheets and climb out of the window. He snipped a couple of stitches, pulled out the tube, put a dressing on and I didn`t feel a thing!!!! Phew!!!!!!! ........Note to self along the lines of what Frou frou tells me " Mother....just man up and grow a pair !! ".

It was a bank holiday here in France yesterday so we were up at 5am yesterday morning ready to go off to a brocante. It is so nice to be out and about again that I wouldn`t have cared if I had come home with nothing at all.

But being so early I arrived at a battered old car just as a young man and his wife unloaded a huge array of dusty boxes and trunks. Dust and grimy old newspaper is always a good sign and I was in there like a ferret up a trouser leg! Or is that a souris up the pantalons? 

The young guy told me he had cleared an attic and dusty as it all was .....it was all divine!!

A few more early dealers had realised what was happening and were starting to arrive on the scene so I lifted up a huge box of old textiles to hold onto it to go through it.

What I hadn`t realised is that the box had been sitting on this amazing huge old wallpaper and textile sample book and saw it just as another lady scooped it up into her arms. Aaaaah!!!

 Don`t panic....stay cool.....don`t even look at her! Oh heavens!....I can see it says "Toiles de Jouy" on the front!

She looked at it.....held it....looked at it again.....then held it tightly as she stood and examined it whilst keeping one eye on what was being unloaded. I tried not to look interested as she leafed through it.

Oh heavens!.....it has textiles and wallpaper swatches together.....don`t let her see you looking!

Then.....something he unloaded must have flicked her switches as she dropped the book and went off to the trunk he had just put on the floor at the back of his car.

I did a triple half pike swallow dive four roll gamboll and the splits and I had it in my grip!

I love it, love it, love it! I think it is 1920s or 30s and what a wonderful source of design history. I spent last night fawning over it and I have now recovered enough to list in my auctions today.

The roofer arrives tomorrow to put the tiles on my new office roof..I say new roof ...but the building is anything but new and we are replacing the roof with period tiles. I think it was once a small barn for a pig. Right - I am there before you so don`t even think about making a smart comment on that one! I am back to full strength and can rugby tackle at 40 paces!

A la prochaine mes belles!