What a week!!

Ssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh!..............I know I am late creeping back in my blog- I feel like a teenager trying to silently climb up the stairs without getting caught after arriving home at 3am but.......


WOW...............what a week it has been!!


We arrived at the 5 kilometres long brocante early on the Friday afternoon ready for an early morning start the following day. After checking into the hotel we went for a drive around the neighbouring towns to see if there were any brocantes open. We found one shop owned  by a somewhat haughty, well dressed man; he reminded me a lot of the actor "Kenneth Williams"! 

I explained that I was looking for old textiles and he took my card saying he would keep in touch if anything came along.


We wandered around the town and stumbled across this amazingly-decorated old charcuterie shop, below. It was  locked up and I was unable to see inside but a passer-by told me that it had been closed for a number of years. How sad for the townsfolk no longer being able to visit such a lovely shop to buy their cuisine treats!.

We had a late supper and if Sleeping Beauty had eaten the same garlic-fuelled meal as us then her prince most definitely would have walked on by and left her in the undergrowth!! Fortunately, Mark ate the same as me!


We later had coffee in the slimmest, corner  cafe I have ever seen.

You could almost touch both walls with your arms outstretched. And the cast iron table supports inside were amazing........

Perhaps we should have ordered " skinny latte" !!!




The next morning we were up and out on the road by 4am with me sporting my new gift - a torch on a headband which was supposed to leave my hands free to truffle. After only 2 minutes I had startled several people and blinded myself from the reflection in a mirror so it was slapped in the bottom of my bag for the remainder of the weekend! Plus...... I didn`t want to bump into anyone I knew whilst I was wearing it and have to take the stick for it forever!


The first person I bumped into was the wonderful Lizzie......www.thewasherwoman.blogspot.com.

How did she manage to look so gorgeous and bedecked in vintage at that time of the morning? I once met her in a brocante and she was wearing a divine frock coat made of 1920s and 30s floral swatches and I have never recovered from it.................How I want that coat!!!! 


Buying was going very well and I taking my time, pacing myself knowing how many miles we had to cover when I saw a lorry parked on the grass, its roller shutter door  open and its driver literally throwing bundles of textile onto the grass. The 'Charge of the Light Brigade' was an understatement compared to the increase in my pace to get there and, as I approached, the piles of textile just got taller and taller. One pile was already taller than me! 


All the textile was 19th century and the stand holder told me he had emptied the atelier (workplace factory) of a  tappissier (upholsterer) that had not been touched since the early 1900s.


I was in textile heaven! Bundles of passementerie trims  still on their original cards, tapestry panels, silks, ticking panels and woven borders. It must all have been the upholsterer's samples and off cuts.


There was nothing for it but to sit in the lot like a truffle pig and start choosing! Mark kept moving my choices to one side - and I noticed that as the pile I was sitting in was diminishing,  his grew ever larger! As I sat there more was unloaded. There was more than enough for every textile addict there.


I looked up as the immaculately dressed haughty "Kenneth Williams" was pulling a huge trolley full of textiles past me, he sneered "You can buy this all later at my shop but it will be veeerrrrrry, very expensive".


Several options came to mind:


1. Breathe on him after that garlic supper.


2. Pull him into the textiles and bury him to rough him up a bit.


3.Tell him to  re-arrange the words " derriere" and " stick it up"


4.Smile sweetly and say "merci monsieur".


I did the latter....mainly because I was shoulder deep in heaven and I really couldn`t care less what he had chosen!!!


So............... 'A demain' mes belles,  when I will tell you more about the fair and the treasures I managed to truffle out!