Egg-cabbage socks, some wellies and a tree

For me, a nursery is not the most enjoyable of places to spend my time since not only do I not know one type of plant from another I also hate kids. It was simply because I had nothing better to do on this particular day that I agreed to travel with my father to one such establishment purveying plants and a variety of other pieces of vegetation. He wanted to buy some leaves and things from the auction being held there because it was closing down. I had no idea that at this auction I would seize on a money-making opportunity and become convinced that I had all the makings of a super-successful businessman. I also had no idea that I would not remain convinced of this for very long.
Ho-hum...
Many years ago I had a friend whose father had a farm on the outskirts of a village. It was a small village named Standerwick similar in size to another one named something else, and it was a little farther than a violent sneeze away from the desperately dreary town of Frome.
My friend’s farm was typical of many found throughout Somerset and Wiltshire and perhaps beyond. It included a number of buildings fashioned from olde worlde stone and there was also a large barn built of corrugated tin. Machinery often defying description and of purpose unknown to me lay apparently neglected and rusting to pieces in a corner of the yard. In another corner sat an old stone trough, and in another still: a shed. One of the olde stone buildings was used for milking the cattle while the barn housed their winter feed of hay. It would have been home to many rodents too had my friend’s family not owned a couple of cats that slept in the laundry in a room next to the farmhouse kitchen door. In this room the family also kept their jackets and boots. My friend told me once that one of the cats had given birth to some kittens. This had failed to surprise me as much as it would have had I been told that the same cat had given birth to a wheelbarrow full of penguins, but my friend then told me that at less than a week old one of the kittens had found its way inside the wellington boot of her father who had been rather surprised early one morning when he felt his foot squelching against something in that boot and something else oozing into his sock. I really shouldn’t have found this funny, even though I did. Anyhoo... Not long after this my friend’s father sold much of the farm to allow for the construction of the A36, a junction of which accessed the new location of Frome’s Farmers’ Market recently transferred from the town centre car park. It was at the time the market was still located in Frome that I first visited an auction simply to see what one was like. I had a sneezing fit halfway through and very nearly bought a goat. Other than that I remember little else apart from listening to the auctioneer’s rapid and garbled shout, his speech so fast that all his words seemed to blend into one. I remember being unable to understand a bit of it, for it was as if he spoke in another tongue. ‘That was a long time ago’ I thought as I climbed into my father’s truck to visit the nursery and my first auction since. ‘At least the worst thing I could end up with at this one is a tree.’ As it happened, I was actually rather wrong about that.
It didn’t take me long to get thoroughly bored at the nursery auction. As I’ve already mentioned I had little interest in plants. All the same I wandered around looking at shrubs and sticks in small plastic boxes, and as I did so I have no doubt that I occasionally puffed out my cheeks, thrust my hands into my pockets and scuffed the dirt a couple of times in misplaced petulance. We had arrived at about ten in the morning and by eleven I would have found it more interesting watching cement set. I decided to focus my thoughts on the auctioneer and try to figure out what was being said.
The rapid monotone was that of a somewhat melodic machine gun. It was similar to stones rattling down through a drainpipe, or to the chant of an Aborigine with the backing of a didgeridoo. Slowly though, with my boredom behaving like treacle poured over and through the cogs of time I began to get an inkling of comprehension of the auctioneer’s speech. It didn’t make anything greatly more fascinating however, but I did begin to notice a few things. I began to pay more attention to his performance, noting that during the bidding each incremental rise in the price of a particular lot was accompanied by a nod of his head and a point of his finger at one of the green-fingered mob surrounding him. It was almost as if he were crooning on stage to an audience of grandmothers. I found this funny, albeit not for long, and soon thought of him as a rather bad rap artist instead, hoping that he might soon begin to gesticulate a pair of scissors with his fingers and mention about pimpin’ bitches and bustin’ caps an’ that, innit. Sadly he didn’t, and so I became bored again and decided to wander around a bit more.
As I wandered I soon discovered a garden mower in a shed. I guess the excitement was merely that of a boy of about thirteen: one whose father had collected many of the things over the years and had left them scattered about the numerous corners and bushes of his yard. I toyed with the idea of encouraging my father to place a bid upon it and left the shed to see how the mass of green fingers, Barbour jackets and wellies was progressing. It was still some way away from the lots within the shed but I immediately noticed that in the midst of the throng was my father. I watched as the mass moved slowly from one lot to the next, and as my father raised his hand in the air to buy a hedge.
The garden mower was one of those sit-on things that doubled as a pathetic-looking tractor. It had a trailer attached to the back and I decided that my friends and I could have a great deal of fun with it should I be able to convince Dad to actually buy it. I went back in to the shed to look it over again and not long after returned outside to try and talk him into the purchase. By then I was rather hungry, but this wasn’t particularly important.
At this point Dad was nowhere to be seen and for reasons unknown the number of Barbour jackets and wellies had swiftly dwindled to about thirty. It had reached a pile of paving slabs and a few rocks and, covered by various pieces of vegetation, a stack of flower pots. There was a pallet of plastic ones of different sizes, all of which were coloured black, and behind them an even greater stack of orange and green terracotta pots. They were green with moss and ivy and dozens of other leaves, the names of which would still be completely irrelevant even if I did have the faintest clue. For a moment I pondered nothing in particular. I simply stood next to the pots and decided that I quite fancied a cheese sandwich. The mass of Barbour jackets, wellies and a clipboard (attached to the auctioneer) came ever closer and soon enough I found myself in its midst. It was then that I heard the auctioneer burble something about the terracotta pots.
I don’t precisely recall what had caught my attention; whether it was the number ‘twenty-five thousand’ referring to the approximate quantity of the pots, or whether it was simply the fact that it was met with an uncomfortable wall of silence. It could well have been either of those things. I looked around me at the faces of the Barbour jackets and the wellies and at the auctioneer standing a good head-height above everyone else because he was on top of a box. He began to call for the bidding against the lot, his gaze falling expectantly upon each of the Barbour jackets and the wellies in turn. ‘Shall we begin the bidding at fifty pounds?’ he fired, a little more slowly than I had actually anticipated.
The suggestion was again met with the same uncomfortable silence, but undeterred he continued on. ‘Twenty-five, then?’ Nothing. ‘Ten?’ I waited for someone to step in with a bid. I didn’t think for a second that particular ‘someone’ would be me.
‘A pound?’ I said nervously, expecting to be ignored. There was a rustling of Barbour jackets, a scrape of wellies and a nondescript murmur. I’m pretty sure I also heard something of a horsey-snort.
‘Okay’ said the auctioneer with an almost imperceptible tone of resignation. ‘We’ll begin the bidding at a pound. Will anyone offer me two?’ Again there was silence, and like the egg-cabbage odour of last Friday’s socks it seemed to hang in the air for an age. ‘One pound, then. Going once. Going twice. Sold... to the young man in the middle (not wearing wellies)!’
Oops.
There was more rustling, a little more of a murmur. Someone definitely laughed. I realised that I’d just bought twenty-five thousand terracotta flower pots for a quid. I immediately forgot about the cheese sandwich and tried to work out how I was going to break the news to my father whom, I had just noticed, was across the yard poking his head into a tree. I went over to the tree with my father’s head in. ‘Uh, Dad? Do you need any pots?’
His expression was at first confused. Certainly there was disbelief, bemusement and a hint of horror. But there was a definite look of ‘for God’s sake’ present in his face too. It was something that immediately told me of his reluctance to ‘bugger about’ helping me to load twenty-five thousand flower pots into the pickup truck to take home. But he did. Halfway through the four trips it took us however, a man walked up to me and offered me a fiver for a thousand. Brilliant! I thought, thoroughly pleased with myself. It was my first ever business deal!
Now, for the sake of a pseudo-description, twenty-five thousand flowerpots is a lot of pots. Stacked together they’re about the size of a couple of skips full of pigs. I had no idea what I was going to do with them but over the coming years I sold a few thousand, used a few more thousand for anger management after discovering their particularly therapeutic qualities when hurled against a wall, and I attempted to turn a few more into candles to sell at car boot sales. A few more I shot with Dad’s air rifle and I gave a few thousand to a friend to make a sculpture with that he sold for four hundred quid. But as with anything and Me, after a while I lost interest and Dad used the remaining thousands to bury one of the half-dozen vans rotting away at the end of the garden.
Like I said, inspired by my wheeler-dealing and belief in my own entrepreneurial abilities I soon visited another auction convinced that I could spot a deal and make myself a vast fortune. I left with two Betamax video players, an electric drill that didn’t work and a pair of rusty skis. It was one of the last auctions I ever went to.