A Flea Market Morning

The market at the Old Wharf Car Park starts at six, and by seven the best of it has gone. I know this because for several years I arrived at nine and wondered why I never found anything.

The hour before the hour

You learn to be there when the vans are still unloading. The dealers arrive first, torches in their hands, and move down the rows before the stallholders have finished laying the cloths. It's a quiet, businesslike ritual, almost medical. Nobody says good morning.

I'm not a dealer, and I don't pretend to be. But I've learned to stand to one side, keep my hands in my pockets and let the first wave go through. They are after furniture, silver and anything with a maker's name. What they leave behind is usually what I want.

How to look

Looking is a skill. You don't browse a table of two hundred things. You let your eye drift across it, soft, and wait for something to catch.

What catches is rarely the best object. It's the one that's out of place: the object that doesn't match the pile. A tiny silver spoon in a box of cutlery. A child's glove, a single one, stiff with age. A key with a paper label.

I try not to buy the first thing that catches. I walk the row, come back, and see if it still catches.

The stallholders

Over the years I have come to know a few. Mr Abara sells tools and the odd box of mismatched cups, and he always tells me what he paid for them. A woman in a green coat sells postcards in shoeboxes and refuses to haggle, which I admire.

They tell you more than you ask. A good stallholder will name the house where a thing came from, or the person who died, or the shop that closed. Some of this is salesmanship. Some of it is true. I write all of it down.

What I bought

Three things, for eight pounds in total. A paper packet of pins, unopened, from a haberdasher whose name has gone from the street. A brass luggage tag stamped with a number. And a tiny wooden box, no larger than a matchbox, which slides open to show a folded square of faded blue paper.

I don't know what it held. I don't mind. That box is the one I keep turning over.

The walk back

By ten the market is thinning and the light has turned. People are packing up, and prices fall in a hurry, but nothing interesting remains. I carry my bag to the car, put the box in my coat pocket and drive home the long way.

There is a particular tiredness to a good market morning. It is tidy, and cold, and quite happy. I make a pot of tea, lay the day's finds on the table and begin the catalogue.