French Fogey Finds

Regular readers of this blog (and I'm also including you, yes you, dear lurkers) will know that - call it what you will - flea marketing, second hand scrummaging or jolly brocanting - has been a new-found joy of mine since arriving in Switzerland.

A friend living in Choulex (pronounced 'Shoelace' but without the 'sss' at the end) let me know that a disused aged care home was selling off everything inside and outside the place. Would I like to go?  Look, who doesn't need gold plastic barbeque plates that include scallop servers?  That's right, no-one.

Sapphire and I were immediately struck by the age of the building which, (sorry, I forgot to photograph), was most likely over two or three hundred years old.  It was a classic several-storeyed Suisse-French farmhouse with thick stone-filled walls, solid, rough-hewn wooden beams and not one floor that was level or at right angles. Maybe that's why the place looked as though no-one had lived there for at least a decade.

It touched something in me to see boxes and boxes of seasonal decorations.  Baubles, baby trees, tinsel, Easter rabbits, 'golden anniversaire' trinkets, halloween pumpkins, candles and ..... mini carrots. I just had to have them. For what, I'm not sure yet, but Love Chunks fervently hopes that they and my golden croissant will soon end up somewhere he no longer has to clap his beady blues on them.

Boxes and boxes were filled with coat hangers, felt hats, cardigans and, saddest of all, dozens and dozens of empty photo frames. Did the staff empty them out when a guest departed in order to save space when handing over clothes and belongings to grieving relatives?

We were invited to look in every room of the house and noted that the walls, banisters and lift doors were all painted pink: was it a bold generalisation to assume that this particular aged care home catered for women only?  Names were still pasted on the doors with photos of each lady; clearly all long gone but hopefully peacefully so.  There was a lingering sense that it had been a decent place to live and work in.

Up on the top floor was a still-fairly-well equipped medical office and several rooms with hospital beds.  Further up the hall - and being careful to tread lightly as the floorboards were spongy and the beams were now forbiddingly low - we found ourselves in a beauty salon. "Oooh, I'd love this," Sapph exclaimed at seeing a double-seated, hair drying helmet on a stand in the best pale brown and cream plastic that the nineteen sixties had to offer.  Nearby were lockers with names neatly written on each and benches lined with  folded aprons, smocks, bottles of congealed nail polish and hairspray cans.

Board games, videos, books, paints and boules suggested that the ladies here were pretty happy.  Stacks of Villeroy and Boch dinner settings in a floral pattern, wine glasses, vases and much-used ovenproof creme brulee dishes indicated that the meals weren't too shabby either.

A vinyl suitcase from the 1970s revealed a barrel load of wool; worth hundreds of francs if purchased today.  It seemed an insult to take the pale violet, salmon and soft white mohair and cashmere balls, so the sturdier, plainer ones were selected to knit more blankets-for-the-homeless in front of the telly in order to prevent me from picking at the skin around my nails.  Another suitcase held the needles - how many hands had used them, and what had they created?

Kidney-shaped vomit bowls (I toyed, very briefly, with the idea of buying one and using it to serve up cashews to shocked dinner party guests but Sapphire talked me out of it), bed pans, shower gels for sensitive skin, walking sticks, wheel chairs, crutches, bandages and ointments a plenty with beige and rose-patterned chairs stacked up to the roof.  Streets ice-cream outdoor umbrellas jostled for space next to large framed photographs of seagulls and industrial-sized fridges that were being measured up and lugged away by fellas blocking the driveway with their truck.

We both loved this scarf that featured all the capital cities of all the Swiss cantons and bought another one that did a very good imitation of a green-themed Hermes classic.  The third was an Australian tea towel featuring the 2005 calendar. "I'll fold it in half and make it into a cushion," Sapphire said, her attention now distracted by something really unique. "Oh will you look at that......"

A duck lamp.  A duck lamp!   There were at least twenty of them stacked on a bookcase and my only regret is that I didn't buy them all and decide to set up a funky coffee house/second book shop with duck lamps on each table...... This one is now sitting (and works) next to Sapphire's bed.

I often remark that Sapph should have been growing up anywhere between the 1920s and 1960s because she adores finding retro treasures such as the travel clock pictured above, now proudly displayed in her room.  Therefore, when we found some pearls and the finest, softest navy blue leather gloves that fit her hands perfectly, she had to have them.

Milly had spent the afternoon at home with Love Chunks enjoying the sunshine streaming through the large living room window as he tried to watch the NAB cup on the laptop.

When we bustled in with a bulging Nanna cart and several bags, he patiently sat through our excited presentation of 'finds', nodding and saying 'aah' at (mostly) the right time before noting that we hadn't found anything for him.  "There was a zimmer frame that caught our eye, POG*** dearest, but don't worry, your next glass of wine will come with a clown-faced toothpick perching on the edge."

And, as per the Dog Code of Living With Humans Who Are Easily Amused, Milly too was forced to model the scarf:

...which she did keep on marginally longer than the bra 'ears' we forced her to wear a week or so ago.  All this loot for the grand total of fifteen francs!

*** POG - Pompous Old Git.  Applied only to Love Chunks and not the previous occupants of the aged care facility.

Autumnal Brocante

I'm supposedly in the thick of NaNoWriMo (27,000 words at last count) and factoring in a sick Sapphire (three days off school) and my own four day migraine (still lingering), but hopefully you'll understand why my inclination to blog has been fainter than a Kardashian talent.



But autumn has arrived in Geneva and a brocante or two has been visited. Bring out the photos!

Firstly, a pencil sketch with '1881' written just above the signature. Yes, after I proudly popped it into an IKEA frame, Love Chunks pointed out that the stall owner could have just written the date in there, hoping a sucker like me would be eager to part with a huge ten francs. Fair point.



Another stall holder thanked her lucky stars when she had five copies of this old watercolour of Geneva and five of us duly purchased one each for two francs a pop. Clearly drawn in the days before the Jet D'Eau emerged from a busted pipe in the lake during 1886 or the UN was ever heard of. So, mass produced tat, but I like it anyway.



Found these French spice drawers and instantly fell in love with them. Not so LC or Sapphire, who both said 'Erk' when I stuck them in our admittedly-not-very-sympathetic Billy bookcase:



But YOU can see why I liked it, can't you? Glass drawers made in handy scoop shapes?



Ahem, moving right along. We have darling Milly, reluctantly being forced to sit in the corner and pose in front of my twelve franc bargain - an old wooden snow sled!



Perfect for storing Love Chunks' muddy shoe collection:



Peter Rabbit has always been one of my  picture books and Sapphire has a tiny figurine depicting Peter snuggled up in bed after his adventures. A Wedgewood plate for five francs - yes, thanks.



And a cheap poster of the classic WW2 shot of St Pauls' cathedral surviving the devastation of the blitz? In an IKEA frame that I realised was so unbelievably cheap because it didn't have any clear plastic cover or glass in it?



Second hand book sales are another addiction of mine. English versions preferred of course and when there's a twice-yearly clearance to help raise funds for more books AND a bunch of old Pommy ladies are selling cups of tea and fresh sandwiches filled with cheddar cheese and Branston pickle, I'll be there with bells on. And found, on the 'Antiquarian' table, this little beauty from 1909:



It was interesting to note on the spine that he was called Hans Anderson. No 'Christian' inserted in, unlike Danny Kaye's movie of 1952. "I'm Hans Christian Anderson, I've many a tale to tell..."

Even more interesting was that the book was a prize awarded in 1909 by the Vicar EA Johnson to the student John Jenner for 'General Proficience, Good Conduct, Punctuality and Regularity.' Poor mite; dumb as dodo dung but turned up anyway. Probably liked his prunes, too.....



Modern books aplenty of course. There's few things nicer than knowing you have a delicious pile of reading awaiting you.



.....with one additional selection that even Milly doubted I'd get through.



Yep. War and Peace. Brand new; never been attempted. Handed in for re-sale instead. Will it end up the same way again...?



Time will tell. Until then, there's always time to step away from the desk and wander outside for some autumnal squirrel spotting.

Love Chunks wasn't impressed either way

Regular readers know that my dog Milly is the apple of my eye.


She's my furry secretary, squirrel-spotting walking companion and fuzzy-butted friend.  It's not too large an exaggeration to admit that I think the sun shines out of her.

But this ...... ?

Oh Milly, what have you done?

I know that you know you're in trouble because you're not making eye contact with me.

It's okay, you're a good dog and you didn't mean it. So don't get all huffy and offended now....



And remember, dear dogadoo, just because I showed this latest brocante purchase to Love Chunks and he said, "It looks like a golden turd," doesn't mean that is one.

No, it's a golden croissant!



Okay, brass. Filched from an old boulangerie wall sign and so utterly pointless I just. had. to. have. it.  Who doesn't need a gold-coloured food stuff?

So my awesome little orange dog is not to blame after all. 

Or for this:

When you've spent the best part of a week doing overdue tax returns and keep getting the 'Please call us between our business hours of 8am and 6pm' voice machines the banks switch on several different time zones away, you have to get your jollies somehow.

Thank goodness I have some soft ears to scratch, a tummy to rub and some gentle snores occurring near my feet. Love you, Milly.

Genevan gems

Thanks to the Sunday afternoon 'blahs' being eradicated by the inspiration of River, I've decided to play Sunday Selections this week.

River's a good blogger who does this every Sunday whereas I do it when I damn well feel like it. A bit like blogging itself really.  Sunday Selections is a time to post up photos that you haven't used before that deserve their own time for viewing in cyberspace.  The original idea came from Kim at Frog Ponds Rock who realised that she takes many more photos than she uses, and wanted to show them off. 


River usually selects a theme, so I've decided to borrow that too and have labelled mine 'Found Objects,' or stuff I've snaffled at French-Suisse flea markets, second-hand shops and the street.

I love these little stainless steel guys.  They're Swiss-made, dacshund knife rests.  Usually sold in sets of six, but I only had fifteen francs and wanted one each to represent the three human beings in the household. These are just for sitting on the bookshelf, not to have cutlery resting on their backs.  Yesterday I saw a similar set but they were modelled on retrievers and didn't look quite so fetching.

Love Chunks' Columbia jacket.  A second-hand find from Emmaus: a used clothing, furniture and book shop that opens at 1:30pm weekdays to a crowd of at least 50 people waiting for the doors to be unlocked. This unworn $399 jacket cost me 25 francs and saw LC very comfortably through the Big  Freeze of February 2012 and skiing in Wengen.

I'm a sucker for a quirky - and preferably old - tin. Some sort of bike parts but the name is what did it for me: Dissoplast.  These days it would mean some form of personal insult "She applied the dissoplast treatment on you man, and you lost!"

Edgeworth pipe tobacco. Love the lettering and the colours. Maybe I was ripped off at paying seven euros, but I liked it.

My other Emmaus bargain - an Esprit unisex black coat that was still available brand new in their shops at the time of shelling out 20 francs for this one.  Retail price 299 Swiss francs.  A quick swim in our washing machine and it became a handy jacket that I rarely took off over autumn and winter and am likely to do so again this year and the next.

His Masters Voice tin, barely two centimetres wide. "Oh," Sapphire said, "Is that what HMV shops stand for?"

And inside were spare gramophone needles, still covered in delicate tissue paper.  Five francs!

Sapphire discovered Paul Klee during our visit to Basel late last year when I set the alarms off due to my not-inconsiderably-sized schnozz leaning in too close to some of his works. Why not get a book of his sketches and prints for five francs?

Why not indeed. The next plan is to find some cheap and unusual second hand photo frames to put her favourite ones in.

I prefer coffee over tea and have never owned a teapot whose spout did not dribble everywhere but in the cup, but this pewter beauty was sitting in a 500 year old French farmhouse being used for a brocante for the day.

It was mine for twelve euros.

To drugs now and Geneva was telling patients with mouth infections to Sod Off - sorry, Socop and make their lives slightly more bearable by mixing borax and menthol with Cocaine.

...... even my daschunds showed an interest.

Or there's Sod Right Off - no, sorry, Sodri pastilles, also locally-made.  Just a nice coloured tin really. Both cost five francs each.

Walking to the park with Sapphire recently, we spotted this chair at the front of our building on the day before Hard Rubbish Collection.  Usually there's a sadly unattractive selection of broken CD racks, sofa beds clearly past their prime (and covered in grime) and busted booster seats.  With a quick glance right and left, we retraced our steps and adopted the chair.  It clearly needs a rub down and a new coat of varnish but for right now it does perfectly well accommodating an extra person at the table during dinner parties.

Finally, a public confession to my best friend and husband of many years, beautiful, brainy and brawny Love Chunks.  Several weeks ago, I was brocanting with Robyn (a woman who possesses the unparalleled skill of being able to find the solid silver 19thC treasure hidden amongst a box of mouldy shoes and mosaic trays) and Jenne (an artist who is drawn to jugs and plates) and found this sewing table thingy:

"Combien monsieur?"

Eighty francs.  

No way. I was happy to walk off, having found out many times previously that Swiss stall holders don't haggle like they do on BBCs 'Put your money where your mouth is.'

Surprisingly he called me back. "Madame, Madame!  Soixante (60) francs."

Nah buddy. 

Madame - let me speak to my boss.  He gestured me over.  Robyn and Jenne were intrigued too and we walked slowly back to the stall.

The boss was snoring loudly on an ancient banana lounge set up in the back of his panel van, head tipped back so that his nose hairs blew gently in and out, in and out with each breath.  He didn't take too kindly to his young assistant shaking him awake and seeing three mature women staring at him with poorly disguised amusement.

He grunted something and rolled back to sleep.

Forty francs?

YES.  I then spent the next couple of hours lugging the thing about the markets like a supermodel's handbag.  Things evened out when both my companions ended up with copper bed warmers not unlike the one I found for LC last year.

We climbed aboard the tram with copper lids a clangin' and my drawers a squeakin'.  Add the clatter of some china dishes packed in plastic bags and the metal tinkle of some small bits of cutlery and we had the capability of providing the percussion for the solo accordian player busy busking at the other end of the tram.

The plan is to give this sewing table thingy a good clean, add a generous layer or two of furniture wax and have it in our living room. 

No, not as a sewing aid - I failed the sewing elective in Home Ec in year nine and haven't learned a single extra mending skill since.  No, this little beauty could perhaps offer a different selection of chocolate bars in each drawer?

They're dreamin'

Darryl Kerrigan, the classic working class Aussie father from The Castle used to like reading the 'For Sale' adverts in the Trading Post.

"Hey Dad - guess how much they want for these jousting sticks?" 

Darryl would hear the outlandish price and scoff, "They're dreamin'!"

It's amazing how often I think of him - a fictional character - when I'm out with Robyn on a brocanting (flea market) jaunt. We tend to meet each other at the Genevan equivalent of Rundle Mall's Balls - The Broken Chair.

This little group regularly demonstrates on the quadrangle out the front and is noticed by, well, no-one much. They're dreamin....



Over at the actual flea market in Plain Palais, I had a five franc budget for the day (that's what having a now-healthy twelve year old does to you) and a determination to photograph anything that elicited a 'They're dreamin'!" response.

Like this. A box of skipping rope handles.



Still, our friend Jenny later remarked that they could in fact be good for those of us who tend to fall over the rope. "Just twirl the handles and jump," she suggested, "without then being in danger of having your ankles whipped out from under you."  A nice idea, but a week later when she went brocanting with Bruce, they were still for sale.

So if a workout partly coordinated by The Invisible Man wasn't a bargain hunters' dream, perhaps a second-hand trophy was.  Hold me back - it was the Inter Banques Petanque Victory Cup from..... *rushed past the 1870s Singer sewing machine* ...... 1988!



Better still, he only wanted a teeny five francs for it!

But we'd only just begun and on the very next stall was a bewildering combination of retro racism, nineties ugliness and mismatched ornamentation:



I'd venture that the blues bass player would not have even heard of a compact disc, let alone be allowed to sit down next to the white men who were developing them several decades after his night club gigs ended.  Sixty francs - they're dreamin'!

But wait ...... what was this I saw before me....?  Something the Abominable Snowman used as his school satchel?



A hairy backpack. Not a euphemism, but slightly mange-affected and with a distinct aroma of armpit. I tentatively stroked it and decided not to ask the price. Coarse hairs had stubbornly stuck to my fingertips and it took several wipes on my jeans to get rid of them.

Gone with the wind in German?  We all know that der Deutschland is the poetic language of lust, love and longing, much as we all tend to say, 'Jeez I'm starving. I'm really hanging out for some German tonight. Cancel the Thai Palace, let's find us some stuffed sausage!'

This stall owner wasn't even trying to convince us that these wooden shoe molds were worth considering, as they were carelessly tipped out on the ground next to some curtains and motorbike helmets.  The effect was slightly creepy and at ten francs per foot, it was beyond 'dreamin'.



Moving right along to get that sad little scene out of my mind, I noticed a masterpiece:



Nude musicians, Picasso-style, for thirty francs. With a bonus empty banana box to carry it home in. Very, very tempting, as was Shazza Stone, featuring in a 1993 magazine shortly after flashing her map of Tassie to fame:



Still my five franc coin stayed in my pocket, now with a few hairy backpack fibres clinging to it. Would it ever be spent on something unique, something special, something that would find a fond spot in our home?

These were five francs each but looked too disgusting to touch, let alone read the labels or sniff the corks. A shrug was all we got in response to "What kind of wine is it? Quelle age?"  

We suspected that the real answer was Le Ancient Garage.



Still, a glug or eleven of Dodgy plonk might have helped convince me that a blowfish lamp could soften the blunt impact of our IKEA-laden apartment:



....or that a set of photographs depicting eye surgery might look a treat when framed and hung up on the eastern wall of the living room.



Maybe the poor patient was given these menthols to help in their recovery afterwards.



Onto Spanish comedy magazines from the nineteen seventies, with Super Senorita's head concealing part of the title so that I originally read it as 'El Pus' magazine and was reluctant to open the pages.



It must be said that a big part of brocanting is the rummaging, especially in neglected boxes of assorted junk. It is there that silver jugs, rare saucers and vintage medical equipment can sometimes be found.  

This box of old mice and cords didn't scream out that usual siren song, however.  Dust, desperation and despair was more like it.



Jenny had already wandered off and found some terrific pewter plates with very intricate inlays on them, hand engraved and dating from the 1920s.  With her halting French, she managed to convince this top-hatted fella to drop the price.



He had some pretty unique and genuinely antique pieces for sale, but the ambience was made slightly challenging by the death metal blasting out of the speakers in the open doors of his van.  Jenny's sign language possibly proved more effective than her spoken French.

Stop the search...... could this be something I put away for Love Chunks, I wondered.  A turn right sign and a yellow bike frame?

Er no.

And this world weary chick agreed with me.



Here it was, finally! THE piece that would make our Allen-Key Apartment a home. A quirky one perhaps, but an individual one.... Tacky, funny, furry and grotesque - flea market perfection.

Yes. This was where my five francs was going to be spent!  A triple-legged lamp stand!



One hundred and fifty? Was monsieur quite sure?  No, I didn't want to take a look at single cow horn night light as a forty franc alternative, so I was on my way....

....to finding some real art. Art done by the people, for the people.



Well, blind people perhaps.

If the box of Commodore 64-era computer equipment for sale wasn't optimistic enough, we came to these - unloved remotes for five francs each.

Nope, couldn't do it. My coin stayed with me for another hour until I found the complete works of Jane Austen crammed into one bulging paperback - in English - for two francs and a cup of coffee for three.

Four hours of fun for five francs. I'm starting to love living in this bewildering, slightly odd, tiny little city.