At the Auction

Still in Cornwall and sending you all greetings.
J. and I have had a really good week so far. We have raided just about every charity shop in Cornwall. taken all her rubbish to the tip in my Berlingo (lots of room with the seats down) and taken her old immersion heater to the metal recyclers ( a nice little cheque in the bank) Done the aforementioned potato peeler conversion and bought some dry winter stores from Lidl. A large amount of fish has been caught and frozen ( and given away).
But today was the best ever!
 My large kitchen fridge has broken and I have been using the outside "beer" fridge and my small dairy fridge. This is not really sufficient at this time of year in particular, with the stone fruits, blackberries, peppers and tomatoes in full swing. So D. and I have been looking on the interweb, the Argos catalogue  and local sales sites for a larder fridge. Argos have their Value Range Larder fridge at £199 which would fit the hole, but the trouble with Argos is that you cannot actually see the large products and it was still a little more than we had available. Others that we Googled started at $400 to £800 !! We decided that we might have to buy a second hand fridge at those prices.
Yesterday J. says "There's a household Auction up the road tomorrow, with viewing today, shall we go and have a nosey?" Shall we? of course we shall! So off we went yesterday to have a look and in the sea of tat was a beautiful Miele larder fridge, as good as new, in fact we think it probably had very little use. At home later we Googled the make and model. The prices for this particular fridge started at £595 and went up to £775. Okaaaaaay, this might be out of my league I thought. After talking it through with D. we decided that really £180 tops was all we could afford, including the buyers premium of 15%.
 D. went fishing and after a spot of breakfast J.and I set off for the auction. I could go on trying to build up the suspense, but I can wait no longer.. with only one other person bidding I sealed the deal at £60!!! with buyer's premium that is £69 for a good quality, as new larder fridge. What a bargain. 
Getting it in the car was a bit of a challenge, but we managed it. So if you see a Citroen Berlingo going north up the M5 on Saturday afternoon, with a thumping great fridge in the back, it's us!!
 I also saw a very large lidded wicker hamper that I thought would go well next to the fire to put extra logs or maybe spare knee blankets in. It was quite old and there was a lot of interest in this lot, so I backed out at £12 ( a large cardboard box would be free) J. then took the card off me and continued to bid until she got it. "What are you going to do with it ?" I asked. "Give it to you for a Christmas present" she replied. How lovely is that ? and we don't even buy each other Christmas presents!!!
So What a super day it has been.
I phoned YD last night to see how things were going back on the old Smallholding. "Okay, nothing's died yet!" Bless her what would we do without her?
I'm off to fetch D. off the boat soon. I wonder if he has much fish?

Nice to hear that you are following my blog Rachael and enjoying it. Love to you and your adorable children
Back soon All
Gillx