I'm not certain but I formed the impression during the 'boom' years, (that caused the 'bust' we are now enduring), that there was small demand for, and thus trade in, older things.

By this I mean, bric-a-brac; used furniture; minor antiques; the 'stuff' that accumulates in a home that is inhabited for years and years by the same occupants.

Maybe I'm wrong and this trade went on unabated while I was looking the other way making some good from being the maker of 'new' things.

Or perhaps when money was plentiful (or rather, as we have now found out, easy-got), an 'edgy' new item provided the same thrill as a 'find' of an old thing did then.

But back in the last decades of the last century, there was great trade in such things.

Remember Clanbrassil Street as it was then: the poor man's Francis Street (or the paupers South William Street) - with shop after shop filled with one person's 'junk' or another's 'find'?

Remember the Dandelion Market in Dublin, The Coal Quay in Cork, Smithfield in Belfast and countless other such spots throughout the country, where many of us spent happy hours sifting through such 'stuff or junk', making our 'finds' whether with a view to profit or something different for the home?

But there are two things of which I am sure.

One is that this trade in old(er), but not necessarily important, things remains a major activity in France.

There are brocantes, (which occupy a space somwhere between a second hand furniture store and an antique shop), and sometimes many of them, in every town.
Street fairs and markets abound and, Pezenas, a delightful old town some half an hour away from Thezan les Beziers, is filled with brocantes.

My many trips down to the Dwyers in Thezan, this passed year, provided the need to go hunting for 'older things'.

The Dwyer's Chambre d'Hote required to be furnished, on a tight-enough budget, with items that would make sense in a building that spanned anything up to 800 years.
So we had a good reason to track-down and haunt the brocantes .

And, in my view, we managed to furnish the bedrooms with an eclectic mix of items that has given each room a different, if not distinctive, atmosphere.

And, on these sorties, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the revival of my dormant hunting instinct and the resurgence of an interest in making 'finds for profit', particularly of items in need of repair or restoration.

But there is a twist to this tale!

The other matter of whch I am certain, is that I have a mill filled, on three stories, with 'junk and stuff' that has accumulated over the past thirty-five years or so.
The most of it is surely rubbish - you know, the kind of things that should have been thrown away in the first instance but, because there was 'space in the mill' to 'put it aside', it was 'put aside in the mill'!

The space is now so filled that there is no space!

It is my resolve (as it has been every new year for at least the last ten) to clear the mill this year.

But if I do embark on this task this year, my greatest fear, and I suspect it will prove to be well founded, is that I will find that I am making 'finds', albeit for the second time, and that I will determine to re-store them!

On the other hand - maybe they will make me rich!!

We shall see what we shall see!!!!

This is a glimpse of what I must face into.

It is a shambles: and to have created such fills me with shame and as a consequence I am shamefaced because to have behaved thus is, surely shameful...... I can't remember which word I went to look-up in the dictionary - but this was rhe sequence of definitions surrounding shame!