Gravy bone?

Swine flu. You get no sympathy...

Skype

I was talking to this dealer from Altrincham the other day, who was really into cranberry ware marmelade dishes from the late 1840s and so I said to him, 'Ooh, I've got one of those. It's a bit on the chipped side, but nothing you wouldn't get away with on Flog It. I got it for £35 at Peter Wilson's, so I couldn't possibly let it go for anything less than £37. Shall we say 36?' And so he says to me, 'I haven't any cash on me at the moment. Can I skype you later instead?' Well, I was just flabbergasted. I thought, well, you've got a wife. What's wrong with her? Why can't you skype her? And I certainly wouldn't dream of being skyped by you, cranberry ware marmelade dish or no cranberry ware marmelade dish. Not at my age and not with this pelvis, I'll tell you that for nothing. The things people come out with. But then, that's Altrincham for you. More money than sense up there and too many hours in the day, that's their problem. They might be used to spending their time skyping from here to kingdom come, but I've got 4,000 individual dried flowers to price up and Evie to look after all weekend. I said to her, 'How about we go to the Monkey Park at Trentham?' She just said, 'The simian equivalent of the gulag? No thanks. Solzhenitsin might have appreciated the irony, but I'd much rather spend the afternoon with this apricot-flavoured Muller Lucky Star and Ant and Dec, if it's all the same to you.' There's no pleasing them, is there?

Youtube

Now that I'm on youtube, can you find out if there are any videos of Wade jugs in the shape of parakeets for me. I don't know how to find things on youtube yet. I've not got the time for internet searching, you know that. I've got all these people coming to view the house and the minute I get it tidy again for the next visit, it's all messed up with the dog's feet and Paul's clothes all over the place. You don't know what it's like. And now there's a new bathroom, I suppose that will be destroyed before we manage to sell the place. And your father's always on the balcony smoking his cigars. Why don't you go over to Belgium to get him some more? It's nearer for you, isn't it? If he doesn't have them, he just gets bored and then there'll be another bloody motorbike in the garage.

Lot: 1108 - A Beswick cat, a Royal Doulton puppy in basket and a Wade Humpty Dumpty

Are you looking at the Willingham Auctions website? What do you mean, you're still at school? It's six thirty! That's ridiculous. What have you got to do a departmental handbook for anyway? If it was me, I'd just tell everyone what to do and that would be it. There's no point writing things down. If people are anything like me, they're far too busy to read.
Anyway, just go onto the Willingham auctions website, will you, and find Lot 1108. It's a Beswick cat, a Royal Doulton puppy in a basket and a Wade Humpty Dumpty. Now, it's very rare to get all three of those together in one lot. I think it's happened once before at an auction in Harrogate or somewhere like that, because I saw it on Flog It. And in the end they went for £38 for the whole lot. Well, I can get more than that for the kitten alone and there's a collector from Kidderminster I know who's always up here and she'll kill for Wade Humpty Dumpties, so I should be able to get £50 off her for that. And I'll probably just give the puppy in a basket to Michael, because he likes that kind of thing, I've decided.
So anyway, will you go to Willingham and put a bid on for me, because there's no way I can get down to Cambridge at the moment, what with my knee. I've been crying non-stop as it is with these hot flushes and the doctor won't put me back on oestrogen unless I stop smoking. So I might not be around for much longer at this rate. You can get me Lot 1108 and bring it up to Stoke at half-term, can't you, if it might be the last time you ever see me...