The table top sale, UFOs and Prince Andrew ...

As always, being in Jean's company was a tonic, like gulping an icy lime and soda - I am immensely fond of this bold ninety year old yachtswoman - 

We'd arrived at the Roman Catholic Church Hall in Swanage before the Semi Colons table top sale had started - on the way there from Wareham, we gossiped about our surgeons - there was a small white statue of a saint in one corner of the hall - 

Angela was pricing up jolly rom com DVDs and foxed paperbacks - there were  jumpers, glass bowls, tagine dishes and photograph frames to arrange on our table - 

Angela is the chairperson of our local branch of Semi Colons - she's a retired Primary School Headteacher, as is her husband, Peter - 

All of us were there - I chatted to Paul, who'd travelled overland from London to Delhi in the 1960's - he'd seen tribesmen in Kandahar - in Delhi, he'd slept on the roof of Ringo's Palace during the summer months -

One morning, he'd woken up, to find himself being covered with Sanjay Gandhi's election leaflets, dropped from a light aircraft, still circling above the scorched city - 

At nine o'clock, the punters streamed in - 

I felt my heart lurch with pity and love when I saw those pale wrinkled faces, those shabby coats -

On the table before me was a Ladybird Souvenir of Prince Andrew's Wedding to Sarah Ferguson - 

I held the wretched artefact in my hand, hiding it under a splendid breeze block about alien abductions -