Beggars' Choice

Went to a Craft and Antiques Fair the other weekend. It’s a biannual event held at the Claremont Showgrounds and has been running for quite a few years now, although I notice it’s actually now called a Craft, Antiques, and Collectibles Fair - this would explain the large number of McDonald’s giveaway toys that were on sale, which are neither crafty nor antiquey. Not really collectible either, some might say, and quite rightly too.

Highlight was picking up a Poole totem-pattern freeform bowl made in the 1950’s by Ruth Pavely. All this doesn't mean that much to me, but my wife is red-hot on these things and spotted it amongst the detritus as one might spot Wally on one of his amazing adventures, and snapped it up. Nice work!

Also worthy of comment were two books I found; The Clown Said No! and Watch Out, Jar Jar! (from the Read, You Will! series of Star Wars books for kiddies).

I naturally assumed the first book was about a clown getting pestered for sex and quickly started thumbing through it, but instead it turned out to be about a clown who is tired of being laughed at (who was his careers advisor?) and quits the circus, followed by a bunch of animals. He sets up a new, nurturing, circus which is friendly and supportive, with the centrepiece act the clown lulling a donkey to sleep with his piano accordion or something. Upshot: people will gladly fork over hundreds of dollars to look at a kipping donkey. NOTE TO SELF: incorporate sleeping donkey into all future business plans.



The Jar Jar book features one of the most, ahem, “beloved” animated characters of all time in a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of hi-jinx. Thought you couldn’t hate Jar Jar more than you already do? Think again. It’s thoroughly depressing, but it did provide my first encounter with super-awesome jedi knight Yarael Poof: anyone who can make it with that name and with a neck that long in a room full of people with lightsabres is OK by me.