The joy of French car boot sales

Every Saturday morning Michael rises at four and drives down to the Côte d’Azur to the Magic World car boot sale. He goes early to see the bric-à-brac unloaded in order to pounce on any interesting old bottles, which he collects. His collection of 18th-century champagne bottles is probably second to none. While hunting bottles, he might also impulsively buy something that tickles his fancy. His knowledge of old things is wide and deep and occasionally he unearths something that would make an Antiques Roadshow crowd gasp with avarice. Then he goes for a swim in the Mediterranean. He’s back at home by ten.

Last month he came back with a set of late 19th-century French pharmacy scales. The glass and mahogany cabinet alone is a work of art. The scales are so precise the balancing needle must be viewed through a magnifying eyeglass. The beautifully crafted mechanism set on a black glass floor must be worth hundreds, perhaps thousands. He gave €60 for it.

On Saturday night he invited Catriona and me round to his house for a chicken dinner. Before going to the table to eat, we drank a bottle of dark, still slightly fizzy 25-year-old champagne he’d bought at Magic World for €1. We drank this out of engraved 19th-century ‘coupes’ (wide, shallow, last seen in 1960s Babycham adverts) also picked up at Magic World. Michael had directed me to sit in a beautifully carved 19th-century walnut throne he’d bought that day for bugger all, to see if I’d notice the difference between it and his usual fireside armchair. (I didn’t.)

And while he and Catriona talked about Michael’s other favourite subject, which is food, I let my eye wander around the old curiosity shop at other displayed fruits of his Magic World addiction: weird old paintings, old sculpture, old glass, old framed photographs, old artificial flowers, most of it apparently chosen in a spirit of whimsy.