Antiques supper at Standerwick

Last evening Val and I went along to Standerwick for an unusual and very entertaining evening. I was expecting to eat a meal and then listen to a speaker describing his life in the antiques business. Wrong! We did indeed have a lovely meal (pork chop & veg, all locally sourced and a scrummy pavlova or chocolate torte) and we enjoyed the very good company of 6 members from Chewton Mendip WI around our table. The speaker provided antiques for us to look at and we had a series of questions to answer about each one. (work to do, indeed!) it was absolutely fascinating, and what a privilege to be able to handle so many old, interesting and valuable items! One table had the cheapest and the most expensive puzzles to solve! Their marrow spoon (not for scooping the vegetable type of marrow, it was for bone marrow!) was old but worth only £6. The brooch, very small, just a thin gold strip with 3 white stones turned out to be worth £6,000, (I observed two things at this point: one, all the doors were closed and two, he didn't divulge the value until he had that brooch back in his possession!) It was very interesting, we learnt a great deal about antiques along the way and had great fun! Well worth the ticket price indeed!